3 Precious Tips for Hiring Event Staff.
If you enjoy complicating your life, try organising a whole event by yourself.
The truth is, no matter how many employees you have, planning an event will be a challenge (if it’s a successful event).
However, you can lighten your burden by asking for help to friends or preferably to your employees and co-workers.
In a few words, hiring event staff, brand ambassadors, promotional staff, exhibition girls and event hostesses and hosts for an event it is often essential.
Now, we would love to tell you there is no way to go wrong in event staffing but….
Use this post as support to hire staff for events, and you will be on the right path to organise a successful event.
Not in the mood to read? Here’s our video digest of this article:
1. What are the primary responsibilities for event staff?
It’s not always easy to assign the right responsibilities. Before talking about hiring event staff, you should consider how your own company’s team, it’s going to manage the event at the chosen venue.
Here some job roles you should take into consideration.
1. On-site jobs
On-site jobs are about tasks your employees can take care of at the event venue during live days:
- Check and Scan entrance tickets
- Information Desk
- Kids Assistance, Family Area, Kids Entertainment
- Exhibitors and Vendors assistance
- Taking care of build-up and break-down
- Post-event cleaning
2. Security
You don’t have to hire a whole private security company. However, some extra help to keep the situation under control is always a good idea, depending on your event type and size.
3. Sellers
Sellers are often third parties that you invite to the event. However, you can also hire your sellers to manage specific stands or event areas.
4. Event Marketing
Managing the world of Event Marketing is not dull! You should hire a professional to manage your event marketing campaigns.
5. Logistics and Event Planning
What happens on the day of the event, hour by hour? What’s the plan? What happens if a speaker doesn’t turn up last minute? The bigger the event, the more event staff you need to hire.
Suggestion: it’s not a bad idea to hire event staff with first aid certification. Alternatively, you can hire certified medical personnel.
6. Food and Entertainment
When serving food, you need to hire hospitality staff and catering staff to cover these areas. And while attendees are eating, why not offering them some entertainment?
- Kitchen Staff: if you are not planning to hire a whole catering company, food won’t appear by itself!
- Waiters: depending on your event, you may need to hire waiters and waitresses. Otherwise, the situation may get complicated with everyone trying to grab some food first. We’ve seen it happen before.
- Welcome, and seating areas: if you wish to welcome your guests, or have assigned seats, hiring an event hostess can be a classy touch.
- Presenter: for structured events, debates, gala dinners, conferences or auctions, an excellent presenter or moderator can be ideal for your event. Otherwise, guests may have to take the stage introducing themselves sometimes in an awkward way, especially when inexperienced and shy or not fluent in English.
2. Where can you find event staff to hire?
To hire event staff, you need to use the Internet! There are two ways we recommend you use:
1. DIY
Online portals allow you to DIY event staffing. This way, you can manually do the research.
In addition to that, you can post a job offer on many websites. If you want to hire event staff yourself, this is the way to go.
Suggestion: here an article that gives you a list of websites where you can look for event staff to hire
2. Outsourcing through Event Staffing Agencies
You are organising an event. You have so much to do that, even thinking about event staff to hire makes you feel stressed already.
Entrusting event staffing to an event staffing agency is normal. This way, you can leave the interview process to professionals.
Event Staffing Agencies specialised in the event industry can help you hiring event staff using expert interviews created to hire the best staff for events.
In addition to that, they are already aware and can check all countries hiring laws, right to work, payroll and staff’s health and safety at the event venue, so you won’t have to worry about hiring a lawyer either. This professional support leaves you free to focus on your business.
Suggestion: describe your needs to your event staffing agency, and they will introduce you to the right candidates.
3. How to hire staff for an event?
If you are thinking of hiring event staff by yourself, it’s not that different from a standard recruitment process. However, for events, job positions are temporary. Besides, event staff should have specific skills on how to manage exhibition stands or event security.
As we mentioned in How to Hire Event Staff like a Pro, here some suggestions on hiring event staff:
1. Be descriptive
You need to write down the job description of what profile you are looking for, no matter how you are planning to hire staff for events. Job descriptions can be very creative, and they are essential to this process.
2. Interviews
Event staffing interviews are complicated, even for the most straightforward job positions. It’s all about questions. Here some interview questions to hire staff for an event:
- Can you describe your event experience?
- What do you like about this job position?
- What are your strengths, and how do you use them when working at events?
- How do you take an urgent decision?
- How do you manage unexpected situations at events?
- Describe a situation when you h something you were not ready to do. How did you handle it?
- In which areas of events you need to improve or learn more?
- As an attendee, what do you think will make an event more pleasant?
- What do you like about working with event organisers in particular?
- Is there anything that doesn’t allow you to work for many consecutive hours, weekends, evening or last minute
Rox Event Staff is the only event staffing agency in London that helps you take the headache out of staffing and event marketing in one place.
We have dedicated account management, event marketers, staff’s right-to-work checks, training and skills tests on all workers, taking care of payroll too.
Leaving you free to focus on your business!
Train your staff
Event Staff can make your event successful when having the right profile. Otherwise, it could be the opposite result. Always keep that in mind.
How do you hire staff for events? Let us know in the comments below!