Rethinking Seasonal Recruiting for Municipal Agencies

The most important part of a Park and Recreation department, aside from the infrastructure, is the people who staff it. In the early months of the year, public agencies across the country, and particularly in California, begin recruiting and hiring their seasonal and part-time employees for the upcoming year. This hiring process requires close coordination with municipal HR departments, making it a critical partnership. But sometimes, the process can also create friction.  

Hiring part-time workers can be a legitimate challenge for HR departments, especially when it comes to seasonal employees in Parks and Public Works departments. Human Resources departments are dedicated to ensuring compliance and consistency, typically without a deep knowledge of how hard it is to find 100+ seasonal hires. And many recreation managers and first-level supervisors are enthusiastic, passionate, and program focused, excited to hire people and do good work, but typically lack a deep knowledge of HR protocols. The tension between operational needs and structured procedures can easily create challenges.  

I see this situation every year, and I’m happy to report that with some key planning, the clash can be prevented. If people learn to see the other point of view, work together, create shared understanding, compromise, and ask questions, those challenges can be avoided. 

So, the question becomes, “How can we streamline this process? How can we make seasonal recruiting and hiring more efficient?” I’d like to share some strategies that I’ve found effective in my career.  

Finding Efficiencies 

In one city where I worked, Parks and HR were often in conflict. HR required a detailed process where every single hire had to adhere to a checklist that documented all personnel requirements and required that a manager sign off on every hire. That checklist was more than a page long and each hiring packet was an inch thick.  

While this practice is commonplace in many cities, this process at a larger city meant management had hundreds of employees who needed to be vetted within a week. If the department team is hiring 121 people for a water park to start next week, for example, that meant that one manager had to sign off on each of those packets in less than 3 business days. 

One improvement we made was to recognize that returning employees don’t require the same level of paperwork that new employees do as they have been vetted by their previous work at the City (we love a seasonal re-hire!) and much of the information is on file in some form—so we can confirm instead of collect. Changing the hiring process for new and returning employees reduced the administrative burden. 

These seasonal employees often work with children which requires background checks and fingerprinting; this is not daunting if it’s one or two employees, but fingerprinting hundreds of people in a short period of time requires coordination. Instead of sending people off to figure out where to be fingerprinted, we offered several options to seasonal hires for dates and times when new hires could come to a central location. Coordinating with HR and having a collaborative planning conversation together makes the process more efficient and gets both departments what they each need: HR compliance and happy new hires. 

Be Realistic About Qualifications 

Several years ago, a colleague in Arizona was faced with a serious shortage in their aquatics staffing. As you can imagine, aquatics are in high demand during summer in Arizona but staffing shortages can keep these facilities closed. The new director had to stand before elected officials and inform them that only one-third of the pools could be opened that summer due to staffing delays caused by their existing hiring process. It was a serious issue.  

The director gathered her core leadership team and said, “We have a problem.” They started to look critically at their aquatics hiring processes. By the end of that summer, they’d opened more pools—not 100%, but progress. By the following spring, the director could stand before elected officials and inform them they were fully staffed and ready to open all pools. How? They changed the way they advertised and promoted each role and did more community engagement. They emphasized that lifeguards are first responders. This rebranding of the work made the work feel more important and improved overall work culture, shifting to safety as the core element of their values.   

Part of the challenge in collecting applications was the expectation that candidates arrive fully trained and ready to step into the role. Agencies had to change their thinking; it’s not always reasonable to ask a 17-year-old to spend $800 on certifications without the guarantee that they would get a job. A better strategy for finding the right people for community-facing jobs is to hire for character and aptitude and train them.  

Aligning Expectations on “Professionalism” 

Conventional wisdom says “dress for the job you want”; but what does that “look” like if you’re applying to run a summer camp or be a lifeguard? Is it a reasonable expectation that candidates show up in a business suit for a job that will never require that attire?  

Obviously, if someone shows up in a truly unprofessional that can hurt their candidacy. But in today’s world, what does “professional” mean?  

“Professional appearance” doesn’t have the same definition it did 45 years ago. Cities might have dress codes, but there are many subconscious biases that aren’t talked about—and they should be.  

The fact is, hiring today is hard. If you’re excluding qualified candidates from your hiring pool because of bias or outdated rules about what “professional” means, you’re not helping your organization thrive. 

I want to encourage Parks and Recreation staff and HR departments to talk to each other about hiring. Communication assists HR in understanding the difficulty departments face in hiring part-time staff and it assists Parks and Recreation staff in truly understanding the legal landscape of hiring – the non-negotiables to get an employee on board.   

The best first step is to take a hard look at your hiring practices in place right now. It’s more than likely that opportunities to improve are right in front of you.