You’ve operated as a one-woman show as you’ve planned events. You’ve worn every hat from event set up to tear down, accounting to marketing, and now it’s time to put on your HR hat to hire event staff.
You don’t need an HR department to staff an event. In fact, most event planners don’t have a team big enough to have an entire department dedicated solely to hiring.
Hiring event staff is an investment and it’s important to find the right mix of skills and abilities in the people you hire – whether they’re part of your day-to-day team or contracted for a specific event.
Single-handedly running successful and sustainable events is nearly impossible on your own and it takes a great team to thrive.
5 Steps to Hire Event Staff
In today’s video, we’re talking about 5 steps to hire event staff for your business or event. Pay attention to step #1 because I share why you need more than just a job description to find the right team for you, your events and/or your business.
- Create an ideal employee description – write out a description of the person you’re looking for that defines their work ethic, what skills they have and their job responsibilities.
- Speak to your accountant so you know how to legally handle full- or part-time employees vs. contract employees.
- Have a lawyer create a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) so you protect your business information and your intellectual property.
- To save time and help narrow you search, create an online application with Survey Monkey (they have a free version) and ask for a 1-2 minute video that is part of the application process. This is a great way to see someone’s personality and their communication skills before you decide to meet them in person.
- Reach out to your business contacts for referrals– often this results in the best candidates when you hire event staff.
10 Interview Questions To Ask During The Interview
Once you’ve identified who you’re looking for, it’s time to narrow your search and interview and screen the top candidates. Here are 10 questions to ask during the interview.
(Tip for new event planners: use this list to prepare for an upcoming interview!)
- Describe your event planning experience
- What attracted you to this position?
- How do you make decisions?
- What are your strengths and how do you use them when planning an event or working for an event planner?
- What area(s) of event planning do you need more improvement or training in?
- How do you handle a situation when things don’t go as planned?
- What makes you love coming to work everyday (or for each event)?
- Describe a time when you were asked to do something you weren’t trained to do. How did you handle it?
- What do you like to do in your free time?
- Is there anything stopping you from working long hours, weekends, evenings or last minute?
Now I want to hear from you.
In the comments below, share another interview question you’d add to the list above.
Remember, we love hearing from our community, but links to outside posts and videos are seen as spam and are deleted. 
Have an eventful day,
Very informative blog for everyone. Thank you so much and keep going on
You’re welcome Jason!
Very useful post. It is important the event staff are capable enough to look out the various elements of the wedding. Recently I attended a wedding organized by a popular event planner, but the services offered by the staff was not upto the mark. The post helped me to hire an experienced event staff for my event planning company.
Glad to hear the info we provided helped!
I’m curious how folks structure salaries for event planning employees. Do you include event days as part of their salary? Or do you pay for those separately?
Thanks for the question, Gina. I find it easier to pay a daily rate for freelance staff and employees get a regular annual salary that includes event days. What type of events do you plan? If they mostly take place on weekends, you can change the typical Mon-Fri work week to Tues-Sat, for example.
I never thought about how I would need to have an event staff sign a non-disclosure agreement when hiring them from an agency to protect my business information and my clients. My best friend and I are thinking of starting a wedding planning agency since we both love planning parties and other events. I’ll take note of this because we’ll probably have to hire event staff for some of our bookings. Thanks for this!
You’re welcome, we’re glad it helped! Good luck with your new business and reach out if you need anything. We have a ton of free resources and some paid courses available too.