Targeting success: How to improve your high-volume hiring strategy

High-volume hiring shouldn't feel like a burden.

When your business needs to fill many open positions in a short timeframe, it represents a strong demand for your offerings and indicates success in your company's work thus far.

If your organization is in the midst of deciding how to hire quickly and effectively, consider turning to a high-volume recruiting process carefully developed and implemented by experienced staffing groups. Instead of handling all aspects of a time-consuming, complex project, your enterprise can outsource much of the work — while still deeply informing the process and maintaining an exceptionally high degree of oversight.

Let's take a closer look at key considerations when it comes to high-volume hiring, from building an effective talent pool to the logistical concerns that can arise during the hiring process.

What is high-volume hiring?

"High-volume hiring involves heavily increased recruitment and, often, a short window for doing so."

High-volume hiring refers to the need to bring a large number of new employees or contractors on board in a condensed period of time. The specifics can be different from one company to the next, but high-volume hiring generally represents a significantly increased need, coupled with additional pressures related to hiring deadlines.

Except for businesses that have built specialized, dedicated workflows for high-volume hiring, this process often takes companies out of their comfort zone. Human resources and recruiting staff will either need to be supplemented — introducing more recruiting needs — or the focus of current staff will have to shift from their usual, and often critical, duties. The unique nature of high-volume hiring makes partnering with an experienced and dependable recruiting firm an effective solution.

How do you recruit employees quickly?

Whether your organization needs to recruit one employee or one thousand, certain aspects of the hiring process remain the same. The Society for Human Resource Management shared a general model for recruiting that informs this process, with four top-level actions that compose a full hiring cycle:

1. Creating and defining hiring objectives.
2. Building a strategy for recruiting.
3. Actively recruiting new staff.
4. Analyzing the results of these efforts.

Even when recruiting employees quickly, none of these large steps — nor the many smaller actions and responsibilities tied to them — can be skipped without jeopardizing the outcome. Your company still needs to define its objectives, craft an effective job description and outreach strategy, identify the most promising candidates and review recruiting metrics.

Cutting down on time to hire, especially in the context of high-volume hiring, can be especially challenging without prior experience. Partnering with a knowledgeable recruiting agency can address many of these issues, from creating an effective hiring cycle to avoiding common pitfalls and keeping staff focused on their primary responsibilities.

One especially valuable benefit of partnering with Beacon Hill is our deep wealth of prior experience in quick recruiting for specialized roles and distinct onboarding strategies. For example, we created a unique recruitment process for the customer service team of our client, a provider of cloud-based remote connectivity services. We addressed two especially important issues: an ongoing need to hire job seekers and the short time period available for recruiting, due to the specialized group training required. We develop effective methods of support, including:

• Building relationships with local colleges and universities to attract preferred candidates.
• Offering unique referral and longevity incentives.
• Managing career fairs.

How do you create a candidate pool?

"Candidate pools can be difficult for companies to build when recruiting at a high volume."

A candidate pool represents the potential employees your organization may hire, whether now or months or years in the future. Creating a relevant and valuable candidate pool requires careful attention when it comes to key tasks like crafting effective job descriptions, publicizing openings through a career site or job boards and interacting with potential hires. Your business must decide how to incorporate referrals, social campaigns, inbound recruiting and other processes into its overall effort to attract qualified and capable candidates.

Beacon Hill has existing relationships with candidates across the country, which is especially valuable in terms of building a candidate pool for high-volume hiring. Our national footprint and wide reach mean we can efficiently recruit qualified candidates. Whether your organization needs to draw from the local area around your headquarters or plans to recruit remote staff, we have the systems, experience and staff to help you meet your goals.

In one case, we assisted a global HR consulting firm by providing 400 candidates for contract call center roles in a three-month period. Through a combination of data analysis, program suggestions — such as further investment in training and a performance management plan — and offering contract-to-hire roles, we addressed an especially time-sensitive need. The result was a strong success, with the company and hired candidates alike both sharing especially positive reactions.

How do you handle high-volume recruiting?

Successful high-volume hiring and recruiting must increase the number of candidates identified and eventually onboarded, as compared to a standard hiring process. Quantity can't come at the expense of quality, however. Expectations around education, experience and skills must be maintained for the best chance of success. This broad set of needs requires significant investment when hiring efforts are managed within your organization.

At Beacon Hill, our carefully developed and constantly improved recruiting process is designed to scale effectively. A continuing emphasis on the candidate experience means we don't only identify the best possible potential hires or contractors, we also keep them engaged throughout the process. Our initial conversation with every candidate is in-depth and wide ranging, helping us build a firm understanding of interests, qualifications and suitability. When the time comes to recruit at a high volume, our established context for each potential candidate makes it that much easier to filter and pass along the cream of the crop for your approval.

How has COVID-19 affected hiring trends in 2021?

Slightly more than half of Americans worked remotely in April 2020, according to a Gallup poll. While that percentage has decreased since, the forced move to telecommuting for businesses that could support it revealed a powerful option for companies: remote recruiting.

Beacon Hill has helped a wide variety of companies shift to remote hiring strategies in the wake of the pandemic, unlocking benefits like a broader talent pool. We've successfully completed this work even in industries that have traditionally been on-site only. Consider these examples in the legal and finance fields. We know we can offer similar support to nearly all types of businesses.

A trustworthy recruiting partner can help you navigate your high-volume hiring needs, whether they're in response to a unique situation or a regular part of doing business. To learn more, get in touch with us today.