How smart employers treat summer hires like future employees

A few years ago, Fairmont Hotels & Resorts started giving summer hires a new option to consider as they headed back to school in the fall — why not come back to work during the busy Christmas season?

Fairmont is always looking to the future and potential leaders, according to Jennifer Melanson, regional director of people and culture for Canada’s western mountain collection, who started as a summer student herself.

“It’s worth the investment,” she says. “When we have a high-performing student, we try to get them back in the following summers, perhaps to different properties, so they get a bit of wider experience. And then we invite them into our graduate programs, which is a fast-track into management.”

It’s a strategy that’s important in the competitive landscape of summer hiring, when many employers are scrambling to find enough people to handle the rush from May to September.

In talking to HR leaders from three top employers — Fairmont and Canada’s Wonderland and the Regional Municipality of Peel in Ontario — it’s apparent that summer hiring is anything but casual or last-minute: most organizations start recruiting in late fall and treat seasonal roles with the same rigour as full-time positions, while striving to ensure their onboarding is quick and effective so people stay for the full summer season and hopefully come back the next year.

Starting early for summer hires

For employers that rely on student labour, summer hiring is really a late-fall project. At Fairmont, leaders start by locking in strong performers early.

“Generally, if students do well with us in the previous summer, we hand them a contract before they leave the property so that they return to us,” says Melanson, and then the team moves over to the campuses.

“We do school trips in October where we’re sort of planting the seed with our hospitality students. And we open up requisitions in November.”

Canada’s Wonderland follows a similar cadence, according to Taneshia Khan, director of human resources.

“We start reaching out and planning with our rehires, our returning associates… probably at the end of November into December,” she says.

“Although our park is still operating with WinterFest, we’re already starting to look ahead. So, we give the priority to our rehires and we look at who we want our returners to be. And then we start opening it up to new candidates probably late January into February.”

At Peel Region, the goal is to have everything in place well before exams, so they typically start the hiring efforts at the end of November, says CHRO Deborah Arsenault.

“We want to get the best students, obviously. But… it also allows that psychological safety for our students — you know, school’s expensive [so] making sure that they’ve landed somewhere fairly securely in February versus waiting to April, I think, really helps from their perspective as well.”

Meeting students where they are

Despite heavy use of technology, in-person connection remains critical. Fairmont has built a regional team to act as a sort of “career concierge service” to help students find the right role and the right property for them, says AJ Duncan, regional director of talent acquisition for Canada’s western mountain collection.

“The process, in and of itself, coming out of school, can be a little bit intimidating. And so having us be able to work with them through the process and help them find the right home is a really important part to us too, because all of our properties are so different.”

Canada’s Wonderland advertises through its website and social media, using a third-party ad agency along with corporate support, says Khan. But after candidates are screened through an online application process, the emphasis is on in-person job fairs.

“We run high-volume job fairs typically on the weekend. And… depending on where we’re at with our targets, we run some evening job fairs as well,” she says.

“With guest experience being such a priority, the face-to-face interaction is so important to ensure that we’re really looking for those candidates that can meet that expectation of positively interacting, good communication, just being personable.”

At Peel, connecting with potential summer hires is largely done online through LinkedIn and in-person through academic partnerships, says Arsenault.

“Going out to those virtual career fairs and connecting students, live, I think is a really powerful tool because as much as we love automation and we love technology, it doesn’t replace that connection, that feeling that you can get with people.”

Stand out with purpose and perks

With competition for summer talent high, employers are sharpening how they sell the experience.

Fairmont leans heavily on both lifestyle and career narratives.

“We’re able to offer an experience that combines meaningful work and an amazing lifestyle, as well as those long-term career possibilities,” says Melanson, adding that the diverse employee value proposition also interests a wide group of people.

“Working in the Canadian Rockies is a real rite of passage for a lot of young Canadians and students from potentially around the world.”

Housing is another differentiator for Fairmont, given its remote destinations in tight markets.

“We are very fortunate that all of our properties have significant on-site capacity for housing,” says Melanson. “That’s part of the value proposition for a student is ‘You can come here and you’re going to have somewhere to live. You have a staff cafeteria.’ We all have employee experience advisors who do programming for their social life. So, you have everything just built in. You don’t have to look for an apartment. You don’t have to go to the grocery store.”

For Peel Region, organizational purpose is the main hook, according to Arsenault, especially with Gen Z.

“They want to work for an organization that has a purpose, that’s socially impactful. And, honestly, the region is far above a lot of organizations in that sphere. What we do is leading in a lot of areas,” she says, citing workplace awards for the organization.

Hire for potential when work histories are thin

Of course, with summer roles appealing to young people and first-time workers, hiring teams at the three employers adjust how they assess candidates compared to more seasoned candidates.

