What is high-volume hiring?

High-volume hiring, also known as mass or high-volume recruiting, refers to hiring several candidates in a short period. Companies typically use it for time-sensitive situations where they need to expand the workforce quickly.It’s often used when you have several similar positions to fill. Examples of when you might use this method include:

• Seasonal fluctuations, such as increased retail staff during the holiday shopping season
• Sudden growth in your organization
• Opening a new location
• Sudden or frequent large volumes of employee turnover

During the process, high-volume recruiters aim to attract manycandidates and match them with appropriate jobs. Because they’re hiring several people in a short period, a high-volume recruiter might process hundreds of applications in a matter of days or weeks.

High-volume hiring vs regular recruiting

Regular recruiting and hiring generally focuses on hiring one person to fill a single role. Your organization might fill more than one position at a time, but they’re usually different positions. In high-volume recruiting situations, you’re recruiting multiple people to fill multiple similar or identical roles. For example, you might hire several housekeeping, dining and front desk employees for your resort during the busy season.

The hiring processtypically follows these steps:

1. Research and analysis
2. Crafting job descriptions
3. Marketing and promotion
4. Reaching out to networks and referrals
5. Reviewing applications
6. Screening candidates
7. Conducting interviews
8. Hiring candidates
9. Onboarding employees

While effective for filling a few positions at a time, doing this process manually isn’t efficient enough for mass hiring needs. Streamlining the process with automation and other strategies helps a high-volume recruiter move through the steps faster.

Related:Creating a Scalable Hiring Process

Advantages of high-volume hiring

High-volume hiring could be a beneficial alternative to traditionalemployee recruiting methods. Some benefits of this strategy include:

• Reduced time and money. High-volume hiring is more efficient and helps you fill positions quickly. You get the staffing you need faster, so you can meet higher workload demands, improving your overall profitability.
• Quickly filling staffing gaps. This method helps you fill large staffing gaps quickly to reduce downtime that can slow productivity.
• Handling seasonal staffing needs.High-volume hiring is a flexible option for businesses with fluctuating demands, such as seasonal businesses.

Challenges of high-volume recruiting

Filling lots of positions at once comes with several challenges. Being aware of those potential roadblocks can help you avoid them.

• Slower process: Managing high quantities of applicantscan bog down the hiring process.
• Effective screening: Some companies find it difficult to filterapplicants through prescreening and interview stages when they’re dealing with a large volume of applications.
• Sourcing candidates: Attractingenough candidates with the skills you need can be difficult.
• Engaging with candidates: Because high-volume recruiting often happens quickly and you’re working with several applicants, you might not be able to personalize the interactions as much. You might find it difficult to connect with applicants with the condensed timeframe.

High-volume recruiting strategies

Streamlining your hiring practices can help you overcome the challenges of high-volume recruiting. The following strategies can help.

Align hiring and recruiting team members

Clarify the goals and strategiesbefore you start recruiting, and check in once hiring campaigns are launched. Teams should discuss the kinds of candidates theywant toattract and which qualities make for successful hires.

Matching the organization’s goal with the hiring strategy is also important. If the business is expanding a certain department with new specialized roles, for example, hiring teams should all be on the same page about identifying candidates who are looking for long-term opportunities. Candidates should have qualities that align with the new specialized job openings.

Refine job description requirements

Even though you need to hire quickly, it’s still important to take your time to produce high-quality job posts. Clear, detailed job descriptions help attract the number of applicants you need and job seekers who align with your needs. Using targeted keywords helps the right candidates find your opportunity. From there, clearly defined responsibilities, duties and qualifications help job seekers decide if they’re a match for the role. This helps filter your options before you start your review so the applications you receive are better suited to your requirements.

Show your company culture and value

Your job posts offer the first glimpse of your company culture, goals and values. This can help attract the type of applicants who might thrive in a company like yours. Use a small section of the job description toconvey the culture of your business, using terms that emphasize your values.Describe what they can expect during a regular workday, such as how employees collaborate or how the office celebrates successes.

This section highlights the personality of your business, which helps attract like-minded candidates who align with your business’s culture. Emphasize the mutual benefits of employment at your business, such asworking in a progressive workplace withample growth opportunities while supportingyour organization’s goals.

Utilize your personal network

As an employer, you’re likely connected with many other professionals related to your field. When you’re starting a mass hiring campaign, reach out to these connections and askthem to share it with their own networks, be it on their social media or by sharing with other professionals.This helps you reach a larger audience with less effort.

Incentivize with referral bonuses

You can also source candidates by making connections internally. Offer incentives to current employees through a referral program. Your current employees already have an understanding of your organization’s culture and daily functions, so theycan identifystrong candidates within their networks.

