If you’ve ever groaned about your organisation’s staff turnover, spare a pitying thought for the HR Officers in charge of recruiting for the shows, fairs, fetes and exhibitions that irregularly dot the calendar across Australia each year.

From a recruitment point of view, these are essentially new businesses that start with a bang (fireworks pun!), serve thousands of customers and close down, all within a week or so. Of course, this is a business that brings with it a travelling city of full time carnival employees, each of whom knows their niche role like the back of their grotesquely-misshapen-from-a-tragic-carnival-accident hand. This is a relief, considering most job boards have a dearth of categories specifically set aside for Scone Judges, Shake Shack Operators and Bearded Ladies.

However, on top of the lifelong Showfolk, most exhibitions also require a multitude of employees for more general retail, hospitality, customer service and cleaning roles. The Brisbane Ekka, for example, opened its gates for two weeks in early August. 3,600 jobs were created specifically for this year’s Ekka, plus roles for 800 volunteers. That’s 4,400 Showbag Sellers, Dagwood Dog Vendors, Information Booth Staff and Stockyard Cleaners from Brisbane that you can bet weren’t fulfilling those duties the week before. The magnitude of such an HR feat is overwhelming.

To discover how an HR department might attack this process, we asked one of Employment Office’s professional Short Listing Specialists how they would tackle the task of recruiting over 4,000 casual staff. They laughed and shuddered simultaneously. Then, realising we were a) serious and b) going to use their professional advice in an online blog, they gave us a serious estimation.

Our Short Listing Specialist offered: “There would be no time nor need to interview each applicant. That’s not cost effective and frankly it’s impossible without an army. The best way to work through such an enormous number of candidates would be with a group thing. A series of group assessment days.”

Group Assessment Days are an emerging tool in the world of employment, giving recruiters an opportunity to jump in beyond the normal interview process, and see for themselves how short listed candidates interact in a team environment, respond to tailored activities and fit the organisational culture. They’re commonly used to whittle down a shortlist for one specific role, but given their strength in drawing out the skills and talents of multiple applicants at once, they’re also perfect for our hypothetical mega-carnival needs here.

Without the need to dig too deep to assess people for these kinds of casual roles, our expert estimated a small Short Listing team of 4 or 5 could deliver recommendations on how to best employ 4,000 people within a month. “It wouldn’t be the most laidback month of my career” our expert noted, “but we could do it”.

For a more traditional role, Group Assessment Days reveal more about each applicant’s skills, aptitudes and motivations that any number of interviews can, and can be completed much quicker.

As for those 4,400 Ekka employees, we can only wish them the best. Whether they’re hosing out horse manure or selling Bertie Beetle showbags to overtired children, two weeks must seem like an eternity.