Want to hire employees quickly, but unsure of the best route to take? Nobody wants to rush the process and end up with a bunch of bad eggs. But if you’re looking for a lightning-fast recruitment strategy, you aren’t going to find much help from the majority of vague advice out there: define your goals, make a plan, just do it!
We’re gonna cut through the crap like a razor blade. Welcome to 10 practical tips for how to hire a lot of employees quickly.
Why Would a Business Want to Hire Employees Quickly?
There are dozens of reasons why a company may want to speed up the recruitment process. Perhaps they are in a stage of growth where they need more employees immediately; perhaps they are ready to implement a new strategy that requires an entirely new team; or perhaps they are expanding and opening up new offices, etc.
It could even be that somebody left the company suddenly and they need to be replaced as quickly as possible. In the end, it doesn’t really matter why you need to scale recruiting. What matters is that you do it right.
One of the benefits of speeding up the interview process is that you increase your chances of being your candidate’s first offer. After all, there’s a 96% chance that a candidate will accept the first offer they receive. It pays to be quick.
So, how do you hire employees quickly? Let’s find out.
1. Have a Dedicated Recruiter
You can’t go full-speed ahead without having one person focused on recruiting. If you don’t have a full-time recruiter, you’re going to have to sacrifice one of your present employee’s roles. Recruitment takes a lot of extra time and can be (and is) a full-time job on its own.
By hiring a recruiter, you can rely on them to be dedicated to getting you the employees you need.
Also, this doesn’t necessarily need to be a new employee. You can get a freelance recruiter for a set period of time, or you can move one of your current workers from their position to the role of recruiting until the new employees have arrived. The choice is yours, but don’t think you can recruit fast without a recruiter.
2. Hire a Recruitment Agency
Want to take things to the next level? Why have just one recruiter when you can enlist the help of an entire agency?
A good recruitment agency will get you results way quicker than you ever could alone. These guys have an entire business that’s built around matching employers with employees. If you’re asking how to scale recruiting, and you aren’t looking into recruitment agencies, you’re doing it wrong.
When you hire an agency to help you scale recruiting, you are receiving an entire team dedicated to getting you the perfect candidates. Always look for testimonials and reviews when choosing to work with agencies. Not all of them are as amazing as they claim to be.
3. Record Your Interviews
Best way to shave time off the interview process and ensure fast recruitment? Run less interviews. By recording the interview with a virtual meeting tool like tl;dv, you can share the interview with stakeholders and line managers so that they can see the vibe of the candidate and how they reacted to certain questions without needing to invite them to a separate interview.
Whether you’re interviewing on Zoom or Google Meet, you can record, edit, timestamp and transcribe your meetings with tl;dv. Plus, all these features are completely free. Meeting recordings are ready to download instantly, as opposed to the paid version of Google Meet’s potential 24-72 hours – that’s only going to slow you down.
Get the best meeting recorder here and cut days off your recruitment process.
4. Use Tools to Sift Through the Sh*t
Let’s face it; there’s a lot of candidates that aren’t fit for your company. If there was a way to filter these out from the get-go, it would save tons of time and help you scale recruiting quickly. Luckily for you, there are softwares that do exactly that.
If you’re serious about hiring a lot of employees quickly, this can be a great method to bring extra speed. There are three different types of resume screening tools:
- Resume screening tools with a search function to look for keywords and metrics.
- Resume screening tools that source public data to track a candidate’s digital footprint.
- AI-based resume tools that aggregate and apply knowledge from other recruiters and employees.
For a detailed breakdown of resume screening tools you can use, check out this awesome guide.
5. Write an Irresistible Job Advert
While it might sound like a no-brainer, if your job listing sucks, you’re going to scare away the good candidates. Most people with half a brain will avoid job descriptions that look like they were written in a 5 minute frenzy. If you want to attract top caliber employees, you need to show them why your company is the best for them.
For new job listings, it’s a good idea to use a copywriter. You don’t just want to say what the job is, but make it appealing and entice the potential candidate to submit their resume. Not only that, but you want to make sure you target the right candidates.
If your job advert is sloppy and hastily made, it will attract the wrong kind of candidate. While this doesn’t necessarily save time, it certainly improves quality which is essential to maintain when you want to hire employees quickly. It’s also a great way to scale recruiting because you’ll attract employees more suited to your company and the role available.
6. Use a Tool Like Calendly
Calendly is a free tool that allows candidates to schedule an interview with you without having a back and forth conversation about when is best. You simply set the hours that you are free to call and your candidates will select a time that’s best for them.
This kind of tool can save so much unnecessary time-wasting in the early stages. The best part is the meeting gets scheduled straight into your calendar so you’ll receive a notification when it’s time to interview the candidate. It’s synced with Google Calendar and other popular calendar apps so you’ll never forget.
7. Post to Multiple Job Platforms
Want to increase your reach and access whole new worlds of potential employees? Post your job listing to multiple sites. Don’t just stick to the main few.
If you haven’t yet figured out how to scale recruiting, this can be a huge step in the right direction. Not only do you gain access to entirely new candidates, you can also list your job availability on industry-specific platforms to narrow the focus of your search immediately. Why stick to the generic sites when you can hone in and cut out the noise.
You might have to search to find the best job board site for your niche, but there are many available, even for the smallest of niches. There are 28 for you to browse through here, but there are plenty more depending on your location, industry and target audience.
8. Create a Thorough Vetting Process
If you don’t properly vet your candidates, you could end up with someone who is disruptive or completely inappropriate for your company. By vetting them, you can let go of the weaker candidates before even offering them an interview. This saves a lot of time as you can spot the weak links before the interviews begin.
You can follow some of these steps for creating a vetting process for candidates, but the most important steps to take are:
- Write a good job description and add screener questions to narrow down your applicant pool.
- Send the applicants an aptitude test for them to prove that they have the necessary skills for the job.
- Make sure their resume and cover letter is up to scratch.
9. Recruit From Employee Referrals
Your team already knows what the ideal candidate would be for the role available. They know the company and they probably know potential employees too. By recruiting via employee referrals, you can onboard new employees quicker. You also reduce the time needed to vet and interview the applicant as they already have a solid testimonial.
Obviously, you will still need to do your due diligence and ensure the applicant is fit for the role, but most of the hard work is already done.
You can even set up an employee referral program to reward employees who refer applicants. It’s often suggested that referrals offer higher quality applicants than job boards!
10. Respond to Applicants Immediately
You want to hire employees quickly? Then respond quickly. As soon as an applicant indicates their interest, reply and push them down the recruitment funnel. Send them to your next step, whether it’s an aptitude test, scheduling an interview via Calendly, or whatever else you have lined up. Get the ball rolling as soon as possible.
By being proactive and quick to respond, you’ll not only look like an employer who is on top of everything, you’ll also save time and stress in the long-run.
Applicants consider quick and frequent communication with their potential employer to be a major factor when it comes to choosing whether to accept a role. Think about it. If you take a few days to respond, the applicant is going to think you’re not that interested or you don’t care if it takes a few weeks. The quicker you respond, the quicker the hiring process takes.
