High-Volume Recruiting Best Practices: How to Hire at Scale

When organizations need to fill roles at scale, taking a strategic approach to high-volume hiring can make the process more efficient and cost-effective. Companies engage in high-volume recruitment to address a range of business needs, such as opening a new office, launching a business unit, adapting to rapid growth, and supporting seasonal peaks.

A survey of 420 recruiting professionals from Aptitude Research and Fountain found that 65% of companies have high-volume hiring needs. Sourcing and keeping organized a high volume of prospective team members may seem overwhelming at first. However, following common best practices can help your team achieve key hiring objectives.

High-volume recruiting best practices include:

1. Clearly define job qualifications and required skills
2. Diversify your talent sourcing channels
3. Engage independent talent
4. Maintain a streamlined, standardized hiring process
5. Implement tools designed for high-volume hiring
6. Leverage data to improve over time

Related: High-Volume Hiring: What It Is and How It Works

1. Clearly define job qualifications and required skills

A common challenge with high-volume hiring is that, in the rush to fill open roles, some teams may focus too much on quantity over quality. This poses the risk of bringing on workers who aren’t the right fit, which can lead to disengagement, lost productivity, and attrition down the road.

To ensure your team engages individuals who meet your requirements, rather than simply fill seats, outlining your high-volume hiring goals, job qualifications, and required skills ahead of time can be helpful.

Consider asking the following questions during the initial planning stage of your high-volume hiring strategy:

• Which roles need to be filled in the near- and long-term?
• What’s the desired timeline for filling immediate openings?
• Which hard and soft skills are necessary to succeed in each role?
• Are any degrees or certifications required for certain positions?
• What are the responsibilities or job duties required for each role?
• What does the overall market and competition look like for similar talent and skills?
• Are remote workers or independent professionals the right fit for certain roles or projects?

Related: 15 Best Practices for Hiring Top Talent

2. Diversify your talent sourcing channels

According to a survey of 226 recruiters and talent acquisition professionals from Grayscale and TalentBoard, respondents’ top challenge with hiring at scale is not receiving enough qualified candidates. In some cases, this is likely because organizations limit their reach when posting and promoting job openings.

Depending on the industry in which your business operates and the specific roles you’re looking to fill, a wide range of talent sourcing channels are available. By diversifying your sourcing channels, you can increase the likelihood of reaching qualified candidates where they’re searching for open roles.

Sourcing channels can include, but aren’t limited to:

• Company career pages
• Social media networks
• An internal database of past workers and candidates
• Team member referral programs
• Traditional job boards
• Industry-specific job boards, forums, and trade publications
• Job boards geared toward diverse populations
• In-person and virtual job fairs
• Contracts with staffing agencies
• Local classified ads
• Talent marketplaces

Related: 7 Innovative Recruiting Strategies for Finding Top Talent

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3. Engage independent talent

In addition to diversifying sourcing channels, another way forward-thinking organizations access qualified talent to scale their teams is by engaging independent professionals. Rather than exclusively relying on full-time, in-house workers, engaging independent talent can help your organization build a more agile workforce and scale up and down as needed. Turning to independent workers can also help expand your talent pool and reach individuals who desire increased autonomy and flexibility.

Our 2022 Freelance Forward survey, a representative study of 3,000 professionals, reveals that 39% of the U.S. workforce completed independent work in the past year, an increase over the year prior. And, amid a competitive labor market, our 2022 Future Workforce Report found that 78% of hiring managers surveyed who engage independent professionals say they’re confident in finding the talent they need, compared to just 63% of those who don’t leverage independent talent.

An added benefit of engaging independent talent is that your team can more quickly access and begin collaborating with workers who possess the skills you need. On average, independent professionals on Upwork can start working within four to five days, compared to several weeks or months for full-time, in-house workers. This is particularly beneficial when you’re hiring at scale, because the longer you have a high volume of open roles, the more productivity is lost.

Related: How Global Enterprises Are Reducing Risk Through Innovative Talent Strategies

4. Maintain a streamlined, standardized hiring process

Time spent on high-volume hiring often adds up quickly, which can lead to wasted time and resources, as well as a frustrating candidate experience. In fact, the Grayscale and TalentBoard research shows that candidates ghosting hiring managers and recruiters—meaning abandoning the process without letting the recruiter know—and the speed of hiring are the second and third top challenges with hiring at scale.

