Essential learning in volume recruitment best practice

Volume recruiters must concentrate on identifying new ways to engage with applicants alongside virtual tools in order to attract the highest calibre of intakes. Oleeo partnered with the FIRM to host a roundtable of recruiting leaders to discuss how to react to the changing demands of candidates in challenging times, which will be vital to hiring and retaining the best quality intakes in volume drives.

Five key indicators for recruiters to consider in order to stand out and gauge the interest of applicants throughout their application journey really stood out for me:

1. Start early – Get to know talent from an early point e.g. looking at community sites devoted to you sector and student discussion boards.
2. Engage thereafter on an ongoing basis – Keep people attached to your brand across as many touchpoints as possible – maybe portals or mentoring for example.
3. Leverage ambassadors – Realise that people buy into people and hence brand values are a strong indicator for prospective candidates. Resonate through good corporate websites that sell the brand and the working culture associated with the brand.
4. Gather high quality intelligence – Become smarter, ask and provide more feedback. Utilise multimedia techniques to talk to a brand like video interviews which may help to sell brand values and help a candidate determine if you are a good fit for them and vice versa.
5. Become immersive – This helps to keep traction progressing and always keeps the feedback loop running, consistent with the engagement cycle.

Offering recruiters access to innovative and social ways of getting to know candidates from an early stage and matching their psychometric traits against the skills and competences listed in a job description can be crucial. Gamification for example is a highly engaging way to interact and engage with potential and future hires and eliminate an element of bias from the process, because candidates are not informed what is being measured, therefore they are forced to make real decisions and real choices, reflecting their personality.

Video interviewing too can enable employers to see the candidate showcasing their creativity and personality, all before inviting them in for a face-to-face interview which are enormously time-consuming. Footage can be automated or be live-streamed, and allow time-strapped hiring managers to measure language, skills, culture, personality, competence, creativity, energy and organisational fit – with the ability to still incentivise those who do not succeed.

Click here to download the full roundtable report notes from the FIRM.