Let’s say your company is experiencing rapid growth and now your recruiters are in a position where they need to fill out a high number of job openings quickly.
This kind of scenario might seem like a nightmare if you’ve never dealt with it before, but it doesn’t have to be. It is true that high-volume talent acquisition comes with unique challenges, but there are ways to make it work while also building strong relationships with your candidates.
What is High-Volume Talent Acquisition?
In essence, high-volume talent acquisition means your company needs to hire a large number of employees in a short period. This can happen whenever a company is experiencing major growth, like opening a new office.
Since there isn’t really a fixed number that defines ‘high-volume’, it’s useful to think of it as any amount of new hires higher than you’d normally expect. Depending on the size of the company, this can range from dozens to several thousand.
The Challenges of High-Volume Talent Acquisition
High-volume recruitment will present unique challenges compared to your company’s regular recruitment process. This can make the whole undertaking feel daunting.
High-volume recruitment will present unique challenges compared to your company’s regular recruitment process. This can make the whole undertaking feel daunting.
If you want to be prepared for it, you will need to know how it is different than traditional recruitment:
- Time and resource restrictions: Consider that an average job opening attracts up to 250 applicants. You can see how hiring dozens, or even hundreds or thousands of new candidates can seriously strain recruiters.Unless you are using an automated system to screen all these applications, you simply won’t have the time to go through them all. The same goes for screening by phone and scheduling interviews.
- Cost per hire: All of the steps we mentioned above will cost you not only time but also money. When you’re hiring a large number of new candidates, these expenses can grow exponentially.
- Organization: Communicating with this many potential hires and tracking where each of them is in the stages of the recruitment funnel can be a nightmare. This can easily lead to someone getting lost in the shuffle, and to you potentially losing the perfect hire.
- Candidate experience: If you aren’t careful and well-prepared, all of the above can easily add up to disastrous candidate experience. If this is the case, you shouldn’t be surprised if candidates start losing interest in your company before the hiring process is done.
The Benefits of a High-Touch Recruitment Approach
When considering a way to overcome the challenges of high-volume recruiting, adopting a high-touch approach might not be the first thing that comes to mind. But the fact is that a high-touch approach combined with automation might be just the solution you’re looking for.
In this case, we define a high-touch approach as a method of recruiting that tries to fulfill the needs of your business, while at the same time engaging with candidates to better understand what they’re looking for.
When properly applied, high-touch recruitment results in finding the perfect candidate for the position, while making sure that the candidate considers a job with your company the right step in their career path.
It also focuses on a more personalized approach to communicating, which helps build a strong relationship with potential hires. Even if you end up rejecting a candidate, this relationship will help you keep in touch if you have an opening that would better suit them in the future.
How to Use High-Touch Recruitment
High-touch recruitment doesn’t have to be complicated or difficult to use. It essentially boils down to two main aspects – communication and personalization.
Here are some of the steps you can take if you’re interested in adopting a high-touch approach to recruiting:
Make Your Employer Brand Visible
First, you need to make sure that candidates actually find out you’re hiring. And since different candidates use different job search mediums, you need to be there too.
Make sure your job openings are posted on any hiring platforms or social media sites your company uses. Also, don’t forget to mention any job openings on your own website. For example, using a call to action in a blog post can prompt a reader to check your ‘careers’ page.
Communication is King
As we mentioned, finding out what candidates want and how your company can help them achieve their career goals is a big part of high-touch recruiting. And a simple way to find out is to communicate frequently throughout the whole hiring process.
You can apply this to the screening process by crafting questions that focus more on candidates’ career goals. This will also provide valuable insight that can help you determine if a candidate would be a good fit for your company culture.
Beyond screening, make sure you set up a system that will message candidates at every step of the hiring process and let them know what their status is. Even if you have to reject a client, they will certainly appreciate you telling them right away.
Use Personalized Engagement
Touching on our previous point, a good way to improve the quality of your communication, and the candidate experience as a whole, is to use personalized engagement.
Creating personalized experiences will make your candidates feel respected and valued. It will also create a stronger and longer-lasting relationship with the candidates.
Creating a personalized experience when trying to hire a large number of candidates can seem counterintuitive. This is where automation comes into play.
Make the Most of Automation
Automated recruitment systems are your best tool when handling a high volume of new hires. They allow you to engage each candidate individually while saving time on work-heavy parts of the recruitment process, such as sourcing and screening resumes.
Ask For and Give Feedback
According to LinkedIn’s talent trends report, 94% of candidates want personalized feedback after a job interview. This means that you should try and provide candidates with feedback no later than three to four business days later.
At the same time, ask the candidates to comment on your hiring process. This will help give you accurate insight into the quality of your candidate experience. With this in mind, you will know which steps of the hiring process work, and which need more fine-tuning.
Understanding what your potential hires value about the jobs you’re offering is vital, even when you have a large number of positions to fill out. Consistently engaging with your candidates and personalizing their hiring experience will make the whole process much easier and more rewarding in the long run. Leveraging automation and feedback will let you design a candidate experience that will let you fill out positions quickly, without the fear that a perfect candidate might slip away.
