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From time to time, recruiters find themselves pressed to fill a large number of vacancies in a short amount of time. This is the very meaning of bulk hiring. However, bulk hiring can overwhelm a team of any size if there’s no plan in place. Rather, that’s why recruiters utilize bulk hiring strategies to fill those vacancies as quickly and effectively as possible.
Bulk hiring requires two things to be successful: A healthy candidate pipeline and the means to process applicants quickly.
Building a healthy candidate pipeline can be a challenging task. In terms of high-volume hiring, this means using smart sourcing strategies to reach candidates across multiple channels. These strategies include employee referral programs, tapping previous applicants, and building job postings with job postings in mind.
Unfortunately, no matter how great your candidate pipeline is, it won’t mean anything without the right tools for high-volume recruiting. For example, an ATS makes it possible for recruiters to track and screen large numbers of candidate resumes without sinking time into screening every single resume. From there, many have turned to on-demand interviews to make the screening process even faster – accelerating the screening process and cutting days off of their time-to-hire in the process.
However, these are only the means to the ultimate end. Let’s take a closer look at what it takes to make bulk hiring successful.
Not every company has the luxury of a large in-house recruitment team to handle hiring at scale. That’s why many small and medium-sized companies utilize full-cycle recruiting to build an effective hiring process with limited resources. Full-cycle recruiting offers a holistic approach to the recruitment process, from planning to onboarding new talent.
In full-cycle recruiting, a single recruiter acts as a candidate's point of contact throughout the entire process. As such, that recruiter is responsible for the entire process and saves a candidate from being passed from desk to desk. This ultimately leads to a better candidate experience while decreasing the time-to-hire as nothing gets lost in the shuffle.
To make this strategy work for large-scale recruitment, you need to track every step of your recruitment. Map out the process from start to finish. Identify meaningful KPIs and metrics for every stage, and use them to determine where to add improvements when possible.
And don’t forget to measure how long it takes a candidate to go through every stage – such as the interview stage. According to Yello, recruiters spend two-thirds of their time just on interviews alone.
With all of this in mind, it’s time to look at what makes high-volume recruitment strategies work.
Possibly the most important component of any successful bulk recruitment effort is clear communication between candidates and between team members. Data from FinancesOnline suggests that 52% of job hunters report frustration from the lack of response from a potential employer while 83% of candidates say that the recruitment process would be improved through clear communication. As such, team collaboration and timely communication are necessary to move candidates through the recruitment process efficiently.
Regarding speed, invest in automation to remove the most time-consuming and redundant tasks from your recruiters’ workload. According to Yello, recruiters spend approximately 30 minutes to 2 hours scheduling interviews – per candidate. That means a recruiter that needs to screen 5 candidates will spend 2.5 hours to 10 hours on scheduling alone. Get that time back by adopting tools such as on-demand phone interviews to empower recruiters to focus on more important tasks.
Related to speed, it’s important to cut back on wasted time wherever possible. Interview scheduling is only one example. The actual interview process itself is also a serious time sink. Conducting a live interview takes an average of 30 minutes. Considering the scheduling time we just mentioned, that means that 5 candidates could take from 5 to 15 hours to screen. However, we once again see an opportunity to cut this time further with on-demand interviews. In an audio-based format, recruiters can cut screening interviews down to as little as 5 minutes.
Another important strategy to consider is reboarding. Similar to standard onboarding, SHRM defines this process as “updating the employee on current and new projects” to help acclimate them to the working environment. This is particularly important in today’s job market. The last few years saw many employees leave and return to the workforce for one reason or another. These individuals are an excellent source of talent but may find it challenging to reacclimate themselves to a given working environment. To this end, hiring managers should consider how they can make the company culture welcoming.
Recruitment is a competition. You want to reach a candidate and make an offer before the competition. According to Forbes, the best talent is off the market within 10 days. And that means if your recruitment strategy isn’t reaching those candidates in that brief window, you’re losing talent. As such, engage candidates early. Services like Qualifi will enable you to do this as soon as the candidate applies, engaging them in your screening process.
Even the most efficient recruitment process will be useless without applicants. As such, work on improving your pipeline with strategies such as passive recruiting. This often overlooked strategy gives you access to passive talent which represents 70 percent of the workforce. These are candidates that are not actively looking for a new position, but are rather open to one. As such, you’ll need a strategy that appeals to this casual job seeker. Asynchronous interviews, for example, allow candidates that typically work during the standard interview hours to access your recruitment process without fuss. This approach keeps the process simple and allows passive talent to engage at their convenience.
By now you’ve likely noticed that on-demand interviews, also known as virtual interviews, are a major asset for bulk hiring strategies. However, it’s important to note that there are two types of interviews in this category: video and phone. While both have their merits, only one can come out as the best bulk hiring solution. So, let’s take a quick look at both.
Both interview methods involve recruiters recording themselves asking interview questions, sending them to candidates, and screening the responses.
The key difference between the two is a matter of accessibility. Virtual video interviews require candidates to possess a camera, microphone, and appropriate space. These are things that many of us take for granted but aren’t available to everyone. As such, asynchronous video interviews exclude a large number of potential candidates – something you simply can’t do in high-volume hiring.
Contrast this with virtual phone interviews. 97% of Americans own some form of cell phone – all you need to complete a phone interview. That makes it remarkably more accessible to candidates. That’s not even to mention that phone interviews help mitigate bias, allow for faster screenings, and most importantly – accommodate high-volume recruitment efforts. Ultimately, virtual phone interviews have all the benefits of video interviews with none of the drawbacks.
