Finding the best candidates in a competitive hiring market can be challenging. When looking for a lot of talent, you need to think differently. 

Volume recruitment presents a fantastic opportunity for organizations to connect with many qualified candidates without requiring lengthy screening processes.

What Is High Volume Recruitment?

So, what is high volume recruiting? It is a structured approach to bringing large numbers of high-caliber job candidates into your hiring network. There's no definite figure for high volume hiring, but it typically involves increased numbers of applicants in a specific period. 

High volume recruitment aims to build a large candidate pool that includes the best so that you can quickly find and hire the type of talent needed to grow your business. Its success relies on the right plan and well-defined hiring practices that keep candidates engaged and motivated.

What Are the Benefits of High Volume Recruitment?

High volume recruitment can help you discover new ways to connect, engage and retain candidates. The following are three benefits of high volume recruitment:

Saves You Valuable Time

The time savings is one of the most significant advantages. When leveraging high volume recruitment, you'll have to dedicate more time initially to set up your hiring plan and identify the correct networks for expanding your reach. 

However, once your program starts running, it will work in the background. You'll only need to keep an eye on it to ensure it's still providing results.

Recruiting Is Cost Effective

Since you can shorten your hiring process, you can reach more talent on a limited budget. High volume also eliminates the need for lengthy screening processes and bureaucratic requirements.

This approach can help your company identify which hiring practices are working best and help you fine-tune your recruiting efforts. With a well-planned high volume recruitment program, you can also effectively monitor the success of your efforts and make changes when necessary. 

Helps You Find the Best Talent

When you start a high volume recruitment program, you will likely see immediate increases in recruiting efforts. With a well-planned high volume recruiting strategy, your organization's reach gets extended beyond job boards and social media platforms. 

Your potential pool of candidates grows, and your hiring network expands as you reach out to new communities with your open positions.

What Are the Challenges of High Volume Recruitment?

While high volume recruitment can help your organization grow its talent pipeline and provide many qualified candidates, it's not without challenges. Like any other hiring approach, it has its difficulties. We'll cover some of the most common ones below:

Volume of Applications

One of the most significant issues that most organizations face with high volume recruitment is the high volume of applications. The sheer number of applications can make it difficult to identify the top candidates promptly.

High volume recruitment is not a quick process. You will need to optimize your hiring process and make adjustments so that the sheer scale of applications doesn't slow you down. You can do this by automating your recruiting efforts. 

At the same time, you'll need to find ways to securely manage large numbers of applications—for example, by using applicant tracking systems.

Employee Turnover

The attrition rate can be another challenge that organizations experience with high volume recruitment. When you're bringing in many candidates, not knowing what the job entails and what it will take to get it done can be a considerable obstacle. Misaligned expectations can even hinder your ability to keep the right talent in your organization.

When planning a high volume recruitment program, you'll need to factor in the turnover costs and address anything that could cause employees to leave. Provide detailed job descriptions and ensure new hires feel welcomed and supported through onboarding. 

Communicate effectively, set clear expectations, and align incentives with goals. Regularly monitor retention numbers and take action if they start dropping.

Quality of Hires

Leveraging high volume recruitment is an effective way to get many candidates into your hiring network. It helps you find quality candidates quickly and efficiently. However, it's important to note that it won't be able to produce quality hires for every open position.

Indeed, high volume recruitment can leave your organization exposed to quality issues. One way to combat this is by investing in proper screening processes that involve multiple rounds of assessments and the filtering of low-performance candidates. Evaluate your screening candidates and determine if you need to make improvements.

Decentralized Hiring

Decentralized hiring can be challenging for multi-location companies when using high volume recruitment strategies. This notion is especially true if you manage several offices across different regions.

Fundamentally, decentralized hiring means each location is responsible for its recruitment efforts and hiring needs. Each site may recruit and hire based on different criteria and timeframes. 

A decentralized hiring approach may lead to inconsistency, making hiring and retaining the best talent harder. It can also limit the number of candidates screened and how many positions get filled.

Hiring efficiency will be higher in centralized locations with more resources and processes to recruit and hire.

Hiring Bias

Bias can creep into high volume recruitment efforts, making them less objective and ineffective. If this happens, you may lose out on crucial talent with great potential but no ties to your company.

High volume recruitment can make bias more evident because many people are involved in the process. It can lead to preferences more prominent in your hiring decisions, including:

• Gender
• Race
• Demographics

Hiring a diverse workforce is often a priority, but it's easy to lose sight of this when the pace is high. With that in mind, you could enforce diversity policies and use the same criteria and screening processes. 

The right high volume recruiting strategies will allow talent to come through and your company to engage with those groups through targeted recruiting efforts.

Unsuitable Remote Working Setups

You can use high volume recruiting for remote and virtual hiring. However, there are a few factors you'll need to consider when planning this type of hiring. 

In particular, one of the biggest difficulties with remote work is the time difference between different time zones. That can make it harder to align schedules and complicate meeting deadlines or providing the necessary support.

Policies and guidelines are essential in any high volume recruiting program, primarily when recruiting remote workers. Have a remote working policy for candidates and employees that outlines expectations, help resources, and responses to common issues. 

You can't expect remote employees to travel regularly or be able to provide the exact type of service as employees in a different location. If you're looking for remote candidates, ensure they are suited for this type of work and have knowledge that can make them a good fit.

Data Fragmentation

Data is a critical element of high volume recruitment. The number of applications and the time it takes to review them creates a risk that hiring managers won't step back and take a moment to contemplate the data. Fragmented data collection can cause hiring managers to overlook patterns and trends that could help them make better decisions.

Part of the challenge is that the data used in high volume recruiting is isolated from other data sources. For example, you may not incorporate it into your applicant tracking system or biographical database, leading to delays and gaps in data.

To alleviate these issues, consider implementing KPIs that act as filters to help you match your company with talent. You can improve on this by having an organizational data scientist on your team who can help interpret the data, understand trends, and provide actionable insights.

Poor Candidate Experience

High volume recruitment can create a poor candidate experience if you're not taking the time to screen and get to know applicants. Many won't make it to the next stage because they will disconnect from your process.

Given that, you must ensure that your hiring team spends more time on each application. Use tools that show where you are in the process, and communicate effectively with candidates who aren't moving forward.

Final Thoughts

High volume recruitment can be a successful strategy for expanding your talent pipeline and identifying more talented candidates. To successfully use this approach, you will need to consider its challenges.

These include the volume of applications and poor-quality hires. High volume recruitment is not a quick process, but it has benefits—it helps you identify more considerable numbers of candidates in a shorter time.