There’s a good chance that your business needs to hire a lot of employees—and fast. Even in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, over a third of small businesses had open positions they hadn’t been able to fill. Filling roles is clearly a persistent challenge for many HR departments. Enter high volume recruiting strategies. High volume recruiting tactics help your team hire as many qualified professionals as your business needs. These strategies focus on streamlining the hiring process, prioritizing quality over quantity without sacrificing speed.
So what are some of the best high volume recruiting strategies? Take a look at this “5 High Volume Recruiting Tactics” infographic or keep reading below.
Lean On Technology
When your team is faced with a lot of empty roles to fill, you have to stop wasting time on simple, repetitive tasks. Instead, focus on the most important aspects of the search. Let technology take care of the smaller tasks.
For example, your team can use:
- Social media to easily advertise positions and attract a wide range of applicants
- Artificial intelligence (AI) tools to streamline your applicant sourcing, candidate screening, and interview scheduling processes
- Video software to simplify interviews and reduce the number of time-consuming, in-person interviews your team handles
- Applicant tracking systems (ATSs) to manage candidate data and access high-level views of candidates
In other words, relying on technology is one of the most useful high volume recruiting strategies. With help from advanced recruiting tools and software, your team will be able to focus on more complex tasks.
Form an Ideal Candidate Profile
Create in-depth candidate profiles before you begin hiring for open roles. That way, your team can quickly disqualify candidates who don’t match these personas.
When creating a candidate profile, be sure to determine your ideal candidate. For example, include these specifications when building your profile:
- Past work (or relevant) experiences
- General personality
- Short-term and long-term goals
- Expectations
With ideal candidate profiles in hand, your team can more efficiently identify the perfect candidates for each role. This will cut down on unnecessary and time-consuming decision-making.
Ask for Referrals
Everyone knows that word-of-mouth marketing is a powerful tactic. Consumers are more likely to buy products that their friends love, and those recommendations are free for the businesses in question. Word-of-mouth recruiting functions similarly. Asking for referrals costs your team little time or resources.
When asking for referrals, be sure to add items such as:
- Share your team’s official job description, so you’re more likely to receive qualified referrals
- Turn to both your employees and also your personal network
- Offer a small bonus for successful hires who remain with your company for a certain amount of time
Referrals cost little to recruit and are often already connected with your team. Asking for referrals is one of the most efficient—and effective—high volume recruiting strategies.
Ensure the Application Process Is Mobile-Friendly
According to a report from Appcast, an astonishing 67% of job seekers plan to use their phones during the job search process. In addition, organizations who invest in strong candidate experiences improve their quality of hires by 70%. The moral? Your team needs to create a seamless, mobile-friendly process if you want to secure a lot of top-notch hires quickly.
For instance, to create a mobile-friendly application, your team can:
- Post on mobile-friendly job boards
- Consult with your engineering team to ensure that your application page is optimized for mobile devices
- Ask brief questions that candidates can answer on their small smartphone screens
- Reduce the number of repetitive questions your team asks (e.g., repeating experience questions that will show up on a candidate’s resume)
The easier it is for candidates to apply to your open roles, the more candidates will do so. Attracting plenty of candidates is a must-have if you want to fill those jobs as quickly as possible.
Track Recruiting Metrics
Big data has a prominent place in high volume recruiting strategies. As your team begins the high volume recruiting process, ensure you have software that tracks key performance indicators (KPIs) and other data. You can use this data to streamline your overall strategy.
For example, be sure to track:
- Source of hire
- Time to hire
- Applicants per hire
- Cost per hire
- Candidate experience satisfaction
- Social media advertising data (impressions, response rates, click-through rates, etc.)
- Email data (Open rates, response rates, etc.)
Gathering this data will help your team identify problem areas and make plans for improvement. For example, it can help you select the most effective advertising channels, and even determine whether you can eliminate steps in the hiring process.
Conclusion: High Volume Recruiting Tactics
Overall, high volume recruiting strategies are all about efficiency. By using technology, creating candidate profiles, asking for referrals, offering a mobile-friendly experience, and measuring recruiting performance, your team will find quality candidates—and fast.
Need help meeting your recruiting needs — especially when it comes to high volume? Contact us to get started!
This article was originally published on January 27, 2021; it has since been updated and republished on January 18, 2024