The Covid-19 pandemic has prompted many recruitment specialists to quickly adapt their talent recruitment processes, priorities and technologies to the new realities. A survey by HR.com conducted in the Q4 of 2020 among 500 HR managers shows the adjustments made by the specialists. Many of the responses were limited to organizations that are or have been engaged in high-volume recruitment. The participants were from a wide range of industries, and 72% were from companies with 500 or more employees.
Impact of Covid-19 on High-Volume Recruiting
As a result of the pandemic, 10% of respondents are doing much less high-volume acquisition, compared to 22% doing much more. Surprisingly, more organisations have increased rather than decreased the hiring of large numbers of people. The real story, however, lies at the level of individual organisations where there are dramatic differences in the way recruitment has changed. The Pandemic’s impact on the various sectors of the economy is different. Therefore, it may be important to note that the health services sector, which suffered from a dramatic shortage of talent since the start of the pandemic, made up the largest share of the survey, accounting for 14% of respondents.
On average, two-fifths of those questioned stated that the pandemic made their organisations more likely to engage in high-volume recruitment, while more than a quarter (27%) said the pandemic made them less likely. These changes may help explain other findings from the survey, for example why many organisations are using external partners for at least some of their high-volume recruitment. Increasing or decreasing the high-volume recruitment of your company when your company is already running at maximum capacity can be difficult when only using internal tools.
The future is mobile
Only two of the high-volume recruitment tactics are considered best practice according to the survey: advertising jobs on social media (70%) and actively sourcing referrals from employees (56%). This ties in closely with another finding from a survey, which identified only one technology as crucial to high-volume recruitment: the ability to access the technology via mobile devices. More than 7 out of 10 indicated that this is very important, much more than the second most popular choice: the automated generation of interview questions (46%).
Nonetheless, if we can take any lesson away from 2020 it’s that anything can change. So be ready for new ways of reaching out to candidates. Other tools and technologies are on the horizon. Stay alert for new ways to find and reach large numbers of candidates.
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Quality of good metrics
Quality of hire undoubtedly is the most popular recruiting metric in 2020, cited by 71% as the most important. Next comes time to hire and/or time to fill in (53%). No other metrics is cited by more than half of the respondents. This makes sense. When it comes to high-volume recruitment time and quality consistently emerge as top priorities, even over matters related to costs.
However, when you are focusing on high-volume recruitment only using these two metrics might not be the best way to go. A good approach is to first focus on these two areas to get the outcomes right. And once you have those basics nailed down, turn your attention to financial metrics such as cost per quality hire and ROI. Ultimately, your organization needs to balance the issues of speed, quality, cost and experience.
Most popular assessment test
In high-volume hiring, the emphasis is on what a person can do, with 77% of respondents using assessments of job knowledge and/or competency tests. Personality tests and cognitive ability tests are reasonably popular, used by almost half of the respondents. However, organizations that do well with high-volume hiring tend to use more than one type. but whatever type you use, ensure that it is non-discriminatory.
You can read the full study from hr.com here.
