There’s no way around it; the hiring process is complex in any situation. But when you’re dealing with high-volume placements the pressure is, well, amplified. Imagine being on Amazon’s recruitment team when they attempted to hire 50,000 people on Amazon’s Job Day in 2017 – in one day! Or, like in 2019 when McDonald’s wanted to hire 250,000 for summer positions. Even if this isn’t something your organization does on the regular – or in these numbers – don’t worry, we can help get your recruitment team up to the task. There are some keys to success for high-volume placements. Let’s talk tips and how they differ from standard hiring practices.
High Volume versus Standard Placements
High-volume placement generally refers to hiring for a large number of positions in a specific, and often short, time frame. The ‘volume’ is relative to the size of your organization, however. For example, a small or medium-sized business might classify high-volume as 100 new hires, whereas that number could be in the thousands or the tens of thousands as we referenced above for large organizations. High-volume placements are more commonplace in the retail and hospitality industries as a result of the need for seasonal hires. But really any organization could find themselves in need of this type of recruiting if say you’re staffing for a new location or are perhaps experiencing rapid growth.
To compare, the average job posting attracts less than 50 applicants, while the average high-volume post attracts more than 250 applicants according to Jobvite. What this means is that given the time constraints as well as the number of positions and/or applicants, different tools and processes will be required in order to successfully find and select the right hire all while maintaining a seamless applicant experience.
How to Do High-Volume Placements
It’s no secret that the biggest issue with this type of hiring is the scale. In smaller batches, you can afford to be a bit inefficient, but in a high-volume placement situation, you must optimize every step of the hiring process.
Get your act together – Start by clearly defining your objectives and expectations. Not just for the recruitment team, but also to align with hiring managers to understand the overarching performance goals as well as what specific skills and qualities are required. Not taking this step beforehand, or being vague, wastes time and money. Once you know what you’re looking for, you might even create applicant personas that are similar to buyer personas to really hone in on the ideal applicant. In addition, research your industry and/or local landscape. Not only might you find tips worth using, but you’ll also know what challenges you may be up against in the hiring process.
Put your best face forward – We’re talking about branding here. Beyond being a fit for the job description, you want applicants to be attracted to your company too. In high-volume placements, advertising beyond traditional job boards plays a big part. Your brand needs to be consistent and represent what makes your company great across all your social media channels and anywhere your potential applications may be. Enlist your employees as brand ambassadors too. And don’t forget the Careers section of your website; make sure it gives a clear picture of what it’s like to work for you along with the benefits and above all make it easy to search and apply for these positions here!
Fine-tune the candidate experience – Speaking of, your applicants can’t apply if they don’t know you’re hiring. So be where they are, whether it’s LinkedIn, online niche communities or even Reddit threads in some cases. Next, make sure your application is optimized for mobile so it can be accessed anywhere, anytime. Also keep it short and simple by keeping qualification questions to a minimum, allowing applicants to apply using social media profiles and even pre-populating text boxes as much as you can. Use tools such as video interviewing to save time and hassle for your team and the applicants. And keep your applicants engaged by communicating clearly throughout the process with status updates.
Engage your network – Beyond helping as brand ambassadors, your employees can also actively participate in the high-volume hiring process by asking them to reach out to their contacts and share job postings on their social channels. Ask your organization’s alumni and vendors to do the same to help fill the applicant pipeline. Remember those resumes that you said you’d ‘keep on file’ to applicants you previously passed on? Known as talent rediscovery, take a look back and see if any of these folks may be a better fit now. Heck, even ask your applicant for referrals. You can never have too many!
Automate, automate, automate – You want to get this right the first time. To make sure that you’re able to efficiently handle the applicants once they’re rolling in, automation could be the answer. From automating talent rediscovery and resume screening to interview scheduling and skill assessment to adjudication and applicant tracking tools, you’ll save yourself a huge amount of time and stress, and can make better use of your team’s skills to find the right people! Actually you don’t have to wait until you’re at this point for automation; you can actually integrate it into your sourcing as well to help with the job postings. And don’t forget the onboarding process. Automating this where possible can help you check forms, disclosures, and authorizations off your list more quickly and without error.
Track your record – Lastly, learn where you need to improve for next time. Look at sourcing to determine where you had the highest return in applicant volume and quality (and where you didn’t) to maximize your spend. Also, analyze your time-to-hire metrics to see where you could further optimize your process: are there steps you could eliminate or automate; are there bottlenecks at particular points and/or in particular departments? You could even track your time-to-start to make sure onboarding is efficient whether its background screening, training and/or getting paperwork completed.
Yes, it’s still a lot to manage, but we know you can do it. Especially with a partner (ahem, Vetty) who knows the ins and outs of high-volume placement and has the technology to give you the speed, accuracy, and scalability you need.
