Once a seasonal problem for big retailers, the challenges of high-volume recruitment have been exacerbated by labour shortages and increasing competition for talent. The normal methods just don’t cut it – achieving hiring success at scale requires specific tools and tactics.
Candidates don’t have the time or patience for lengthy application processes – they want to get into work quickly and will often take the first job offer they get. When you’re hiring at scale, you can’t afford to have qualified candidates dropping out before you’ve even had a chance to assess them.
Here are some ways you can streamline your hiring processes:
• Automate, automate, automate. High volume often equals high workload, which can quickly eat up time, resources and energy. Weirdly automates the longlisting process by spotting candidates with the right skills and characteristics – giving you a competitive edge over companies with longer turnaround times.
• Improve time-to-hire. 57% of applicants lose interest in a job if the hiring process takes too long. Test how long it takes for a candidate to move through each stage of your recruitment process, taking note of any bottlenecks so you can optimise your process further (FYI, that’s where Weirdly’s live analytics come in handy).
• Hire faster, without bias. Automation takes care of the heavy lifting, making it easier to handle large volumes of applications. But the right tool can also help reduce bias so you can be confident you’re practising fair and diverse recruitment when hiring at scale. For example, Bunnings achieved a 0% gender bias in its frontline recruitment.
Tracking candidate data is one thing, but you’ve actually got to use it. Metrics like source-of-hire and conversion rate can help you understand where you need to focus your efforts to get the most improvement. You’ll also find that monitoring key recruiting metrics can help you curate a more positive candidate experience.
With Weirdly as your high-volume ATS, here are a few of the data points you can keep a close eye on:
• Source-of-hire – which of your recruitment channels are driving the most ROI to your open roles?
• ROI from paid and organic sourcing initiatives – you may find, for instance, that certain job boards drive more traffic and applications to your open roles, while paid job ads only work for certain positions.
• Conversion rate – lower conversion rates can indicate that you need to eliminate unnecessary steps in your recruiting process for candidates and recruiters.
• Diversity of candidates – ensure you’re driving diversity in your talent pool.
One of the perks of high-volume recruitment is that you’re often inundated with qualified candidates. While things like availability and location might mean you can’t place them in a job straight away, that doesn’t mean the perfect opportunity won’t crop up later. The key is to put them into a talent community.
Here are some of the ways building a talent community can help you increase efficiencies:
• Leverage qualified and nurtured leads. Rather than starting from scratch when filling an open position, you can jump straight into a pool of candidates you know are ready to work.
• Choose from a wealth of talent. Software can help you filter candidates even further, by skill set and values, for example – just like Target did.
We’ve seen first-hand what can happen when recruiters take a candidate-first approach to hiring at scale: John Holland has increased applications by 90%, and Vodafone scored an 8.9/10 for its candidate experience.
The easier you make it for candidates to apply, the more likely you’ll attract applications from the right candidates. To do that at scale and keep the process fun and engaging, you want to jump on the tech train.
• Get rid of resumes. Resumes might give you a snapshot of a candidate’s education and job experience, but it’s about what they don’t tell you. Things like personality and behaviours, values or soft skills indicate how well they’ll work for you. We also know resumes inject unconscious bias into the process. So, get rid of them.
• Streamline your communication. When you’re dealing with hundreds of candidates, paperwork is your worst nightmare. This is where automation saves the day (again). You need a system that can track and streamline your interactions with candidates. For example, Weirdly’s schedular tool lets candidates book their own interview times with hiring managers, while a drag-and-drop system lets recruiters bulk-send documents and trigger email updates.
• Create more inclusive ways of hiring. Candidate experience should be a top priority for all recruiters – and should influence the way you optimise your process. For example, our multimedia question functionality offers a more inclusive way of applying. It lets candidates choose how they answer – by video, audio, image or typed response.
The most effective high-volume recruitment strategies enable you to attract and hire the candidates you need – without compromising on candidate experience. You can make sure you have a continuous pipeline of qualified talent that you can tap into when you need it – and get the right people into the right roles quickly.
Ready to see how you could smash your high-volume recruitment targets? Book a demo with us today.
