Qualified, interested and available candidates. You need a lot of them and you need them now. With unemployment still towering above pre-pandemic levels, high-volume hiring should be easier and faster than ever, right? Wrong.
In March of this year, close to 4 million fewer people were in the labor force and those who are actively seeking a new job seem to be more hesitant. In a recent ZipRecruiter survey only 35% of job seekers expressed that they are motivated to accept the first job offer that they receive. That’s in stark contrast to the 51% who said they’d jump at the chance for a new job back in 2018.
The scale and pace of high-volume recruiting has always been challenging, but as we emerge from the pandemic the ability to quickly identify strong candidates and successfully compete to hire them requires a new way of thinking and doing.
RELATED RESOURCE: How Ardene is Using Technology to Manage High-Volume Applicant Flow and Build a Talent Pipeline
Depending on the industry, season, pay and the job itself, you already have a lot to think about before revamping your hiring strategy. However, there are universal struggles shared by most, if not all, high-volume recruiters. When the struggle is real, how are teams overcoming their biggest challenges as we emerge from the pandemic? Here are the top three we’re hearing and some GR8 answers from the field:
Struggle #1: “My talent pool needs to grow, but my budget sure hasn’t!”
Answer: Programmatic Job Ads
Why It’s GR8: With a programmatic approach to job ads, ideally integrated into your applicant tracking system, you can automate and optimize your job postings to make the most of every precious advertising dollar. Ads are promoted on relevant sites based on performance. Spend and cost per click rates are automatically managed to ensure ROI. Campaigns apply data to continuously optimize how to best reach the talent you seek. An integration with your programmatic platform and ATS ensures a seamless candidate application experience. The increase in efficiency and decrease in wasted spend and time makes this solution a win-win on many levels.
Struggle #2: “It’s becoming increasingly clear that our team is not as fast as the competition. We keep missing out on candidates.”
Answer: Text Recruiting
Why It’s GR8: Reaching candidates when—and how—they prefer is critical to moving the hiring process forward and fast to secure top talent. With text recruiting, talent acquisition can send updates and receive responses from candidates in minutes, compared to hours or even days. When you’re trying to keep the hiring momentum going, using a channel that has open rates as high as 98% can really add up in terms of time saved and hires gained. Plus, just like email, texting gives recruiters the flexibility to communicate directly with a single candidate through person-to-person (P2P) messaging or to use application-to-person (A2P) messaging to communicate with a group of candidates. The benefit of A2P messaging is that recruiters can include text messages within batched workflow activities. The automated alerts, reminders and notifications are ideal for timely communications and eliminating manual tasks too. Sweet!
Struggle #3: “I’d love to maintain engagement with promising candidates but managing a talent community is a near impossible feat.”
Answer: A Next-Gen Talent CRM
Why It’s GR8: To achieve high-volume hiring success, candidate engagement and nurturing activities should always be on—not you! However, user adoption of software that’s promised the ultimate solution for this struggle has been low. As few as 2% of companies say they use all of their Talent CRM functionality. High-volume recruiters don’t have the time and few organizations have a recruitment marketer in place with the necessary skills and ability to focus on day-to-day campaign and talent community needs.
Fortunately, the next generation of CRM recruiting software—led by GR8 CRM—recognizes this fundamental gap. In our case, an automated talent pool model eliminates the complexity associated with prior candidate nurturing and engagement efforts. GR8 CRM moves away from talent communities that require daily and often tedious management to talent pools with automated lead journeys. Whether the candidate is a new lead, previously considered or a silver medalist, pre-defined messages align with candidate activities and status transitions. The right message is automatically sent at the right time to nurture, assess and deliver just what you need—lists of qualified, interested and available candidates. Top talent will not get lost in the shuffle and instead have a positive and engaging experience with your brand. And for you, the ability to leverage smart automations to achieve major and measurable gains in recruiting outcomes is a gamechanger.
Looking for more GR8 ideas? Check out our blog: Recruiting Automation: What’s New, What’s Next and What’s Needed