Hiring a couple of people here or there is one thing. High volume hiring whereby you’re bringing on large numbers of new hires in a short period of time is a different animal entirely. 

In all honesty, there’s not a lot of room for error when it comes to mass hiring. Screw it up and there goes substantial amounts of time, money, and effort. As a result, many companies rely on the expertise and experience of established enterprise RPO firms that know exactly how to build and scale teams quickly. The alternative, doing it themselves, can prove time-consuming, costly, and hard.

However, it can be done! In this article, we’ll dive into the topic of high volume hiring, discussing the challenges related to it, why it’s critical to get it right, and what best practices firms can follow if they choose to go the route of tackling it internally. Using the guidance in this article, you can increase the odds your company conquers high volume recruiting and lands the top talent it so desperately needs.

"Great hiring can and should be both expedient and a process of great quality. Hiring is one of the - if not the - most important activity any organization does. It should be given more priority and resources because the companies that do it really well all seem to be near the top of the market cap food chain."

- Oz Rashid, CEO @ MSH

What is High Volume Hiring ?

Defined as the process of filling a large number of job positions within a relatively short time frame, high volume hiring is typically undertaken by organizations experiencing rapid growth, seasonal demand, or turnover. 

High volume recruitment can present unique challenges in terms of logistics (think messy spreadsheets), resource allocation, and ensuring an exceptional candidate experience. There’s certainly a lot to manage, from screening and interviewing a large influx of candidates to balancing speed with the need to find and hire high-caliber employees. 

Leveraging technology and automating processes are both ways companies can streamline their high volume hiring while still attracting and retaining quality candidates. Another option is to outsource their talent acquisition strategy to an RPO firm that specializes in enterprise recruiting.

Unique Challenges of Hiring for Many Roles at the Same Time

When hiring for a lot of roles at one time, especially in larger organizations or situations where rapid hiring is necessary, several challenges often arise:

Resource Allocation and Coordination

Employing a high-volume hiring strategy in-house requires significant resources in terms of time, manpower, and budget. Not to mention, it can also be a struggle to effectively coordinate efforts across different departments or teams within the organization. When multiple hiring managers get involved, things can get hairy with everyone pushing their own agenda.

Quality and Consistency

With a high volume of roles to fill, there’s also a risk that the quality of hires or the consistency of the hiring process will be compromised. Rushing through candidate screening or skipping steps during the interview process to meet hiring quotas, for example, can lead to subpar hires. 

There’s also a good chance the candidate experience may be negatively impacted. Because of the sheer volume of applicants, job seekers might experience communication delays, prolonged wait times, or a lack of personalized attention. Although it’s critical to provide a positive candidate experience to attract top talent, this might suffer because so many applications are being handled simultaneously.  

Stakeholder Expectations

In large organizations, multiple stakeholders are often involved in the recruitment process, including department heads, HR personnel, and C-suite executives. With so many hands in the pot, it can be difficult to manage everyone’s varying priorities, timelines, and expectations, especially when hiring for various roles across different teams.  

Administrative Burden

Then there’s the administrative side of things to take into consideration. Processing a large volume of applications, scheduling numerous interviews, and managing candidate communications involves a lot of paperwork, spreadsheets, time, and resources. Without efficient and tech-driven systems and tools in place or an enterprise RPO partnership in place, HR hiring teams may struggle to keep up with the workload, leading to bottlenecks in the high volume hiring process and potential delays in filling critical roles.

The Importance of Getting the Process Right From the Start

High volume recruitment plays an integral role in the sustained success of many companies. Without it, they would be left high and dry during periods of great seasonal demand or expansion. Hence, there are many reasons why companies simply can’t afford to make mistakes or haphazardly approach volume hiring, including:

Cost Implications

Companies that employ a high volume hiring strategy often rack up substantial costs from advertising, recruiting, onboarding, and training. A disorganized hiring process can lead to wasted resources. For example, hiring the wrong candidates will likely result in high turnover, requiring rehiring and retraining—potentially costing an organization thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars or more. 

Impact on Productivity

An arbitrary and unstructured approach to mass hiring can also disrupt workflow and decrease productivity. How so? When roles are left unfilled or are filled by underqualified hires, there’s a bigger chance of missed deadlines and decreased output. This can have a cascading effect on project timelines, customer satisfaction, and ultimately, revenue generation.

