How LA Chargers leader manages seasonal hiring and onboarding

What does it take to bring on and roll off 300 people over an 18-week season? The Los Angeles Chargers do it every year with their seasonal staff, and they’re gearing up for a promising 2025. Getting game day ready starts on and off the field at SoFi Stadium. The team is preparing to bring on its seasonal staff, from game-day employees to community relations, equipment, and video staff, to name a few.  

It takes a full team to keep this stadium running. The new SoFi stadium is the Chargers’ home base and will also play host to the 2026 FIFA World Cup™ and the 2028 Summer Olympics games. With not a bad seat in the house, everyone is welcome to come and enjoy a sporting event or concert at the stadium.  

At the recent Dayforce Summit in Los Angeles, we had the opportunity to hear firsthand from Dayreca Sims, the LA Chargers' Director of Payroll and Benefits. Here’s how she sets her team up for success. 

Drafting the right talent 

Finding great talent can be quite the journey, especially for seasonal hiring. You have limited time to source, screen, and interview candidates to hire on a contingent basis. Pro sports teams, including the Chargers, often have the unique recruiting challenge that everyone is eager for the chance to work for them. “When we post a job, no matter what area it’s in, I have about 300 applicants within 24 hours,” said Sims.  

The LA Chargers needed a flexible solution that allowed them to quickly narrow down their high volume of applications with limited resources. By using Dayforce Recruiting, they established workflows with questions and upload fields for applicants to demonstrate their qualifications for the job, helping eliminate the need for every applicant to progress all the way to the interview process.  

The time savings for handling this volume of applications is making the difference. Sims shared, “You’d spend so much time recruiting that you couldn’t get your job done. Now when I post a job, I receive a much more manageable amount of applications at once as opposed to spending multiple times a day weeding out bad applications.”  

Managing your job requisitions all in one place also helps keep work straightforward. “When I post a job, it posts to my internal job posting, Indeed, and LinkedIn with one entry. It’s so easy to manage instead of going through a full job post for each website.” 

Tackling seasonal onboarding  

Bringing on new employees can be time-consuming. There’s a lot of documentation you need right away and plenty of training to provide at the start. Sims recalls the levels of spreadsheets on spreadsheets that her team was dealing with. “My first season, we onboarded each new employee with an individual spreadsheet. We would have to manually upload the 300 spreadsheets into our system, send those to another system, then log into another system to send their backgrounds.”  

“Every season, we hire seasonal employees, including game-day employees, community relations, equipment staff, and video staff, and we have to bring them all onboard for the season and offboard.”  

The level of compliance complexity can also be difficult to navigate on these accelerated timelines. The LA Chargers found simplicity at scale in helping manage their employment requirements by centralising their compliance support in a single people platform. The transition from hiring to onboarding is always easier when it works together. Sims described how simple the workflow can be. “Once you have your candidate chosen, you already have all of their background information in the system and can kick [off everything] right in the Dayforce platform. I don’t need to manage multiple platforms to get one person hired.”  

Building a deep roster 

Everyone expects to face new challenges down the road. Finding a supportive community within your vertical can make all the difference when navigating new complexities. It’s a competitive industry by nature, but off the field, over 30 pro sports teams choose the Dayforce suite as their platform of choice.  

Sims reflects on how tapping into their NFL peer network has been a game-changer. “It really came down to Dayforce bringing us all together. We may compete on the field, but we collaborate when we need to.”  

She highlights a specific example on stage at our LA Summit. “California has voluntary disability insurance. Both the 49ers and the Chargers rolled that out last September using the same implementation team and the same vendor. They shared all the information that we needed so we could have a successful implementation.”  

Having a supportive community and the right partner can help today’s leaders find the answers they need, faster. “I consider Dayforce to be an indispensable business partner. When I have a new issue, something complex that I may not have faced before, it’s the tools, the community, and the knowledge map we have at our fingertips.” 

Many leaders these days wear multiple hats, especially when they’re tasked to do more with less. Dealing with spreadsheets and manual work takes you away from doing the work you’re meant to do. For the LA Chargers, it’s about prioritisation. “The Dayforce partnership has brought efficiency back into our day-to-day. We are using that time more wisely for our employee experience.” That great employee experience is what translates into a winning game day.