The holiday season is in full swing, and it’s shaping up to be yet another busy year for big shipping companies—even before we all start panickedly placing our last-minute online gift orders.

This holiday season, shipping giant UPS aims to hire 125,000 total seasonal workers—about 25,000 more than the year prior—who will primarily work for the company during its largest “peak season” during the end-of-year holidays. These temporary roles include drivers, operational workers, seasonal support drivers who deliver packages from their own vehicles, and driver helpers who primarily assist drivers in making deliveries.

It’s probably no surprise that hiring for this many workers takes quite an amount of prep work. In fact, hiring for peak season has become a year-long planning process for Jeff Grant, VP of HR of the west region at UPS, told HR Brew.

Come January, Grant will begin planning hiring again for the 2025 holiday season. So it makes sense that throughout the year his team is already thinking about ways to retain the best of these workers, either for future seasonal roles or permanent positions.

Keep ‘em coming back

Grant spends a “good amount” of his time trying to re-recruit former workers for a seasonal job.

His team focuses on a year-round strategy to keep these workers engaged, including maintaining “touchpoints,” like reaching out and asking if they would be interested in coming back, and then letting them know when hiring for peak season has begun. While former seasonal workers have to apply and be considered like everyone else, they benefit from that early notice.

There’s a strong incentive to re-hire these seasonal workers. They’ve already been trained, and can help new hires during the onboarding period. And frontline managers are usually happy to welcome back familiar faces.

“Our operators love it when I go to them and I tell them, ‘Hey, I hired you 25 people, and 10 of them were employed with us last year and had a positive rehire status,’” Grant said.

Looking for the ‘rock stars’

In addition to bringing back seasonal workers, UPS also focuses on hiring seasonal workers into permanent roles.

The company can’t guarantee seasonal workers roles immediately following their tenure because of the nature of their contract; the fact that some roles (like seasonal support drivers and helpers) don’t exist year-round; and permanent positions may not be available until later in the year. But high performers are encouraged to keep an eye on UPS’s careers website and apply to opportunities as they open up, stay in touch with the managers they worked with, and update their résumés so that they include their work for the company.

This approach seems to be working well: Currently, over 128,000 of UPS employees started in seasonal roles and moved into positions. In the US specifically, more than one-third of the company’s workforce started in seasonal positions.

Management is encouraged to look for the “rock stars” among the seasonal workers, Grant said. One significant trait that these high-performers convey is having the right attitude and being able to excel in a high-pressure environment.

“They’re coming in at a pretty interesting time at UPS. The volume is going up significantly, the days are a little bit longer, it’s the stress that's out there in the environment with our customers,” he said. “It’s really a lot of pressure for them. So I want somebody that comes in with a great attitude.”

But it’s not just attitude; Grant also wants to see employees who are career-motivated and interested in advancing within the company.

Grant himself is one such former temporary employee. He joined UPS more than 25 years ago, first starting a six-month college internship. Initially, he wasn’t envisioning a career at UPS, and was open to other opportunities. But he became impressed by how invested his management team was in his career growth.

“As soon as I got to UPS, I had people just continue to pull me in and give me more experience, more exposure, people that saw things in me that I didn't see myself, to be honest,” he said.

Every few years he took on responsibilities in other functions—a career development approach that has benefitted many HR pros who excel into leadership roles. Grant, who attained a bachelor’s degree in HR, held roles in security, communications, sales, and project management, before eventually landing back in the people function.

“This is really a career-minded company,” he said. “I’ve been with UPS for 25 years, different rotations. It wasn’t just a job for me. It’s that career momentum.”

More than a season

One major HR mantra for Grant is a career development phrase called the “three Es”:

• Experience
• Education
• Exposure

It’s something that he wants all employees to get from their time at UPS, even those in brief seasonal roles.

“What they get from that time frame can really kick start their career,” he said. “They can go to logistics, they can learn about the supply chain and how that works, they can have a pretty good education within a short time frame. I’m not sure how many other jobs allow you to get that insight in a seasonal gig.”