It’s that time of year again. A time when we all get to slow down a little bit, catch our collective breaths and enjoy a little down time with family and friends… unless you’re a recruiter working within the retail industry. For them, this is perhaps the most stressful time of year, no matter how much pumpkin pie is on offer.

Just as it seems the holiday decorations come out earlier every year (seriously, I saw Santa crop up on my neighbor’s lawn before the first jack-o-lantern appeared this year), so to does it seem the peak hiring season begins sooner and sooner. As an example, one Jibe client – a major, nationwide retailer synonymous with the season – began its holiday hiring as far back as July, when red, white and blue bunting was still in fashion. From June to July, this client increased its job postings by nearly 70%. By October, their job postings had increased by 120%. And the quintessential holiday hirer — Macy's — is in the midst of hiring an additional 83,000 seasonal employees this year.

For hiring managers, recruiters and other talent acquisition professionals, this sudden burst of open positions can create many a holiday headache. The difficult logistics of hiring increase exponentially when trying to fill so many positions in such a short timeframe. Typically, much of the work involved when staffing up for peak periods such as the holidays is done manually, which is time-consuming, resource-draining and error prone.

Recruiters and their teams will spend countless hours posting to endless numbers of mainstream and niche job boards. Because of the expediency and need to fill these positions, considerations such as employer branding, cost-efficiency and candidate experience are often sacrificed. Scattershot posting by multiple recruiters to as many boards as possible in as short amount of time as possible can result in misspent marketing dollars, inconsistency of messaging and an overall downgrade of quality to the employer brand. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Recruiters and their teams should spend their time recruiting, not dealing with job board account creation and maintenance for each and every open position. There are solutions in the market today that allow them to outsource and automate much of this process, without sacrificing any level of control over message, brand or source selection. This is something that Jibe does very well with its Jibe Post solution. Unlike others on the market, Jibe Post is a lightweight solution, not embedded deep within the ATS. This allows for flexibility with regard to content, customization, regional dispersion, channel selection and implementation — a new client can be up and running with Jibe Post in less than two weeks. And, because it’s part of the Jibe solution set, Jibe Post clients also receive a layer of analytics around their postings to measure how effective each source truly is.

As you tuck in to your Thanksgiving meal this year, send a little extra gratitude to any recruitment professionals you know and understand they’ve been working their feathers off since the fireworks subsided. Hopefully, next year, they’ll have embraced some of the new solutions available and will be able to join you at the table as well. Save some stuffing for them.