Defining and maintaining standardized hiring steps can help save time and support an engaging experience.

Steps can include:

• Sending automated prescreen surveys
• Setting up an initial screening call with a recruiter
• Completing interviews with the hiring manager and other senior team members, depending on the role
• Participating in peer interviews to learn how the candidate would interact and collaborate with existing team members
• Administering skills assessments to gauge individuals’ soft and hard skills
• Requesting additional presentations or projects as needed depending on the role
• Running reference and background checks

As part of the standardized hiring process, also align with your team on a scorecard for interviews, so all candidates are evaluated based on the same criteria. With a standardized scorecard, your team can stay focused on the job requirements, making interviews and decision-making more consistent, while reducing bias.

Keep in mind, if you’re looking to engage independent talent for a short-term project, you likely won’t need such an extensive process. Through Upwork, you can access and receive proposals from qualified independent professionals who already have complete profiles, including details about their professional experience, examples of projects, and reviews from past clients, among other information. You can also use built-in collaboration tools to seamlessly conduct interviews via an Upwork video or voice call, internet phone call, or Zoom meeting.

5. Implement tools designed for high-volume hiring

According to the Aptitude Research and Fountain study, at the time of the survey, 82% of respondents from companies with high-volume hiring needs planned to increase their investment in technology. However, some traditional hiring solutions may not be designed specifically with hiring at scale in mind.

Rather than manually reviewing and tracking an abundance of candidates, tools are available to reduce administrative tasks and help organizations achieve high-volume hiring goals. The right high-volume hiring tools can help streamline or automate tasks such as initial candidate screening, communications, interview scheduling, and reference checks.

Some examples of high-volume hiring tools include:

• Harver
• Oleeo
• Phenom
• Grayscale
  

Related: High-Volume Hiring Tools for Engaging Talent at Scale

6. Leverage data to improve over time

Research from HR.com found that only 45% of organizations surveyed strongly agree that their high-volume hiring strategy is effective. To help maximize the effectiveness of your high-volume hiring efforts, regularly tracking metrics and insights is important. Understanding key performance indicators (KPIs) related to your strategy can help your team better understand what’s working and what’s not, and identify areas for improvement.

For example, if your hiring process is too long, you can pinpoint bottlenecks in your procedures and outline steps to decrease overall time to hire. Or, if you’re investing a significant amount of budget in a talent sourcing channel, but not receiving many qualified candidates, you can reallocate your recruitment budget to channels that drive better outcomes.

Metrics to track include:

• Number of applicants and quality applicants
• Total time to hire
• Time spent in each hiring step
• Candidate drop off rate
• Cost per hire
• Cost per sourcing channel
• Offer acceptance rate
• Cost and ROI for high-volume hiring tools and other technology

In addition to helping your recruiting and HR team improve, measuring key data points can provide executives across the business with insights into overall hiring success. By presenting transparent, actionable data, your HR team can make the case for additional resources, tools, or budget to further optimize your high-volume hiring when needed.

To ensure your high-volume hiring strategy is as effective as possible, skilled data analysts are available on Upwork who can help you identify the right metrics to track, as well as recommended steps for improvement.

A recruiting expert can help with your high-volume hiring

Identifying and hiring a high volume of qualified workers can be daunting. But you can simplify the process by giving your  team the right support. Experienced independent recruiting professionals are available on Upwork to help you achieve your high-volume hiring goals. Recruiting professionals can provide support with tasks such as sourcing candidates, selecting and managing recruitment tools, coordinating interviews, and more.

Simplify the process of engaging independent recruiting talent with Project Catalog™. Search for fixed-price projects and one-on-one consultations and select the option that best meets your high-volume hiring needs. Get started—browse available talent acquisition and recruiting projects today.

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Upwork is not affiliated with and does not sponsor or endorse any of the tools or services discussed in this article. These tools and services are provided only as potential options, and each reader and company should take the time needed to adequately analyse and determine the tools or services that would best fit their specific needs and situation.