At Canada’s Wonderland, jobseekers as young as 15 may have little or no work experience, says Khan, so it’s about evaluating their aptitude: “Just the impression, the enthusiasm, ensuring that they can deliver a positive face-to-face interaction, because essentially, that’s what we want reflected in our guest experience out in the park,” she says.

“But also focusing on their successes when it comes to school settings and extracurricular activities, volunteer opportunities, community involvement.”

At Peel Region, interviews are built around academic efforts, according to Arsenault.

“This is a real opportunity for… potential students/employees to talk about… how they led something for a community project or a team project, the learnings that they had. Having people walk through those moments in their life to articulate potential has been a real key differentiator for us.”

At Fairmont, recruiters do an assessment that is separate from work experience in looking at fit, says Melanson.

“Do they have service orientation? Do they have social acumen? Are they empathetic? Are they responsible? You know, things that you can’t train.”

Once people are successful in that area, the talent team looks at other factors for success such as involvement with sports teams, volunteering, or community or extracurricular activities, she says.

Hospitality is a space where there are many transferable skill sets, says Duncan: “That section of our process really allows us the chance to see those intangible talents shine through before the business piece where the hiring managers step in.”

Treat seasonal roles with full-time rigour

Even when contracts last only a few months, expectations remain high with the hiring teams.

“In many ways, hiring temporary roles is very similar to hiring full-time positions,” says Melanson. “We understand that the value proposition is different for students and people in the early stages of their career, but our expectations are not.”

Fairmont uses the same interview structure, the same assessments and invests the same amount of time in getting to know the summer hires, she says.

“If someone joins us for a season or long term, they’re still taking care of the same guests and they’re still supporting the same teams. So, they really need to be the right fit for our brand and our culture.”

For Peel, the emphasis is on tailoring roles to genuinely benefit students, says Arsenault.

“We look at roles where we can really augment the student’s experience… How do we equip them to come into the workforce when they’re done their post-secondary?” she says.

“It becomes a much more focused, individual recruiting piece. And students don’t know what they don’t know. So, it’s that hand-holding; it’s [making] that connection.”

At Canada’s Wonderland, the focus is more on short-term output and the ability to be on the front line, to meet the day-to-day responsibilities and face-to-face interactions with guests, according to Khan.

“Hiring temporary workers is more tactical versus full-time is more strategic: ‘How does this person fit in with our company long term? Are they aligned with the company’s vision?’ Whereas on the temporary side, because we do such high volumes, it’s more ‘How do we get to our numbers as quickly as possible?’”

Making onboarding fast, thorough and tailored

With only weeks to make an impact, first impressions and structure matter, say the HR leaders.

At Peel Region, timing and manager readiness are central, given the 10- to 12-week contracts. By having everything done in early March, where people sign their offers, all the equipment is ready, along with the access and peer buddies, according to Arsenault.

“We do a lot of work with the internal managers to make sure that they receive these students in perhaps a slightly different way than they would a full-time employee. Because that full-time employee, those long-term nurturing connections — you have to do it quickly with the students.”

At Canada’s Wonderland, the process itself is compressed, with offers often made on the spot at the job fairs, says Khan.

“We book them for an onboarding appointment to come back where we do their full documentation. They get their uniform. They go through a company training… Then they may wait a couple of weeks for their department training.”

And in the gap before opening, the park keeps new hires engaged through regular communication such as newsletters so the students know what’s going on: “They’re invited to whatever employee events we might have in the interim,” says Khan.

At Fairmont, onboarding for students mirrors that of permanent staff — and starts long before day one.

“We know that the better somebody’s initial experiences, the better they’ll perform, the longer they’ll stay, the more comfortable they are,” says Melanson. “We invest in very extensive onboarding for all our permanent and temporary colleagues… It often means that we can stay in touch with them from December onwards in sharing information about their role, housing, what their lifestyle is going to be, and then they can arrive prepared and confident.”

Once on site, each person goes through a two- to three-day orientation to understand Fairmont’s brand, service culture, safety standards, housing and other important elements, says Duncan. After that, students move into departmental training and a learning and development path to “continue that support as they grow through their current role and start exploring other ones,” he says.

Turn summer jobs into career pathways

All three employers see summer roles as a pipeline, not just a stopgap.

Fairmont’s long-running Student Work Experience Program (SWEP) sits at the centre of that strategy and has been offered for over 35 years. Available to students enrolled in hospitality, tourism, recreation or culinary programs, SWEP provides industry-specific experience and is designed to broaden their view of hospitality through networking opportunities, says Duncan.

“We run different programming specifically for the students throughout the summer season to give them an opportunity to experience different departments and meet people from different schools and different programs, which is great.”

At Peel Region, an impressive eight percent of the workforce started off as summer students at the municipality,” says Arsenault, citing a recent example of a law student who worked on interpretation guides last summer and is returning to set up policy this summer.

“She’s decided, after last year and the exposure that we were able to give her, she wants to go into municipal government.”