Finding the right person for a role is not easy in an employer-driven market and much more challenging in the tight candidate-driven labor market we are currently experiencing. What happens when you need to fill hundreds or thousands of positions in a short period of time? High-volume recruitment—or mass hiring—is utilized when an organization must recruit a large number of candidates to fill a higher-than-average number of positions in a short period due to increased demand and/or high employee turnover.

Need for high-volume recruiting

A study by HCM research, Aptitude Research, and Fountain found that almost two-thirds (65 percent) of companies have high-volume hiring demands. The study defined high-volume hiring as the need to fill over 1,000 positions in a short period or the receipt of more than 1,000 applications per position. What creates the need for high-volume hiring?

• Seasonal hiring: Examples of seasonal hiring can be found in retail—where organizations ramp up their hiring ahead of the holiday season—and in the financial services industry during tax season.
• Sudden expansion: When a start-up company completes an investment round and receives an injection of capital it gains the ability to hire several workers in a short period. When an established organization opens a new branch office, a large number of workers are needed quickly.
• Rapid growth: Amazon onboarded about 2,800 employees a day because of the online shopping surge caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

High-volume recruiting tactics

High-volume recruitment is labor-intensive and time-consuming because it requires an expanded reach—to attract a large number of top candidates—and the review of thousands of applications. Using the right tactics and technology, the process can be streamlined while maintaining high quality.

• Align with hiring managers: Before starting the recruiting process and hiring in mass, it’s important to ensure that recruiters and hiring managers are aligned. The team members responsible for sourcing and engaging candidates should have a firm understanding of the roles they are hiring for, the skills needed to successfully perform, and the experience required for each position.
• Simplify the application process: Job candidates are 365 percent more likely to drop out of an application process if it takes more than 15 minutes to complete. Therefore it’s important to create a “candidate-first” job application process—starting with the application itself—by keeping it short and sweet.
• Automate: 52 percent of talent acquisition leaders say the hardest part of recruitment is screening candidates from a large applicant pool. Use automation to scale hiring while making human touch part of the candidate experience. Designed with a focus on candidate screening, sourcing, and matching, AI tools allow recruiters and hiring managers to evaluate job applicants automatically with a match score, source candidates from internal databases, and automate job alerts to candidates for opportunities that align with their skills and experience.
• Utilize referrals: Asking current employees for referrals is a cost-effective and efficient high-volume recruiting tactic. 82 percent of workers are likely to click on a job opportunity posted by someone in their social network and employers who use referrals have a 45 percent retention rate after two years compared to 20 percent from job boards.
• Track performance: To ensure you’re using the right technology and tools in the recruitment process—and spending your recruitment budget effectively—it’s important to track performance metrics. Metrics to track include qualified candidates per hire, source of hire, time to fill, offer acceptance rate, and interview-to-hire ratio.

Summary

High-volume recruitment is a daunting process at the best of times and is even more so in the tight labor market recruiters are operating in today. Using the right tools and tactics, recruiters can hire quality candidates—quickly and efficiently—to meet companies growing workforce needs.

By Business Development Manager Sayantan Biswas