Hourly hiring is tough work. Hiring managers in retail, healthcare, manufacturing, government agencies, and hospitality face an uphill battle: recruiting in high volumes, getting sudden resignations, and dealing with disengaged workers.

In fact, 49% of HR leaders still believe that recruitment will continue to get more challenging in the next five years despite technological advances. And with a tighter market stemming from unexpected job growth in the first quarter of the year, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for hiring professionals to find the right candidates.
 

Additionally, job applicants’ confidence has dipped in the US, making it even harder to connect with candidates and get them on board. Unmotivated applicants also result in high turnover rates, which stall productivity and fail efforts to improve company culture.

Confidently handling high-volume hiring means being precise, agile, and engaging to find the right prospects at the right time, eliminating the headaches of high turnover and worker dissatisfaction.

Let’s explore four ways to achieve this.

1. Improve Candidate Matching with Augmented Intelligence

You won’t be shocked to hear technology is the best way to increase your confidence in high-volume hiring. With cutting-edge training models readily available, hiring managers can use augmented (not artificial) intelligence to find their perfect match.

It’s important to highlight the term “augmented” because, in hiring, it’s key to center the human role rather than rely on technology alone. This helps reduce the apprehension around AI’s bias issues and emphasizes the role of technology as an aid in our daily tasks rather than a full replacement.

This technology has brought many advantages to the hiring field. One that particularly stands out is new-to-the-market hiring tools that can create data models based on years of applicant and employee information. This solution helps managers identify applicants who match the characteristics of long-tenured employees based on real applicant traits. So, rather than looking for ideal traits, this smart tool is an accurate and down-to-earth filter for managers to find prospects closest to people they’ve already succeeded with.

As a result, hiring professionals receive candidates with higher chances of being long-term, engaged, and committed employees — this massively solves turnover problems in hourly hiring.

2. Get Higher Engagement Through Text-based Communication

Gone are the days of emailing every candidate or communicating solely via phone calls. While SMS messaging is nothing new, it’s still the king of engagement, so much so that 98% of text messages are opened and read, leaving no room to doubt their efficacy.

It’s not uncommon for hiring messages to get lost in inboxes and missed calls, especially in industries where most candidates are millennials and Gen Zs who prefer text over the rest. This results in a choppy and slow selection timeline that leads to losing valuable candidates or closing doors for future openings.

Although managers shouldn’t entirely forsake emails and calls, text messages must become a part of their communications channels to ensure candidates are updated on their hiring process and can quickly contact managers with questions.

HR technology platforms are stepping in to deliver comprehensive communications solutions. Many offer a CRM option where prospects are treated like clients, enabling several contact channels to reach them. Candidates can receive automated updates on their applications and even have the opportunity to ask questions to a dedicated HR chatbot. This makes for speedy and convenient two-way communication, facilitating interactions between the hiring manager and the candidate.

Communicating with prospects like you would with customers shows them you value their time and interest in working with you. This boosts their engagement and leads them to prioritize your offer over others.

3. Set Realistic Expectations with Brand Awareness

I always tell customers that giving candidates the most accurate depiction of the available job posting is crucial to increasing their interest. Nowadays, people are more focused on joining companies based on their culture, so building brand awareness realistically from the beginning will make you an attractive employer.

The best way to do this is also the most straightforward: Film a video. Whether a day in the life from an employee’s point-of-view, a few words from their potential manager, or any other creative ways of showing the daily realities of the position will go a long way.

While I’m not saying you need to be the next Steven Spielberg, people do appreciate visual references more than a description on a piece of paper, and displaying your company culture transparently in video format is a unique selling point.

4. Adopt Evergreen Hiring Practices

It’s always challenging to hire in high volumes. But there’s nothing a few tricks can’t fix — it’s all about using your available resources intelligently.

If you’re hiring for locations close to each other, applicant pooling is a great option. Many applicant tracking systems already offer this service if they’re dedicated to hourly hiring, but not everyone exploits it.

Say you have two dental offices, and you get a flurry of applications at location A, but nothing for location B. With applicant pooling, you can redirect applications to locations that are actively hiring but have low applicant volumes. This usually works within a 15-mile radius, so candidates can consider taking the same position at a nearby site.

Another solution is to avoid requisitions that open and close with each new hire and instead opt for an evergreen job post that remains open. For example, if you run a chain of restaurants, it’s easier to keep your line cook position open and connect with possible candidates even if you’re not currently hiring. That way, you’ll keep doors open for interested applicants in the future, know where to look in case you need to replace someone, and quickly fill that spot.

A healthy combination of technological tools and the human touch is making life much easier for hiring managers. Despite the hardships of hourly hiring and the current wave of resignations, managers can implement emerging techniques to propel their efforts and match with committed workers who will value the company and stay engaged.

Author Bio

Jon Puckett is CEO at Cadient.

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