Last year's invoices tell you when this year's busy period starts, and most owners have never looked. Pull the totals by week for the last two years and the shape is usually clearer than memory suggests: a ramp that begins earlier than anyone thinks, a peak of six to ten weeks, and a tail.
That chart is the hiring plan. Everything below is arithmetic done against it.
Overtime or another pair of hands
The first question is whether you need anyone at all, and it has an answer rather than a feeling.
Overtime costs a premium on hours above the threshold, and it costs nothing in recruiting, training or downtime. For a short peak of a few weeks it is frequently the cheaper option and always the simpler one.
It stops being cheaper at the point where the premium hours accumulate, and it stops being wise sooner than that. Ten weeks of six-day weeks produces mistakes, callbacks and, eventually, a resignation from the person you can least afford to lose. The honest threshold is not purely financial: it is how many consecutive weeks your existing crew can work long days without the quality falling.
Write both numbers down. The overtime cost of covering the peak with the crew you have, and the loaded cost of one seasonal hire for the same period. If they are close, hire, because the version with a rested crew is worth the difference.
Six weeks earlier than feels necessary
Seasonal hiring competes with everyone else's seasonal hiring, and the calendar is not negotiable. Post when the ramp begins on your chart, not when the phone starts ringing.
The candidates worth having in a summer market are students with a firm end date, people between jobs, and returners from previous years. All three make their decisions weeks before the season, and the last group is the most valuable by a distance.
The rehire list, which costs nothing
Keep a list of everyone who worked a season and left on good terms, with a note about what they were good at and whether you would take them back.
Call them in April. Someone who has done the season before needs a fraction of the training, already knows the customers and the routine, and will tell you in the first minute whether they are available. A shop that calls six former seasonal staff usually fills half its need before advertising anything.
What makes the list work is the end of the previous season rather than the start of this one. Tell people plainly on their last day that you would have them back, and mean it.
What the posting has to say for seasonal work
The start date and the end date, both of them. A seasonal role with a vague ending attracts people looking for permanent work who will leave when they find it, in the middle of your peak.
The hours, including whether weekends are part of it. The pay. And whether there is any chance of the role continuing, stated honestly. If there genuinely is a chance, say so, because it is one of the few advantages a small employer has over a large seasonal operation.
Younger staff, and the rules that apply
Summer hiring often means hiring teenagers, and the rules are stricter than most small employers assume. Federal and state law both restrict the hours minors can work and the equipment they can operate, and where the two differ the stricter one governs. Some states require a work permit or an age certificate on file before the first shift.
The equipment restrictions are the ones that catch people out. Certain power tools, certain machinery and driving as part of the job are restricted by age regardless of how capable the individual is. The federal half of that comes from the Department of Labor, which sets the age floors for the work it classes as hazardous, and those are worth checking before you hand a teenager a task rather than after. The state half is a ten-minute call to your own labor office.
Front-load the training, then leave it alone
The mistake with seasonal staff is training them gradually. A season is too short for gradual.
Spend the first two days on everything, including the parts they will not need until week five, and give them a written one-page reference for the things they will forget. Then let them work. A seasonal hire who is competent in week one is worth two who become competent in week four, and the difference is entirely in how the first two days were spent.
Ending it well, because it comes around again
Set the last day in advance and honor it, and tell people a fortnight ahead if the work has run out early. That courtesy costs nothing and it is remembered.
Then do the two-minute version of an exit conversation: what was worse than they expected, what was better, would they come back. Write the answers down next to their name on the list.
Do that for three seasons and hiring stops being a scramble. It becomes a set of phone calls in April, made to people who already know where the coffee is.