We know that candidate scarcity has been a big challenge across the recruitment market, consistently for the last 4-5 years.
The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic continues to present an enormity of change and turmoil that has changed how in-house recruiters are operating. This insight looks at the shift from candidate scarcity to managing volume recruitment and how we need to adapt to attract the right people and deliver on candidate experience.
Can you handle it?
Attracting more candidates is usually a good thing IF you are well prepared to handle a sudden increase or peaks in applicant volumes, so it doesn’t have an adverse reaction on candidate experience and employer brand.
Every candidate deserves a great experience, whether successful or not. Volume recruitment often has a habit of creating challenges around managing your employer reputation – which can lead to longer-term difficulties in attracting great candidates.
Volume recruitment and candidate-centric content
Volume recruitment should be working to attract more of the right candidates, and less of the wrong ones. Careers sites have to step up and ooze employer brand, presenting candidate-centric content for candidates to engage with your organisation before applying, through the application process and beyond. If prospective talent can see what successful hires look like, find out about interview hints and tips, learn how your recruitment process works and see how they would fit within your culture – it will go a long way to getting the right candidates ‘through the top of the funnel’.
Let’s talk automation
Effective volume recruitment relies on an ATS/e-recruitment system – no question. It’s the only way to measure, manage, prioritise, track and improve the end-to-end process. Automation can assist with managing applications, screening at scale and using email and SMS to manage the candidate experience but often lacks the ‘personal touch’.
Is your messaging reflective of your brand? And delivered timely to candidates? Are you personalising communications and using positive rejection letters/emails? Importantly, using the opportunity to continue the candidate experience by nurturing candidates to build your talent pool for a future suitable role?
How best to screen
Being able to screen at scale without missing those great candidates is crucial. Whatever the volume, automated CV parsing and profiling will assist with managing the volume, and tagging candidates with relevant skills auto-gleaned from their information will ensure the best candidates move to the next stage.
Application screening is an essential part of your recruitment process. Use screening forms that grade candidate suitability for each vacancy to progress or reject candidates based on responses automatically. Your ATS/E-recruitment system should be able to customise scoring and grading tailored to the requirements of the job. A good system will be able to create screening forms that filter out candidates that are not suitable and don’t create barriers to filter out those good candidates.
Not only does effective screening reduce costs and save time, but it also manages the candidate experience so those candidates not suitable can progress with other opportunities without an unnecessarily long wait to hear if they have been successful.
Get feedback
Seek feedback from candidates who invested their time in applying. It will improve how the recruitment team can identify the best candidates and improve shortlisting. You should also be able to create feedback forms for hiring managers to grade candidates during any stage of your recruitment process.
Your ATS should be able to gather feedback at any stage of the recruitment process. Whether you link a survey to a particular vacancy or across the board. By asking for input from everyone in the process about their experience, it provides essential opinions to guide future actions and improvements.
Take a self-guided tour
Take a self-guided tour through the Eploy experience and access the Community Integrated Care case study on re-thinking their recruitment model
