8 High-Volume Hiring Strategies To Adopt In 2023

Before embarking on a high-volume hiring mission, it’s important to set clear expectations with hiring managers. For example, you should be clear on how long it should take to get feedback on candidates. Delays of several days can really slow the process down — and even lead to losing qualified candidates to more reactive companies.

You should also manage your hiring manager’s expectations by being clear about how quickly you, as a recruiter, can fill the desired headcount.

As part of our embedded recruitment service, we’ll immerse our experts in your internal talent team, allowing us to better understand your hiring requirements, as well as your company’s culture and mission. This enables us to effectively hone your hiring processes so you can recruit the right talent in rapid time.

Group sourcing sessions with your recruitment team can be a great way to quickly draw up a large number of candidates. You can even involve hiring managers and their team members, as they might have a lot of relevant connections. Plus, by asking them to provide you with a warm introduction, you can expect much better results than reaching out cold on LinkedIn.

To really tap into this source of referrals, you could automate the process using social recruiting tools such as Teamable, which allows you to find prospects based on employees’ social connections.

LinkedIn is often used for hiring is its InMail function, which allows recruiters to directly message candidates. However, it’s crucial to keep in mind that qualified passive candidates might receive multiple InMails with generic-sounding job offers every week — so it’s important to make sure yours stand out.

First, by including relevant details about the role, you can save time discussing these on a later phone call. You’ll also be able to skip these phone calls altogether when candidates aren’t interested from the off — and focus on attracting those who are.

According to data from LinkedIn, 91% of people would like to see salary information in the first reach-out about a role. Including this information can save time for both sides if there’s a mismatch between what’s on offer and the candidate’s expectations (though it’s important to check with your hiring manager whether you can share this).

Also, remember that not everyone checks their InMails every day. You can significantly increase your response rate by scheduling a few quick follow-ups. 

Batch interviews are a great way to save time when you need to interview a large candidate pool in a short space of time. Typically, this means inviting 20–30 pre-screened candidates to an event that includes both one-to-one interviews and group activities.

These events can last anywhere from a few hours to a whole day — and could save time for both you and your applicants, who won’t have to travel to multiple interviews dragging out over several weeks. It’s also convenient for interviewers, who can also simply block out a day or half-day rather than continuously providing their availability. Even better: when batch interviews are done right, you should be able to make a decision by the end of the session.

Research by LinkedIn has found that 60% of job candidates have quit an application because it took too long. And when you’re hiring at scale, you just can’t afford to have qualified candidates dropping out because another company got there quicker.

Take LinkedIn as an example: in 2014, they were tasked with hiring a large volume of candidates in a short period. They devised a 3-stage recruitment process, in which the first stage was a telephone interview where candidates were scored from one to three. However, when they found that 90% of candidates who scored a three made it to the final interview stage, they started fast-tracking those candidates — saving everyone time.

By streamlining your application and interview processes, you can avoid wasting time for both hiring managers and candidates — and gain a competitive edge over companies with longer turnaround times.

It’s important to give candidates time to consider an offer — otherwise, you could end up with new hires who aren’t engaged, don’t understand the job, or just don’t want to be there.

But, when you’re embracing high-volume hiring, it’s also important to limit this time — for example, to 48 hours. This gives candidates time to think while avoiding wasting too much time on the company’s end.

It can also help you avoid missing out on your second-choice candidates, who may get other offers in the meantime.

Your Applicant Tracking System (ATS) can provide valuable insights into where you stand against your talent acquisition goals. However, it’s important to keep it clean by removing old, irrelevant, or useless data. This might mean erasing clutter such as duplicates or applications that haven’t been properly closed out.

You can ensure your ATS is working for you going forward by creating best practices for data entry, providing training for those who use it, and performing spot-checks on new entries.

We also recommend utilizing an AI-powered ATS to improve and speed up your applicant tracking processes.

The data you have on past and current applicants is your secret weapon when high-volume hiring — if you use it right. Tracking metrics such as where your best talent was sourced from can help you understand where it’s most useful to focus your efforts going forward.

Another good idea is to gather feedback on candidate experience, so you can identify any problem areas where you could streamline your process.

And, by tracking how many candidates typically reach each stage of the recruitment process (vs. how many are ultimately hired), you can make sure you have the resources you need for each stage in place ahead of time.

Data is a key component of Talentful’s recruitment service. From salary benchmarking to market mapping, we harness a variety of information to help our partners hire the right employees — and quickly.