What drives holiday-season hiring? These crucial skills shape 10 key roles

United Parcel Service is a $100 billion enterprise that operates in 220 countries. John’s Crazy Socks is a small family business in Farmington, N.Y. But there’s one vital habit they share.

To cope with the usual end-of-the-year rush, UPS, John’s Crazy Socks — and many others — have been racing to add short-term workers. These seasonal hires are stepping into roles ranging from sales clerks to warehouse workers, tax specialists and more.

What are the specific job titles for which 2022’s seasonal hiring is most intense? And what skills are essential for each role? A new study by LinkedIn’s Economic Graph team provides answers to both those questions, based on a review of about 26,000 paid job listings.?

There’s a wealth of information in the chart above, which the remainder of this article will help you unpack. Let’s start with a detailed look at the top 10 seasonal jobs. After that, this newsletter will highlight the specific skill profiles for these roles, as well as some additional, more general skills that can be valuable in many roles.

For sheer volume of openings, no other role is as abundant this year as “salesperson.” Leading the way among major retailers is Target, which set out to hire as many as 100,000 salespeople for seasonal openings this year. Other retailers such as JCPenney, Macy’s, Nordstrom and Michaels each have hiring targets of 10,000 or more.

Typically, the retail sector’s seasonal hiring starts ramping up in October, with peak employment just before Christmas. Most of these positions wrap up by early January. (Handling returns and gift-card purchases has added a couple weeks to a hiring season that used to end on Dec. 24.)

Pay rates vary according to local norms. At Target, a seasonal salesperson in Dubuque, Iowa, earns $15 an hour; in Mountain View, Calif., that same role pays $19 an hour. Retailers’ needs include both full-time and part-time positions.

Drivers are the second most common seasonal role, particularly those with commercial driving licenses. At UPS, spokesperson Jim Mayer says the greatest seasonal demand is for drivers who will operate company-owned vehicles. But the transportation company in recent years has added seasonal roles for drivers who use their own vehicles, too.?

Many of the remaining top-10 roles are retail-oriented, such as sales specialist, retail sales specialist and store associate. Also in demand are roles related to stocking and moving goods, such as receiving associate (No. 5) and stock associate (No. 8).

Getting extra seasonal help with inventory and shipping roles is crucial for entrepreneurs such as Mark X. Cronin, CEO of John’s Crazy Socks. This year, he hired 15 seasonal workers to help his online store handle the pre-Christmas rush. He posts frequently on LinkedIn, particularly about his company’s work to support people of differing abilities.

Last year’s list of top seasonal hiring roles included several roles related to tax preparation – and while those jobs didn’t make this year’s top-10 list, they do appear farther down the list. Among the tax-prep companies gearing up for big seasonal hiring for the December-to-April span is Jackson Hewitt, which expects to fill 18,000 such roles, chiefly at its independently owned franchises.

Such opportunities can be attractive to “a college student, stay-at-home parent, military spouse, veteran, retiree or someone trying to break into a new role,” says Alicia Branon, director of talent programs and attraction at Jackson Hewitt.?

What are the key strengths needed to land any of these roles? The chart above highlights the top three skills in LinkedIn’s taxonomy that are central to each job. Most of these are very role-specific, with limited relevance to other jobs.

Dig deeper, though, and an analysis of the top five or six skills for each role unearths a different type of expertise, too. Now we’re talking about widely applicable skills that define success in multiple roles.?

The three most notable are sales, communication and time management. You may have heard these described as “soft skills” in other settings. But Brandon Busteed, chief partnership officer at Kaplan, makes a persuasive case that these right-for-any-job skills deserve a better name: universal skills.

Methodology

Economic Graph researchers identified top seasonal jobs on Linkedin by analyzing paid job postings on Linkedin, active on November 15, 2022, that contain the word “seasonal” in their titles. November 15 was chosen as the snapshot date since available seasonal job posts historically peak in mid-November. This year approximately 26,000 seasonal jobs were open in the U.S. on Linkedin on that date.

LinkedIn data scientist Caroline Liongosari and Insights analyst Sabrina Hodjati contributed to this article.?