High-Volume Hiring: Strategies for Corporate Recruitment

High-volume hiring allows you to scale your workforce swiftly, ensuring you have enough staff to sustain rapid business growth, seasonal fluctuations, or unanticipated shifts in employee turnover rate. 

The phenomenon mirrors a store’s preparation ahead of a big sale. The more efficiently and quickly you can place merchandise on the shelves (fill new job positions), the better prepared you'll be to meet customer demand and keep the store running smoothly during peak sale hours.

Read on to dive deeper into high-volume hiring and gain insights into effective strategies for overcoming hiring challenges. 

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What is high-volume hiring?

High-volume hiring is a hiring strategy that entails recruiting a substantial number of employees within a condensed period. Depending on business requirements, the number of hires during mass recruitment can vary from a few hundred to thousands. Below are the steps involved in bulk recruitment: 

• Creating job descriptions

• Advertising job openings

• Reviewing inbound (networks and referrals) and outbound applications

• Shortlisting candidates

• Conducting interviews

• Hiring selected candidates

• Onboarding new hires 

The benefits of high-volume hiring 

The benefits of executing a successful recruiting campaign that meets rising labor demands while also prioritizing candidate proficiency include:

1. Minimized downtime 

By promptly addressing staffing gaps, you can minimize the risk of downtime that might otherwise hinder critical business operations. Most importantly, high-volume hiring helps you meet increased workload demands, ultimately boosting your organization’s overall performance.

2. Reduced cost per new hire

Hiring on a large scale streamlines operational costs while also reducing the cost per new hire. The cost-per-hire metric accounts for expenditures on job boards and other advertising or outreach platforms to recruit talent.

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High-volume hiring obstacles and how to overcome them

While high-volume hiring offers the potential to expand your workforce rapidly, it also presents challenges that lead to bottlenecks. The following delves into a few of these potential obstacles.

1. A low response rate to job openings

If you're experiencing minimal responses to roles you’re seeking to fill, it's possible you're not utilizing a variety of sourcing channels. Taking a diversified, multi-channel approach to candidate sourcing through social media, referral programs, job boards, and paid online advertising can help ensure you reach the right candidates wherever they may be looking for opportunities. 

2. Difficulty in coordinating multiple interview schedules

Aligning interviews to suit both HR teams and candidates' schedules can be difficult, particularly with a high hiring volume. To overcome this challenge, consider automation tools for interview scheduling. Alternatively, you may opt for group interviews when you have multiple openings for a specific role.

3. May be challenging to ensure diversity in the candidate pool 

Diversity inclusion can, at times, inadvertently take a back seat depending on your hiring location or individual job requirements. To actively promote diversity in your recruitment efforts, consider exploring diverse hiring platforms that offer access to a broader range of demographics. You may also monitor data on the diversity of your candidate pipeline through equal employment opportunity (EEO) dashboards and candidate surveys, among other relevant resources.

Read more: Why Is Diversity Important in the Workplace?

Technology and tools for high-volume hiring success 

There are many different tools that can help you conduct a successful high-volume hiring campaign. Some of these tools include: 

1. Applicant tracking system (ATS) for automating hiring tasks

Consider using an application tracking system (ATS) for automated application screening. By configuring an ATS to sift through resumes based on the skills outlined in your job postings, you can easily prioritize promising applications. Besides scanning applications for relevant keywords, an ATS also automates tasks such as sending personalized messages to candidates, scheduling interviews, and managing onboarding paperwork.

2. Artificial intelligence-powered tools for candidate assistance 

AI tools, like chatbots, can offer candidates support throughout the job application process. These tools efficiently manage common application queries, ensuring candidates receive timely and accurate responses to their inquiries. Together, automation and AI tools can assist in scheduling interviews with recruiters, offer updates on application status, and more. 

3. Video interviewing platforms for remote assessment

Video interviewing platforms let you connect with geographically distant candidates. Specific platforms, like Indeed Interview, offer the flexibility to customize interview questions to match the unique requirements of the role(s) you are hiring for. You may choose to deliver the preset questions in audio, video, or text format. 

Counteracting unconscious bias in high-volume recruitment

Unconscious bias surrounding race, age, or gender can negatively impact your firm’s hiring practices, causing you to miss out on deserving candidates. The following are some tips that can help you avoid bias during recruitment:

Include a small test for assessing work performance. 

Integrating a skill test into your hiring process, one that accurately reflects the tasks anticipated for the role can significantly enhance your team's approach to candidate evaluation. The initiative not only provides candidates with an opportunity to showcase their abilities in a practical setting but also compels your hiring team to evaluate candidates objectively based on the quality of their work, sidestepping unconscious biases like gender or physical appearance. 

Standardize the interview process and questions. 

In a standardized interview, every candidate faces identical questions in a predetermined sequence. You may also have your hiring managers grade candidates’ responses to each question on a predefined scale using an interview scorecard. Moreover, as part of the standardization process, be sure to review the list of questions carefully to identify any potential biases. 

Read more: How to Promote Diversity and Inclusion in the Workplace: What We've Learned

Support recruitment and development with Coursera

High-volume hiring lets you expand your workforce swiftly. Attract frontline talent, support internal mobility, and prepare workers for in-demand, digital jobs with Career Academy from Coursera. Featuring a curated catalog of guided tutorials and projects focused on high-value digital skills and tools, Career Academy offers competitive career development opportunities with training programs from industry leaders like Google, Salesforce, Intuit, Meta, and Ashok Leyland, among many others. Explore Coursera for Business to learn how to provide the technology training your business needs to be competitive.