We’re all too familiar with the shortage of qualified candidates on today’s market. Couple that with companies rushing to backfill vacancies brought about by the pandemic and the upcoming push for seasonal workers, and you have the perfect storm. This storm is creating quite a challenge for recruiters who are already running on leaner teams with increased workloads.
Today high-volume recruiting has taken a firm hold and looks like it’s here to stay. A reported 65% of companies have high-volume recruitment needs with a projected increase.
High-volume hiring causes include:
- Company growth
- Backfilling vacancies
- Seasonal surge
- New offices
The definition of high-volume hiring
The definition of high-volume recruitment can mean different things to different organizations, but in general, high-volume hiring is a process that involves hiring large numbers of people in a specific time period. When filling hordes of positions, we typically think of seasonal, hourly or gig workers. But in reality, the term is much more expansive and can include healthcare, technology, financial and aerospace and defense industries.
What are the challenges of high-volume recruiting?
Soon we’ll be into the holiday season. With this comes high-volume temporary openings. There is also the scenario of a new distribution center expansion and opening where multitudes of positions that need filling. Or new divisions created
Sometimes we’re trying to fill single job roles with large numbers of candidates and other times we have multiple job roles with volumes of candidates.
Not only are we looking to hire considerable numbers of people, but we need to fill these roles quickly. The time to hire needs to be kept to a minimum to keep costs down. Herein lies the challenge.
Organizations recruiting departments and staffing agencies have come to realize that the traditional CRM/ATS will not cut it alone. Their talent acquisition strategies must include advanced recruitment technology.
Strategies to tackle high-volume hiring
AI automation technology is built to handle high numbers of incoming resumes and applications. Best of breed enhancements to the CRM/ATS are designed to quickly and accurately manage the volumes of incoming data and to find, match and shortlist qualified candidates to positions.
Improvements and strategies using recruitment technology in the following areas add to the productivity and efficiency of the hiring process.
- Job application portal
- Data loading
- Candidate and job search and match
Job application solution
A recent study reveals that around one-third of workers are looking for a new job. So, where are they? One reason we can’t find them is high drop-off rates in the application process. Companies and staffing firms lose quality talent every day due to this. 73% of candidates abandon an application if the process takes too long, isn’t mobile-friendly or isn’t easy. In other words, the candidate experience is poor.
Solutions involving a mobile-friendly platform that auto-populates application fields can reduce the drop-off rate by as much as 60-70%. Eliminating the need to manually complete forms, this technology uses the specified candidate application or social media site to pull information into the form allowing the candidate to check over for accuracy, add or edit material and submit.
This information provides rich structured data that is automatically loaded into the database. It then suggests to the candidate other jobs they qualify for giving them the option to apply for those as well.
The ease of use and simplicity of the application guides the candidate through the process and reduces frustrations that can hamper application submissions, greatly increasing the application completion rate.
Candidate data loading technology
How often do recruiters burn candidate profile views on the job boards without loading them into the database? They come across a good candidate, but upon further inspection, that candidate isn’t the best choice for the requisition. So, they move on without loading the profile due to time constraints and stacks of resumes to review.
Guesses are, this happens more often than you realize. With a remote team, the odds of this happening only grow. You’ve paid for the view and what might be a choice, qualified candidate slips through the cracks and doesn’t make it into your system.
The next req that comes along may be a perfect role for this dropped candidate but since they haven’t made it into your system, you must reach out to the job boards again.
Don’t let this happen to you! Instead, invest in a solution that is set to automatically load every paid-for job board candidate profile. Auto loading cannot only be set to burned job board views, but also for incoming emails and applications through job portals.
All disparate data can and should be loaded into your simple source of truth, your database, giving everyone at your company access to the same central repository and all of the candidate profiles and data that lie within.
This auto-loading technology also updates and deduplicates candidate records to keep your data current and relevant. The rich, more complete information within your local database helps better fit candidates to the right job. When a better fit is achieved, a happier client and a happier candidate mean longer retention. And that, after all, is a worthy goal.
Here's where the significance of auto loading shines. It does it faster than humans can and without the errors a human may make in manual data entry. In dealing with staggering numbers of applicants and great numbers of jobs, you can’t afford not to invest in auto-loading technology.
Candidate search and match
In an effort to lower marketing costs, a trending priority is to search over internal sources first, before hitting the job boards. Who doesn’t want to make a placement without the job board spend? This said auto-loading candidate profiles into your database becomes even more important.
What would be really cool is to be able to search over your database and job boards all at once, from within your ATS/CRM. Even better, is to have all of the searches ranked, so the source and candidate ranking are all apparent. There is a technology that does this. It also has other bells and whistles that make life easier for the recruiter whose focus is on high-volume recruiting.
With functions that enable candidate-to-candidate matching, you’re able to use the profile of an ideal candidate as a template and find more candidates who have the same or similar qualifications. This is useful in many ways, one of which is to fill a job that has multiple identical openings.
There are also search agent functions that can be set up as an automated search across all of your sources every night. The search results are delivered directly to your email inbox and are ready to review and add to your database, shortlist, tearsheet or hotlist.
This can be configured to automatically load the top 50 candidates into your ATS/CRM, leaving no wait time for the user to view. This function builds your database and maximizes your job board views so you maximize every dollar of your job board marketing spend.
Since we’re all aware that time is of the essence in sourcing and hiring, especially when it involves great numbers, any function that saves time is critical. Saved searches come into play here. Instead of conducting a new search each time, you can build and save collections of search terms and searches, saving you hours of sourcing time.
Conclusion
When you have a slew of roles to be filled you need sensible ways to find qualified candidates and hire them fast. Efficient, streamlined processes are imperative because smart sourcing workflows will find top talent fast.
Today’s automated recruitment solutions enable high-volume hiring finding better quality candidates without increasing the cost to hire. For high-volume hiring needs, now is the time to consider intelligent, automated recruitment technology.
