10 Tips to Achieve a Successful Mass Hiring Drive

Many companies need mass hiring drives to ramp up their employee strength to suffice the increasing demands of the business. Mass hiring is mostly observed among companies that are experiencing exponential growth and constantly need many employees to cater to their newer project and production facilities. But how does mass hiring work on the ground? Let us find out.

Mass hiring is the process of hiring a large number of candidates within a short period. It is a humongous process, which needs meticulous planning and systematic execution to get the desired result.

So, let us check out the ten efficient ways in which the company can ensure a successful mass hiring drive.

1. Assemble a team.

The foremost requirement of a successful mass hiring drive is a great team that can help you achieve your objectives. You may need to rely on recruiters and recruitment agencies in sourcing and screening candidates. But your biggest strength lies in using your existing employees as well, who have prior experience in the respective domain that you are hiring for.

For instance, if you need to hire hundred customer service reps for your company, then it is better to have your best customer service reps on the recruiting team as they can help define what key skills are required for the job and how to conduct the job interviews.

It can be more of a temporary deputation for recruiting, or you could ask them to chip in a few hours every day. Either way, their contribution and insights will have a tremendous influence on the recruitment process.

2. Have a plan.

The next step of a successful mass hiring strategy is to have an elaborate hiring plan in place, which includes sourcing, screening, hiring and onboarding.

You can begin by:

• • Analysing how many and what positions need to be filled: You ought to have a goal, an objective for the mass hiring drive. This will give you an insight into all the activities that you need to do to achieve your goal.
  • Plan your hiring timeline: It is vital to define a timeline to conduct the mass hiring drive. This will bring in focused attention from all parties involved with recruiting. Planning a timeline will ensure that your goals are achievable.
  • Plan the cost metrics: The cost factor should never be underestimated. Such mass hiring processes usually come with a high expense. So consider your overheads right from the planning stage.

3. Clearly define what you want.

Now that you have a team and a plan in place, sit down with your team and decide what do you truly want in your candidates. It should not just be a rough sketch of key skills and requirements, but a more detailed description of the roles and responsibilities that each position demands. This will help you source for the right candidates.

You can take the help of your existing top-performing employees to chalk out an elaborate set of skills and requirements that you need in your ideal candidate. Define your priorities and your most fit candidate requirements. An elaborate job description can help you achieve your goal faster.

4. Expand your sourcing network.

Your current sourcing and recruitment strategies won’t be fruitful for a successful mass hiring drive. A key aspect of mass recruitment strategies is to open your sourcing network to reach out to more number of ideal candidates than earlier. You may have to use multiple channels to reach out to a wider candidate base.

This is a lot like marketing wherein you let everyone know that you are on a hiring spree and then wait for the responses to come in from all sections gradually. The ways to reach out your candidates include:

• • Hosting recruitments events
  • Extensive activity on social media
  • Displaying marketing ads at strategic journals and locations
  • Reactivating your hiring network or recruiters and agencies
  • Partnering with local agencies

5. Use technology efficiently.

As you start your aggressive sourcing activity, you may get flooded with lots of respondents eager for your advertised positions. In such a case, you will need technology to vet each application and sort out candidates accordingly.

Technology can greatly help you with the initial sourcing and screening process by scanning through the candidate profiles and categorising them as per their relevant skills. This will help you sort the good-fit candidates from a list of ideal candidates, which can further help you plan your interview process accordingly. Technology will increase the speed and efficiency of your screening process.

6. Structure your interview process.

The next essential aspect of a successful mass hiring drive is a structured interview process. Research has proved that a structured interview process is the best technique to evaluate a candidate rather than a non-structured assessing process. Plus, a structure is extremely crucial when you are hiring a number of candidates within a short period. A structured interview will lessen your chances of hiring wrong candidates, bring in more objectivity to your hiring drive, and save time as well as money.

For instance, all your recruiters associated with the initial interview rounds should cover the same list of questions, and provide them with precise instructions about what skills to look for in a candidate. They can shortlist the fittest ones, whom you can later call for personal interviews.

7. Ensure follow-up calls.

Follow-up is an integral part of any kind of recruitment drive. Your candidates will be eager to know about the status of their interview or how they have fared in the recruitment process. Thus, it is necessary to keep your communication channels open with the candidates by following up with them and letting them understand how things are going, what will be the next step in the hiring process and how can they best prepare for this.

Follow-ups become especially vital during the mass hiring drive. You are engaging with a lot of candidates through different outreach channels. In this melee, you may think of skipping on the follow-up process. But remember, your company brand is at stake, and keeping a large number of candidates in the lurch about the status of their interview will create a negative impression about your company among the candidates, which can severely affect your recruitment process.

8. Plan your onboarding process.

Your onboarding and training process is where you can provide a memorable candidate experience to encourage your newly hired employees to join your company. Onboarding is one of the most vital aspects of a mass hiring drive. When you are recruiting lots of candidates for identical job positions, then you can opt for mass onboarding.

It is more beneficial to initiate the onboarding process for a big group of candidates weekly then onboarding a small number of candidates every day. This is not just efficient and structured, but it will also help you provide an excellent candidate experience. Plus, it will help you plan your interview process.

9. Seek referrals from new hires.

Once you have provided a great candidate experience during the hiring and onboarding process, seek referrals from your newly hired employees. People like to connect with compatible individuals and refer people if they are happy and satisfied with a particular experience. It has been observed that employees most likely refer candidates during the first six months of their job.

So you can tap into this human behaviour and seek referrals to build your talent pool of most eligible candidates for your next hiring drive. Referrals will not just provide you with an active candidate database, but they will also give you access to the most eligible and desirable candidates for your job positions.

10. Constantly review your hiring process.

No hiring process is foolproof. Every hiring process has some loopholes, which need to be fixed or changed from time to time to make the process more efficient. This is especially true with mass hiring drives.

When you are recruiting candidates in mass, many things can go wrong, ranging from an ineffective screening process with more interview rounds to missed follow-up calls. A constant review will help you identify the leaks in your hiring drive and will help you plug them with immediate solutions rather than let the entire process go out of hand.

A mass hiring drive can become stressful for the people involved, as they are under constant pressure to hire a large number of most suitable candidates within a short period. However, if planned and managed well, a mass hiring 2020 can certainly produce the best hiring results.