Introduction

Seasonal hiring presents unique challenges, from processing thousands of applications in a short period to managing fluctuating workforce demands. Traditional hiring methods often struggle to keep up, leading to delays, increased workload for HR teams, and lost opportunities to secure top seasonal talent.

An ATS helps recruiters automate candidate screening, simplify communication, and streamline hiring workflows, making high-volume recruitment more efficient. This article explores the role of an ATS in seasonal hiring, key benefits, and strategies for maximizing its effectiveness.

When do seasonal hiring peaks occur in Italy?

Italy’s economy sees major seasonal hiring surges in key industries throughout the year:

Summer Tourism (May–September): Hotels, restaurants, theme parks, beach resorts, retail outlets and restaurants near the theme parks hire thousands of temporary workers to accommodate peak tourist demand.

Holiday Retail (October–December): Shopping centers, logistics companies, and e-commerce platforms need extra staff to handle the holiday rush, particularly for Black Friday and Christmas sales.

Winter Tourism (December–March): Ski resorts and mountain destinations in northern Italy require seasonal staff for hospitality, entertainment, and customer service roles.

Each of these peak seasons demands rapid recruitment, large-scale workforce management, and quick onboarding—all of which can be overwhelming without the right technology.

Challenges of high-volume seasonal hiring

Recruiting seasonal workers comes with its own set of challenges, including:

Short hiring windows: Businesses have limited time to attract, assess, and onboard hundreds or thousands of candidates.

High turnover rates: Seasonal jobs often lead to frequent employee churn, requiring a steady pipeline of qualified candidates.

Managing multi-location hiring: Retail chains, tourism companies, and logistics firms must hire across multiple locations, requiring coordinated recruitment efforts.

Screening large applicant pools efficiently: With thousands of applicants for seasonal roles, manual screening is not scalable, increasing the risk of hiring mismatches.

A well-integrated ATS solves these challenges by automating hiring processes, reducing manual work, and ensuring a seamless experience for both recruiters and candidates.

Why is an ATS essential for seasonal hiring?

An ATS automates resume screening, filtering, and ranking, allowing recruiters to focus on the most qualified candidates by allowing bulk actions. With StepsConnect, you can filter your candidates in many ways and create your own shortlist, and use the bulk actions.

An ATS accelerates the hiring process by automating interview scheduling, sending instant updates to candidates, and allowing recruiters to make quick data-driven decisions. StepsConnect reduces time-to-hire by scheduling interviews with candidates with just one click.

An ATS stores a pool of candidates who have previously applied for the specific job, allowing recruiters to reconnect with past applicants to assess their continued interest. This streamlines the hiring process by eliminating the need for candidates to reapply, enabling recruiters to reach out directly. As a result, time-to-hire is significantly reduced, and cost-per-application drops considerably. With Candidate Rediscovery module of StepsConnect, you can reach out to the candidate pool of the same of different job post easily.

An ATS limits application volume for a better candidate management. Recruiters can set application limits per job posting, ensuring they receive only the number of candidates required, preventing overload, and optimizing hiring budgets. With StepsConnect, you can add a limit to your Premium Job Posts and you will not be spending your budget more than the number of the candidates you have set.

An ATS allows recruiters to reassign the candidates to different job postings. If a candidate applies for one location but is a better fit for another, recruiters don’t have to  start the process over. This feature is especially valuable for businesses with multiple hiring locations as stores and branches. With StepsConnect, you can move candidates to other job posts.

An ATS allows hiring managers to assign specific job postings to recruiters, streamlining the process and ensuring clear task distribution. With StepsConnect, you can assign every job to a different user.

Conclusion

High-volume seasonal hiring requires efficiency, speed, and organization—all of which an ATS provides. By automating CV screening, candidate filtering, interview scheduling, reaching out to previous candidates, companies can quickly fill seasonal roles with the best-fit candidates while optimizing resources and improving the candidate experience.