Reputation Damage

Poor hiring practices can tarnish a company’s reputation in more ways than one. Qualified candidates might get scared away from applying because of negative feedback they’ve read about the organization online. On the flip side, existing employees can become demotivated and disillusioned if they see incompetent or underqualified individuals being hired.  

Quality of Hires

Another reason a company’s hiring team shouldn’t support a disorganized and rushed high volume talent acquisition strategy is because it will inevitably compromise the quality of new hires. When quantity takes precedence over quality, companies risk hiring people who aren’t the best fit for the role or culture. High turnover, a drop in employee morale, and lower overall performance typically follow.  

Legal and Compliance Risks

Finally, failing to comply with legal and regulatory requirements in the hiring process can lead to costly lawsuits, fines, and reputational damage. When a company’s mass hiring approach is all over the place, it may overlook important steps like conducting proper background checks, following DEI mandates, and complying with equal employment opportunity laws. This can expose the organization to legal liabilities and damage its standing in the eyes of stakeholders.

High Volume Hiring Best Practices

If you’re looking to engage in a new high volume hiring initiative, consider implementing the following best practices to ensure a successful outcome for your organization:

1. Develop a Clear Strategy

A great place to start when creating a high volume enterprise hiring plan is to define the organization’s goals, timelines, and requirements. Next, determine what sourcing channels will be used to quickly attract a large pool of top-tier candidates. Some possibilities include job boards, social media, and referrals. Finally, don’t forget to identify the metrics that will be used to track the progress and measure the success of the hiring initiative.

2. Streamline Your Recruitment Processes

Next on the agenda is to decide which existing recruitment processes can effectively handle high volumes and then optimize them. Implementing applicant tracking systems (ATS) and other HR technologies will help automate repetitive tasks, streamline candidate screening, and make it easier to communicate with applicants. Also, be sure to standardize your job descriptions and interview processes to ensure consistency and efficiency.

3. Utilize Advanced Technology and Tools

With the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), there’s no excuse not to leverage these technologies to save time. AI-powered resume screening tools can sift through large volumes of resumes faster than a human, identifying top candidates based on predefined criteria. 

Video interviewing platforms can also be used to conduct initial screening interviews that your hiring team can later view at their convenience.

4. Actively Communicate with Candidates

Anyone who has been ghosted by a recruiter knows how awful that feels. Avoid making your candidates feel that way by keeping them informed about their application status and the next steps in the hiring process. Also, provide them with timely feedback, even if they’re ultimately not chosen, to maintain goodwill and potentially retain them as future candidates.

5. Optimize Your Onboarding Process

The hiring process doesn’t end the second the candidate accepts your job offer. Keep the momentum going and increase new employee satisfaction by developing a structured onboarding program tailored to the needs of your high volume hires. Focus on efficiently integrating them into your company and quickly bringing them up to speed so they can start being productive.

Online training modules and virtual onboarding sessions can also be used to scale the onboarding process and maintain consistency across a large number of hires.

6. Seek to Continuously Improve

Treat your high volume recruitment strategy like it’s a living document, continually identifying lessons learned and areas for improvement. Gather feedback from hiring managers, recruiters, and new hires to assess the effectiveness of your organization’s recruitment and onboarding processes and make adjustments as needed for the future.

Making Errors with High Volume Recruiting is Costly and Damaging

"Our approach is different than most because we’ve learned TA doesn’t want to get flooded with more resumes, which adds more work to their plate, and they certainly don’t want to pay 20% fees for every hire. We’ve created a solution where you can turn recruiting on and off when you need it, with a dedicated team that can scale up or down based on demand, at a fraction of the cost with volume-based tiers that lower the fee based on placements made. In addition we aim to take as much administrative work off of TA’s plate, including intakes, feedback, scheduling, and stakeholder management, so that they can focus on driving the business forward."

- Corey Bernis, Vice President of Talent Solutions @ MSH

An internal hiring team doesn’t necessarily need to perfectly nail its hiring process when it’s only recruiting occasional new employees. But when it comes to hiring people en masse, the ballgame changes completely. With high volumes of new hires comes logistical struggles, the risk of costly mistakes and high turnover, and potentially disgruntled stakeholders throughout the organization.

Thankfully, a company can help ensure the success of its mass hiring initiatives by following established best practices. And if it’s still too much, there are well-reputed enterprise RPO firms out there like MSH that know just how to quickly build and scale teams because they’ve perfected the art of high volume hiring. Reach out to MSH today to learn more about how its RPO services can benefit your company.