CHICAGO – Searching for talent to fill a critical role is challenging. Add in the post-pandemic climate that motivates workers to reassess their priorities. Piling on concerns about safety, remote vs. in the office, and many other factors just adds to the time to fill a role for many recruiting departments, internal or external. That said, what if you had to fill 40 positions that require a certain talent?
High-volume recruiting and the helpful solutions were the topics of the webinar “Requisition Overload: Helpful Hacks for High Volume Recruiting,” produced by ERE Media and sponsored by Pando Logic. Panelists included Kisha Jones Director of Recruiting, Southwire Company, Todd Brengal Vice President of Client Success & Growth, PandoLogic, Stephen Porter VP of Recruiting, Pearl Health, Chris Murdock Senior Partner, IQTalent Partners and moderated by Joshua Jones Director of Content Development, ERE Media.
“Before the pandemic, high-volume recruiting was 40-60 reqs. Now, that’s doubled to 80-100 reqs because of the high volume due to healthcare,” said Stephen Porter. To meet the demand, Porter explained that recruiters need to work outside their silos and get creative on strategy while utilizing technology to aid in sourcing and candidate engagement.
“I’m going to keep it real. It’s been a tough year for recruiting. Finding that balance has been a journey this year and we found ourselves to be creative to get roles filled,” said Kisha Jones. “Pre-covid we had a healthy amount of candidates. What has shifted is we’re placing special attention on this referral. If you work with your friend the chances are you are going to stay.”
Jones further explained that increasing the candidate referral program incentives to employees has been helpful in finding candidates. Making the process easier such as employees texting referrals to talent acquisition has helped and she noted that referrals can move quicker through the process.
“High-volume recruiting is the point where your hiring and recruiting process does not have a clear start and it’s ongoing,” says Todd Brengal. “What we are focused on is meaningful metrics and how to make sense of the data.”
The panel dove into the topic of technology and how innovation has helped all cycles of the recruiting process. Especially predictable data that can display what methods will have successful outcomes.
The panel did conclude that high-volume recruiters will not be replaced by technology anytime soon, but did stop short and agree that recruiters need to partner with technology for all aspects of the recruiting life-cycle. This helps in recruiter evaluation and the metrics they are judged on.
“It’s important to be flexible with time to fill and agree with the business what is a reasonable amount of time to fill,” says Jones. “I don’t weigh time to fill when evaluating recruiters. What’s most important when evaluating recruiters is what the candidates, new hires, and hiring managers say about experience.”
For a replay of the webinar please visit here.