High-Volume Hiring For Blue Collar Businesses 

What is high-volume hiring?

Talent acquisition is always challenging, but it’s especially hard for positions with high turnover. High-volume hiring helps you save time and money by streamlining the candidate sourcing process—making filling vacancies easier, and reducing the time it takes to onboard new employees.

High-volume hiring is the process of recruiting and onboarding large numbers of employees in a short period. It is often necessary for blue-collar industries with high turnover rates among unskilled labor and labor-intensive roles. People quit in the short term because it's more challenging than expected, leaving employers needing to hire constantly.

The goal of high-volume hiring is to fill positions quickly and efficiently while maintaining high-quality candidates. This can be a challenge, as businesses must screen and interview a large number of applicants in a short time frame.

Many businesses are streamlining the high-volume hiring process and becoming more efficient by using technology to automate parts of the hiring process—such as job postings and candidate screening.

Team Engine is an HR automation platform that helps you grow and engage your blue-collar workforce. We’ve helped hundreds of businesses save time and money with our recruiting platform and automated tools. This leaves HR managers, hiring teams, and decision-makers to focus on the human aspects of the hiring process.

Common Challenges in High-Volume Hiring

When it comes to their high-volume recruiting process, businesses often hire temporary staff or third-party recruiting firms to help with the influx of job seekers. Even with these measures, high-volume hiring can be a challenge for companies, and an expensive one at that.

Below are some of the most common challenges businesses face when trying to fill many positions in a short period.

• Posting jobs. With high-volume hiring, you will need to post (and re-post) jobs more frequently, which can be time-consuming, especially if you are posting on multiple job boards.
• Tracking applicants. It can be challenging to keep track of all the candidates when you are receiving a high volume of job applications.
• Screening candidates. This is often the most time-consuming part of the process, especially when hiring at scale.
• Interviewing candidates. Scheduling interviews with a high volume of candidates requires an organized system to track who you want to interview, have already interviewed, and still need to interview.

High-volume hiring can be a challenge, but Team Engine's hiring automation streamlines the hiring process, allowing you to automate repetitive tasks, delegate your workflow, and source top talent from key job boards. Plus, keep candidates updated on the hiring process with personalized text messages and emails.

High-volume Recruiting Strategies for Blue-collar Businesses

If you're a blue-collar business, you know that high-volume hiring is a necessary part of doing business. But with the ever-changing workforce landscape, it can be challenging to keep up with the latest recruiting strategies.

We've compiled a list of the best high-volume recruiting strategies for blue-collar businesses. By following these tips, you'll be able to efficiently and effectively fill your open positions with the right candidates.

Incorporate automation for manual processes.

A high-volume recruiting process can quickly become overwhelming. With so many candidates coming through the pipeline, multiplied by all the moving parts in the process—from posting jobs and screening candidates to scheduling interviews—it’s no wonder that less than 4% of applicants get feedback within a day of their interview.

The key to successful high-volume recruiting is automation. Automating manual processes (such as replacing manual resume review with automated resume screening software) allows you to keep your candidates moving through the process smoothly and efficiently.

What does that look like in practice? Here are a few tips:

1. Use an applicant tracking system (ATS) to manage your candidates

An ATS can help you keep track of your candidates and their progress through the recruiting process. It can also help you automate repetitive tasks, like sending out interview reminders. You can also use an ATS to post open roles to multiple job boards with just a few clicks.

Team Engine's applicant tracking system will automate the entire process for you—from posting jobs to screening applications and scheduling interviews—while our hiring automation removes hundreds of recruiting tasks from your plate and lets you focus on the people side of hiring.

Communicate with candidates regularly

When dealing with a high volume of candidates, keeping lines of communication open is essential. Send regular updates to keep potential candidates informed about where they are in the process and what the next steps will be. You can also set up automatic text or email responses to candidates who have submitted their applications.  

Team Engine’s text recruit feature will help you manage the entire recruitment process from beginning to end. With our text-first solution, you can connect with candidates in real-time wherever they are—at home, in the field, or at the shop. We'll help you quickly and easily find your next new hire and build your talent pool in the process.

Streamline your interview process

With high volume hiring, the goal is to hire as many people as possible in a short amount of time. By dramatically shortening your interview process and relaxing on experience requirements, you can be more efficient with this time-consuming step of the process. This is known as open hiring.

