The abrupt need to implement high volume hiring leaves organizations scrambling to find talented and qualified people. Often due to seasonal spikes in business or rapid growth, few operations are prepared to quickly onboard the number of employees needed to fill positions and maximize productivity. If you are a business leader facing a staffing shortage that requires an expedited high volume hiring strategy, these are ways to swell your ranks.
Challenges of High Volume Hiring
Tasking a human resources (HR) department to hire two or three times the number of people it typically vets can be a non-starter. That’s largely because HR professionals usually maintain a relatively modest sampling of resumes to fall back on to fill vacancies. If a manufacturing floor supervisor leaves the company, there is likely a folder with previous applicants and scant few recent ones.
Hiring just one team leader entails circling back to see if previous applicants are available, publishing the position on jobs boards, and essentially starting from scratch. Trying to implement a sudden high volume hiring process generally runs into the following impediments.
- Reviewing Resumes: Someone or a team of hiring professionals will need to sit down and review the resumes one at a time. The process often proves tedious and slows the ability to separate qualified individuals from people not well-suited for the positions.
- Checking References: It’s no mystery that less-than-ethical individuals will provide false and misleading information in their applications. Unless someone takes the time to make phone calls and send out inquiry emails, you could end up hiring an unsavory character.
- Differing Expectations: Departmental leaders harbor a variety of hiring preferences that can be vastly different from HR or others in the organization. If HR takes the lead, supervisors may not get people with the desperately needed skills. By that same token, creating a hiring committee can result in office politics weighing the process down.
The essential point is that few operations are ready to successfully manage a massive hiring process. However, there are ways to improve efficiency and minimize job vacancies.
High Volume Hiring Best Practices
Although it may be late in the game for companies that need dozens or hundreds of employees immediately, consider creating a high volume hiring policy. Bring the leadership team together, including key stakeholders, and map out ways to stay prepared for seasonal needs and growth. Define your goals, employee qualification expectations, and a vetting process. These are other ways to hire large numbers of people.
1. Simplify Your Recruitment Processes
When HR departments are not pressed for time, they have the luxury of performing multiple interviews, rating candidates, and selecting the most qualified person. Such procedures help identify the ideal professional. By contrast, selecting dozens of people from a pile of resumes calls for a standardized checklist. Look over the applications and see how many check the boxes associated with a job opening. Confirm the references and set one-time interviews with the people who check the most boxes first.
2. Employ Technology
Bring in your IT department or third-party provider to utilize things such as artificial intelligence and machine learning. These advanced technologies can automatically identify qualified applicants from those lacking the expertise to fill a post. Don’t hesitate to employ video conferencing platforms to conduct interviews.
3. Maximize Onboarding Efficiency
Finding qualified people and vetting them is only part of the hiring process. Some companies have a slow-moving onboarding method that can take weeks. Consider reviewing your existing policy and making changes that eliminate redundancy and delays. In a hiring crisis, maybe the new person doesn’t need to meet with as many members of the leadership team. Truncate the process to only necessary time expenditures.
4. Strive For Improvement
Think of your high volume hiring strategy as a living entity that learns and evolves. At the end of each seasonal or growth spike, hold a post-mortem meeting. Discuss the ways the process succeeded and areas for improvement. Update the plan and repeat. Striving for excellence is the gold standard.
5. Reach Out To a Hiring Recruiter
It’s important to be realistic about the business’s ability to quickly onboard large numbers of workers. Consider connecting with an agency that possesses experience in high volume hiring. You’ll likely find they have people standing ready who can seamlessly fill positions on a short- or long-term basis.
At Hire Partnership, we work diligently with companies to recruit exceptional people. If you need to swell your ranks with qualified professionals, contact us today. Let’s get the process started.
