Holiday hiring is off to a great start. Retailers are projected to hire more than 800,000 seasonal workers for the October-through-December period. Target plans to hire 120,000 seasonal workers this holiday season, a 20 percent increase from last year. Kohl's plans to hire 90,000 employees across its 1,100+ stores, nine distribution centers, and five e-commerce fulfillment and credit centers. Same case with other retailers like Macy’s, GAP, JCPenny, etc. Read more about it here!

The holiday season is the most exciting yet challenging time of the year when it comes to recruiting and for recruiters. Some of the recruiters may be working on high volume requisitions to fill those seasonal positions I mentioned above. Some of you may be going through a hiring freeze and taking it slower than ever. Some of you might find it challenging to fill your open positions because of not having many people applying for your jobs, and the applicants that you like are not responding to your emails/messages.

If you are one of the recruiters who is not having a seasonal hiring needs but working on filling professional/ specialized positions then you will find it more challenging to connect with right candidates. Not having good applicant flow, not having the right type of the talent applying for the position, when you finally source and reach out to a candidate they are are not responding or not showing interested in your open positions. Challenges that you face during this time of the year continues. Irrespective of where you are at in your recruiting needs, holiday time can be a great time to build your talent pipeline and even prepare for the year ahead!

Five tips for hiring and engaging with your talent during holidays

Below are some tips and advice for you to engage with your talent and build a pipeline during the holidays.

1.Map it out and spread the word

Everything starts with assessing the needs and planning it ahead. Check with your hiring managers and business leaders to understand the workforce that you will need for the rest of the year and later. Connect with your HRIS team to get a report of approved/budgeted positions in the system and use that to correlate when you connect with your hiring manager. This will help you understand the workforce you will need, the skills set you need to look for, and also will get an approximate idea of when you would need these positions to be filled. Knowing these details will help you plan your recruiting efforts, and prioritize where you need to focus more.

Don’t wait until you post the job posting to spread the word. Start spreading the word now that you will be hiring these position in the upcoming months. That way you can use that as a foundation when you start connecting with your potential talent and interested job seekers can reach out to you.

2. Start engaging your candidates now

Knowing what type of talent you need in the upcoming months and in the future will help you start searching for them now in the right place and not waste time. Don’t wait until the last minute to connect and engage with your talent. Work ahead and start sourcing now. This will be a great time to pipeline your candidate for the future needs and start having a conversation that will lead them to show interest in your positions and later apply. Try creating a newsletter that showcases the future positions and use your CRM to promote that among the talent network that you already have in place. Use LinkedIn and start creating some project for each open positions and pipeline candidates.

3. Boost your employer branding awareness

Use this holiday season more than ever to showcase your workplace, share happy moments and update your talent on the milestones you accomplished this year and even share your future plans for growth. Create some targeted promotion on social media to share the success/growth of the past year, your future plans for next year and the open positions you will have to make those future plans work. This will help your talent pool relate to what they are getting into and how they can be a part of your organization and help accomplish those future plans.

4. Involve your employees to boost referrals

Employees want to work with their friends or people like them. So referrals can be a great resource for you this time of the year and any time of the year for that matter. Reach out to your employees to boost your referrals, have a referral program in place if you don’t have one. This way you will be able to tap into the network of your employees, their family, and friends. Have your employee ambassadors on social media to further promote the social media posts that you have planned to promote the open positions. If you a ‘Social Distribution’ platform as part of your Applicant tracking system have your employees to set up their account and start sharing the jobs on their personal social media pages as the jobs get posted.

5. Communication is key

Communicate it often and very clearly on what type of open positions you may have in the future and when you are looking to fill those open positions. If the job seekers see that a position has been open for so long then chances are they might not apply for that one. If you are looking for someone to join immediately, or later at the beginning of next year, add that to the job posting. So job seekers who don’t want to move now but looking to move at the beginning of next year can apply for the job knowing that they don’t have to join immediately.

You might see that the job seekers are not responding to your messages or emails. Chances are they might be on their vacation where they might take a little more time than you expected. Send a compelling message customized in a way that talks to their background and be sure to mention what’s in it for them. Use text to reach out to candidates. Sometimes, candidates respond to a text message than emails, especially when they are traveling or during their vacation.

What are some of the tips and advice that you want to share with our recruiters who are looking to hire during the holidays?

For more recruiting and interview insights, join us in San Francisco this January 30 - February 1, 2019, at #SRSC where talent acquisition leaders connect to leverage emerging recruiting practices.

Nisha Raghavan is the Talent Attraction and Employer Branding Specialist at the American Heart Association. Prior to this, she worked in the telecommunications and media industry to help attract, engage and retain talent. She writes about her Global HR experiences at her blog Your HR Buddy!! Connect with her on LinkedIn and on Twitter at @TheHrbuddy