For anyone who’s had the distinct pleasure of sourcing for high volume industries such as manufacturing, call centers, or retail, they know it’s an entirely different game. Sourcing has to be done efficiently as positions needing to be filled in the hundreds (or even thousands.) So the battle between quality and quantity begins.
Automate, Automate, Automate!
Any time savings, even if it’s mere seconds per application or applicant, can add up to hundreds of working hours when multiplied by volume. The less time spent on menial tasks, the more energy you can put into screening for the right fit. Here are a couple of ways to automate or enhance your process:
- Mobile Career Sites: If you’re stuck in a time warp it’s time for you to join the rest of the world. Having a clean mobile site to capture applicants or prospects will save hours of paper shuffling alone.
- Social Sourcing: Up your social media game. With Facebook jobs hitting the market sourcers now have the ability to reach massive markets faster than ever.
- Chatbots: Setting up a chatbot which can answer fundamental questions regarding open positions is an excellent way to reduce email clutter while being fully responsive to the candidate.
- Video Prescreens: These pre-screen technologies have come a long way, as they now have artificial intelligence components which can rank the responses for you based on preset metrics.
Event Marketing
If you are local to the geographical hiring area, it’s time to throw open the doors and pull people in. Advertise with local media outlets that your organization is hosting a massive hiring drive, and invite people to come in to learn more. By doing this, you will significantly reduce the number of candidates fall out due to not understanding the opportunity. To make this efficient be armed and ready with applicant capture tools such as apply on-site stations, or alternatives such as text to apply for numbers. If this is your first time doing this can be daunting, but keep a cool head and don’t be afraid to ask for help from other site management.
Rocking Referrals
Having a rocking referral program is an easy way to keep your candidate pool fresh. Referrals by nature yield better hires and can be the best way to tap a population for a particular skill set. Developing and engaging your current workforce is crucial, as is asking for referrals during the screening process. Networking is often the only way to fill multiple openings of the same role.
Your SourceCon editor, Shannon Pritchett, once stated she filled over 100 hourly positions in a call center by offering a piece of candy for each referral. She called and screened each candidate that was referred. This is an example of a low-cost solution with an extremely successful result.
Relationships with Community Partners
Making friends in the community is a no brainer for natural networkers. If you’re working onsite, get out of the office and shake the hands of local community job readiness program leaders or various skill guilds. If you are working remotely, you’ll need to put in some well-placed phone calls to develop relationships. Once you are established as a reputable employer, many will jump at the opportunity to build relationships, as they are often measured on their ability to place their clients into positions.