Developing a Hiring Surge Strategy and How Pre-Employment Testing Can Help
As we come out of the pandemic we have begun to see a reverse in its effects on the job market. March’s job report blew past expectations and the US has started to inch back to where it was pre-COVID. This has created a hiring surge as organizations are ramping up their operations.
If you don’t already find yourself increasing your number of open roles, you may soon enough. Hiring surges can be taxing for you and your team, which can open the door to hiring candidates who you may not have hired before. This is why it’s important to create a strategy for high-volume recruiting that will allow you to bring in a high volume of candidates with a high level of job fit. There are several actions you should take when developing this strategy.
Align Hiring with Department Needs
In a hiring surge, hiring will occur across the organization as various departments expand to meet the organization’s needs. With a high volume of diverse hiring required it’s easy to let the quality of your candidate experience slip. For effective high-volume recruiting, develop a strategy that continues to follow recruiting best practices while meeting the needs of the entire organization.
The first step toward creating a unified strategy during a hiring surge is identifying the needs of each team and department. Create a central hub for the hiring strategy. In most organizations, this is your HR department. HR should meet individually and collectively with department heads and managers to discuss areas of growth, weakness, and potential needs.
With an understanding of each team’s needs, your HR team can provide a comprehensive strategy that addresses all of them. Without an in-depth understanding of each department’s hiring plans, it is easy to overlook needed roles – both new and expanded.
Review and Expand Talent Pipelines
The initial challenge for high-volume recruiting is generating enough quality candidates. There are many avenues you can use to increase the number of candidates. For one, reach out to candidates from previously open roles that impressed you. Staying in contact with applicants is a great way to maintain a robust pipeline at all times.
Another way to expand your pipeline is to use non-traditional sourcing. When organizations focus on hiring for hard skills they are limited in where they can attract candidates. Making the shift towards hiring for soft skills not only helps you hire more successfully but expands the areas from which you can recruit.
Identify and Implement Needed Resources
When recruiting at a high volume you still must go through all the same steps that you use in day-to-day recruitment. This means you need to find ways to be more efficient or expand resources to be able to handle an increased capacity. Typically a hiring surge requires both. Overwhelming your HR staff and hiring managers will lead to rushed decisions, which inevitably leads to bad hiring decisions that cost your organization.
Some organizations choose to bring on temp workers to help with the increased workload. Of course, evaluating each of these workers individually costs time and resources itself, which is why others turn to staffing firms. However, while these methods increase resources they don’t necessarily create more efficiencies.
Implementing new technologies can do both. AI technology in particular can be relied upon to accomplish tasks that don’t require a human touch, while creating efficiencies in the ones that do. One of the many ways Cangrade accomplishes this is through the use of Pre-Hire Assessments. There are several benefits they provide during a hiring surge.
The Benefits of Pre-Hire Assessments in a Hiring Surge
1. Easily screen out candidates
When engaging in high-volume recruiting, it’s important to draw in as many applicants as possible. This leads to a lot of “sifting for gold” as an organization must weed out candidates who are not a good fit. Pre-hire assessments, which are used on the front end of the application process can indicate (with greater accuracy than traditional methods) an applicant’s potential for success in a role.
2. Fit candidates to the right roles
Keeping the big picture in mind during a hiring surge will help you be much more efficient. Just because a candidate isn’t right for one role, doesn’t mean they aren’t a good fit for your organization. Because Cangrade’s Pre-Hire Assessments focus on soft skills, they can be used across roles to easily connect candidates to roles.
3. Give managers insights
Pre-Hire Assessments also provide efficiencies by giving managers insights into the candidates. When a candidate completes their assessment both they and their manager receive their Candidate Report which reveals their top strength, development priority, and motivation. These insights give HR and managers insights into what they should focus on in the interview process and with a potential offer. Once a candidate has been hired it can help them improve the onboarding process and overall employee experience.
A hiring surge can put an enormous amount of pressure on an organization if it isn’t prepared. However, with the right strategy and resources in place, it can be simple to shift from low volume recruiting to high volume recruiting while still maintaining a high level of quality in your candidates.
Learn more about how Cangrade’s technology can help you at any volume of recruiting.