The holiday season is right around the corner, which means people all over the country are making their travel plans for Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah and other seasonal get-togethers. For you and your company, it means that you’ll likely need to consider bringing on some additional help to ensure that you can keep up with the demand from all of the season’s festive travelers.

But when it comes to hiring, especially for an expected rush period, remember that quantity isn’t nearly as important as quality. You want to bring on the best candidates to help your business through the busy period, which can be difficult during the time of year when seasonal hiring is at an all-time high. Here are three tips for maximizing the effectiveness of your hiring strategy.

1) Be clear
There’s a simple formula: If you want applicants who are ready and able to take on the tasks working at your company would present to them, you need to ensure that they know what to expect. This means that you must craft your job postings to be as informative to potential new hires as possible.

It’s a common trend in the HR world to produce job listings that forego plain language and no-nonsense discussion of expectations for buzzword slinging and vague noncommittal discussion of your business’s mission statement. Fast Company noted that you should nix this type of talk for brass-tacks discussion of what exactly the role entails and how it fits in with the rest of the company. Remember that the role you’re trying to fill isn’t just about performing a set number of tasks, but rather about helping the organization as a whole meet its objectives. For that to happen, both you and your candidates need to be on the same page.

2) Look at more than just the resume
A candidate’s skills and experience are important, but they’re not the sole indicators of how well the person will perform on the job. In fact, in many instances, personal or cultural fit can be even stronger factors in whether a new hire sinks or swims. Unfortunately, it can be difficult to determine personality factors that could influence whether or not an applicant will be a good cultural fit, since unlike questions of experience, there aren’t simple answers. Instead, model your interview in such a way as to determine not just what a person has done, but how. A candidate’s motivations for performing given tasks can be just as enlightening as the tasks themselves.

3) Think outside the box
Did you know that more candidates are using social media for job-seeking purposes? That means that if you aren’t jumping on board with this new trend, you’re putting yourself at a disadvantage in terms of finding the best talent out there. It may feel awkward trying to recruit over sites like LinkedIn or even Twitter, but expanding into these new spaces is crucial for the success of your business in the online age.

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