If you offer referral bonuses, ensure that employees can easily share job postings. Implement a streamlined system for candidates to indicate the referring employee, such as including a field for the referring employee on the job application.Employees are more likely to utilize the referral program if they know they’ll get their bonuses without a lot of extra work.

Optimize sourcing

Public promotion of your mass hiring positions helps you reach beyond those established networks. Using a wide variety of promotional methods helps you reach a larger audience. Some options include:

• Social media posts
• Paid online advertising
• Job boards
• Past applicants in your applicant tracking system
• Virtual or in-person hiring events
• Recruitment agencies
• Signs in your business
• Online job-seeker groups

Testing different methods helps you optimize your candidate sourcing methods. Use analytics to determine how the applicants find you and how well employees from different sources work out in the positions.

Automate with technology

Using available automation tools helps streamline your high-volume recruiting efforts. That starts with implementing a robust applicant tracking system that automates screening, communication and scheduling activities.An ATS can automatically search applications for certain keywords or qualifications, send automated messages to candidates, schedule interviews and manage new hire paperwork. You can also incorporateassessment tools that prescreen applicants by testing their skills.

Indeed’s technology can help with the screening and filtering process. When you sponsor a job on Indeed, you get access to our matching technology, which filters an extensive candidate pool to show candidates who meet your job criteria. From there, you can invite your preferred candidates to apply or let Indeed send personalized invitations for you.

Improve the interview process

Organizinglots of interviewsat once can be difficult, but video technology is an effective time-management solution.One efficient option is to use virtual interviews. You can move through lots of candidates quickly, and it’s easier to work with different schedules.

Virtual interviews can happen in real time using video chat software. This lets you have the back-and-forth interaction where you can follow up on answers. An alternative is tosupply candidates with interview questions and ask them to record their answers. This works best as an initial screening interview because you can’t interact, clarify or follow up on their answers.

You want a streamlined, effective interview process that helps you learn about the candidates quickly. Develop direct interview questions that get to the heart of the skills you need. Establish your expectations for candidates before you start interviewing so you can spot those traits when you see them.

Focus on and personalize the candidate experience

Efficiency is a priority, but you also want to focus on thecandidate experience. Creating a positive, engaging experience for applicants helps keep them interested and creates a positive impression of your organization. They might also be more likely to stay with your company if you start things off on the right foot. Saving time on other aspects of the process means you can spend more time connecting with candidates and personalizing their experiences.

To improve the candidate experience, make sure the hiring process is responsive and personalized. Make the application accessible and simple to complete—you can always gather more information later for candidates who advance. Providing regular updates and communication also helps keep applicants engaged.

Don’t forget onboarding

You’ve found the right people to fill your mass vacancies. Now, it’s time to mass onboard and train them efficiently so they can get up to full productivity quickly. Software options help you automate the process with tasks such as new hire paperwork and digital training.Using a mentor or buddy system gives your newest employees another go-to source for support and disperses some of the workload to other employees, which can make it more efficient.

Assessing high-volume hiring success

Depending on the reason for mass hiring, you might need to repeat the process later. Analyzingyour recruiting KPIs can help you identify improvement opportunities.Consider the following data.

• Source of hire: Percentage of hires from various recruiting sources to show which was most effective or responsive
• Quality of hire: Performance and retention for new hires
• Acceptance rate: Percentage of candidates who accept job offers from your hiring campaign
• Time to hire: How long positions take to fill from posting jobs to accepted job offers, with longer times suggesting less efficient hiring processes
• Cost to hire:Adds recruiting costs and divides by the total number of hires to calculate the cost per hire and inform recruiting budgets
• Diversity goals: Percentage of diverse hires if the business has specific diversity goals

FAQs about high-volume hiring

Which businesses use high-volume hiring?

Companies such as Amazon and Shopifyare known for using high-volume hiring, but many businesses can benefit from these hiring strategies. Common industries and jobs that hire several employees at once include retail stores, fast food restaurants, call centers, the healthcare industry and seasonal tax specialists.It can work for any business that needs to hire several people in similar positions at once.

What types of jobs work well for high-volume recruiting?

Easier jobs without a lot of complex duties or requirements typically fit this type of hiring best. This often includes jobs with high turnover—keeping a large number of new employees coming into your organization helps you overcome that turnover. Specialized positions with extensive requirements or complex job duties often require more screening and a slower hiring process. The number of those more complex jobs is also much smaller in most cases, so you don’t need the large number of applicants.

How do you measure quality of hire metrics?

Quality of hire is generally assessed with performance metrics, such as turnover, hiring manager satisfaction and performance reviews. They may also include other metrics, such as correlated impact to the organization’s success or retention rates. Measuring quality of hire can help you evaluate your high-volume hiring practices and show which qualities you should look for in future candidates.