Keep your hiring managers involved

A hiring decision is one that typically involves both the hiring managers and recruiting team. It's important to manage the recruiting process in a way that gives everyone full visibility to each candidate's progress.

A Team Engine subscription comes with unlimited users so you can keep all stakeholders at all levels involved from beginning to end. No more lost resume attachments or private email threads; everyone has access to the same information (including text and email exchanges) in each candidate's profile.

Make use of social media

Social media is a great way to reach candidates where they're already spending time. Use platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter to post job openings and connect with candidates who might be a good fit for your open positions. Team Engine takes it one step further, allowing you to target passive candidates by publishing social media ads from within the software.

2. Focus on creating a streamlined candidate experience.

Candidate experience should be a top priority for any business—especially those in blue-collar industries—to improve their chances of attracting top talent. Even with high-volume hiring, candidates must still feel that the process is organized and efficient.

To create a positive candidate experience, focus on making the process as simple and streamlined as possible. For example, use an online application process that doesn’t require candidates to submit a resume, since some blue-collar workers may not have a comprehensive CV. You can also consider conducting phone screenings or video calls instead of in-person interviews to save candidates from having to travel to the interview, and possibly even take time off from their current job.

Your goal should be to make the process as easy and stress-free as possible for candidates. By doing so, you’ll not only attract and engage top talent, but you’ll also increase the likelihood that candidates will recommend your business to others.

3. Use data and analytics to optimize the hiring process.

Data and analytics can be powerful tools for optimizing the recruiting process. By tracking data points and recruiting metrics like time to hire, cost per hire, and quality of new hires, you can identify areas of the process that need improvement.

For example, if you notice that it's taking longer to fill specific positions, you can revisit your recruiting strategy and tweak your job ad placements accordingly. If you find that you’re spending more money than you’d like on recruiting, you can use data to identify cost-saving measures, like reducing spend on job boards.

Data and analytics can also help you improve the quality of your hires. By tracking metrics like employee retention and performance, you can identify which candidates are likely to be successful in your open positions, and how to repeat that success with future hiring decisions.

Using data and analytics to optimize the hiring process can help blue-collar businesses save time and money—all while ensuring that they are hiring the best candidates.

4. Refine your hiring strategy.

As a blue-collar business, you likely understand the skills and experience required for success in your open roles. However, it's essential to regularly review and update your hiring criteria to ensure that you're attracting the most qualified candidates.

One way to do this, as mentioned above, is to use data and analytics to identify trends in the skills and experience of successful employees. This can help you refine your job descriptions and target candidates more likely to be a good fit for your open positions.

Another way to refine your hiring strategy is to solicit feedback from new hires who just went through your candidate experience. Anonymous text message surveys are the best way to collect this type of information from the shop floor or field workers.

Regularly reviewing and updating your hiring strategy in response to new trends and information will ensure that you're attracting the best candidates for your open positions.

5. Take advantage of your networks to find the best talent.

If you're in a blue-collar business, you probably have a network of people who can help you find the best talent. Talk to your employees, vendors, and customers to see if they know anyone who would be a good fit for your company. You may be surprised at how many qualified candidates you can find by asking around.

Consider implementing an employee referral program to reduce your cost per hire and engage your existing employees simultaneously. Using Team Engine’s employee messaging platform, you can automate the collection of employee referral information as well as outreach to the referred candidate.

Team Engine makes it easy for hiring managers to find blue-collar talent. You need to find the best talent for your business, and fast. Time is money, and you can't afford to waste time manually doing all the tasks associated with high-volume hiring. Recruiting qualified talent can be slow and tedious. Not only do you have to post the job opening, but you also have to screen the applications, interview candidates, and make a final decision.

Team Engine is the solution. Our HR automation platform and recruiting software are built specifically for blue-collar workforces and offer everything you need to find qualified people, keep them engaged, and get the most out of their skills. Team Engine will automate and streamline the recruitment process for you and unlock valuable insights and data on your hiring efforts. You'll be able to establish a structured recruiting process to fill your talent pool and hire ahead of the curve.

Request a demo today to see how easy it can be to find qualified employees who are a good fit for your business and company culture.