How to improve your mass hiring process & recruit the right people faster

Hiring a large number of employees in a short amount of time can be overwhelming. When it comes to mass hiring, efficiency and quality is especially important—there’s no room for old-school technology and processes when you need to find the best talent quickly.

Saving even an hour or two at different points in the process can make a big difference, as it all adds up. How can you save time during a high-volume recruitment process without sacrificing quality or the candidate experience?

In this article, we share tips for how to ensure an efficient mass hiring process and hire the right people faster.

Get clear on your goals

You can save a lot of time in the recruitment process by first clarifying your organization’s goals. Together with the recruiting team, clarify why you’re hiring and what you’re looking for in candidates in terms of:

• Skills
• Experience
• Education
• Personality and attitude
• Growth potential 

Take stock of your current situation, and get clear on how you’ll define success. Let’s say you need to hire 30 sales reps in three months—you can work backwards to figure out the number of candidates you need at each stage of the process to reach your hiring goal.

You can also set up a screening template that outlines the questions you’ll ask, and what kind of answers you’re looking for from candidates. For example, if you’re looking to hire people who are especially proactive and self motivated, you might want to ask candidates to share a time when they had to take initiative to solve a problem.

Doing this planning work will enable you to to write clearer job descriptions, which helps you avoid attracting wrong-fit candidates. Be sure to also include the salary range in job descriptions as this is one of the key things candidates want to know before applying.

Rediscover talents by mining your ATS

Talent rediscovery can help you save significant amounts of time in your bulk recruitment process—you might have some great-fit candidates right under your nose. 

To rediscover talents, go through your ATS database and check the CVs of previous applicants who might be qualified for your current job openings. There are AI recruiting tools available that help you quickly find high-quality candidates for your current positions. 

These candidates are already connected to your company and interested in you as an employer, meaning they’re more likely to be a good fit. While they might have fallen short for a previous role, they might be the perfect match for the current one. 

Since you already have the resumes at hand, screening previous candidates helps you jumpstart the selection process and reduce your time to hire.

Involve employees with a referral program

Sourcing candidates through employee referrals can help you shorten recruitment time and hire for better cultural fit. With a referral program, you can stand out in a highly competitive market, as most people would rather apply for jobs at companies where they already have a connection. 

A referral program also helps your current employees feel involved and that they’re making an impact on what happens in the company, which is good for employee retention. Remember to also ask your new hires for referrals. 

When your employees become brand ambassadors, they create a positive impression of your company through word of mouth and help improve your employer brand. 

Include screening questions in the application

You don’t want to waste your time—or candidates’ time—with people who aren’t relevant for the role you’re hiring for. Incorporating simple screening questions in applications helps you filter out candidates who don’t meet your main criteria. By doing so, you can cut the application review and interview time in half without sacrificing the quality of hire. 

As part of the application process, ask candidates straightforward yes or no questions like “Do you have a valid driver’s license?” Then in the next phase, you can ask more reflective questions that give candidates the opportunity to express themselves and better showcase their personality and attitude. 

Use pre-recorded video interviews

Use pre-recorded video interviews to narrow down your candidate pool and save time during the screening process. You can give more candidates a chance at this stage compared to more traditional screening methods and involve more colleagues in the recruitment process—without scheduling more meetings.

Pre-recorded video interviews are time and place agnostic: You record video questions on your own time, and candidates record their answers whenever it suits them best. It’s a win win. 

You can get a better feeling of candidates from videos and create a more objective hiring process: since the hiring manager sees the same thing that recruiters do, you’re not just relying on the recruiter’s interpretation of candidates.

Plus, you don’t need to spend more time than necessary watching video replies: If you see within one minute that a candidate isn’t right for the role, you can simply move on to the next video. Without this method, you wouldn’t have time to arrange 15 or more interviews, let alone have them. 

This method also allows you to better standardize your screening process. With pre-screening phone calls, it’s easy to get off track and ask different questions to different candidates, but with pre-recorded video interviews, everyone gets asked exactly the same questions. 

Use a scheduling tool for live interviews

No one has time for the dreaded back and forth of scheduling interviews—especially when you have several candidates you need to reach out to. 

When you’ve narrowed down your top candidates and you want to invite them to a live interview, send them a link through your scheduling tool like Calendly, HubSpot, or another software. Whether you’re meeting the candidate for a live video interview or in-person, using a scheduling tool is an effortless way to simplify the process. 

Automate skills & reference checks

There are plenty of recruitment methods and tools out there that won’t involve recruiters’ time at all—these tools are your best friends during a high-volume recruitment process. 

In addition to the tools mentioned above, you can also use automated software for assessments, competency tests, language tests, and reference checks. These tools can usually be integrated with your ATS so that you have all the candidate information you need in one place.   

Keep the candidate experience top of mind 

Last but not least: keep the candidate experience in mind during every step of the process. Just because you need to hire many candidates fast doesn’t mean you can’t provide a personalized experience—from the initial communication to when you offer them the job. 

With talent shortages across the globe—including the Nordics—it’s a candidate-driven market, meaning you can’t afford to ignore how candidates feel about your company during the hiring process. The battle for talent will only get tougher, so you need to think of candidates like customers and focus on selling to them.  

Treat all candidates fairly, promptly answer their questions, and keep them updated on the status of their application. 

Curious about how pre-recorded video interviews could improve your mass hiring process? Try Recright for free today—no credit card required.