Get the Best Outcomes from Your Technology-Led High-Volume Hiring

One of the most prevalent questions that hiring leaders ask my team is something to the effect of, “What talent technologies should we use?” When probing a bit further, the question usually turns to how to decrease cost, increase speed, drive efficiencies, improve speed to productivity, and/or increase quality. 

Ultimately, the underlying question is, “How can we create better hiring experiences that result in significantly better business outcomes?”

Historically, we may have said that HR, and more specifically Talent Acquisition, is a laggard when it comes to having access to great technology compared to other parts of an organization. That’s no longer the case. The technology exists, but the lag now is in putting the right solutions together and orchestrating the experiences. This means that we can now lead the hiring experience design, particularly in high-volume hiring, based on technology first. 

Instead of trying to determine what recruiting teams will do and then plugging in enabling technologies based on gaps or manual tasks, lead with the technology and then determine where and how people should be activated into the experience to achieve better outcomes.

If we look at the common challenges in high-volume hiring, they are generally around high no-show rates, low retention, and a mismatch of candidate and company expectations. So, what roles should exist in a high-volume recruitment team if you already have a technology-led experience that enables application to offer in a matter of minutes?

• Insights and Success Project Managers: Team members that are looking at sentiment analysis and performance metrics across all personas in the hiring process, identifying early indicators, and creating action plans. These roles would be highly skilled in using AI and insights-based data and analytics to develop systematized action plans that guide Brand and Attraction Strategists, Digital Experience Analysts, Recruiters, and other team members on where to focus. Think about these individuals as having a Scrum Master-like role.
• Brand, Content, and Campaign Strategists: Team members that deeply understand personas and localized nuances, focusing on leveraging the company’s EVP to develop and execute content and marketing strategies through multi-channel approaches. These roles are highly skilled in leveraging technologies such as content management systems, programmatic advertising, and social listening.
• Digital Experience Analysts and System Administrators: Individuals who focus on creating the experience and optimizing digital interactions while also ensuring the core recruiting platforms are configured in a way that optimally supports the process. These individuals will collaborate cross-functionally with Employer Brand/Recruitment Marketing, Recruiters, Analysts, TA leaders, and TA technology partners to evolve the experience, perform system configuration, develop prototypes for evolved experiences, and provide overall project management to execute iterative changes.
• Experience Agents: Experience agents are team members that ensure candidates do not get stuck or slip through the cracks. While Digital Experience Analysts will undoubtedly focus on ensuring candidates are cared for through strong technology configuration and design, there may be times when a candidate needs an off-ramp, or a person needs to step in. These roles are like customer service representatives that we may experience in our consumer life when the self-serve or digital assistant just can’t quite resolve the situation for us.
• Recruiters: I hope you did not think I was going to say that Recruiters do not have a role in technology-first high-volume hiring! At the end of the day, we are all people who crave human interaction, including the most introverted individuals. Even with the best technology, there is a level of trust and encouragement that only human-to-human interaction can deliver. Recruiters have a critical role in high-volume hiring to have consultative conversations with managers and handle the important touchpoints that it may take to convert and retain candidates in an organization.

Now the roles may not be labeled exactly as these titles or there will be some nuances in the skills and roles for your specific business. When you have successfully designed and activated a technology-first high volume solution, you likely will not need as many people. 

However, the roles and type of the work being done by people is increased in strategic value and, overall, the solution should yield materially improved business outcomes. These outcomes should be measured through sentiment analysis, time, quality, and speed, as well as linked to overall business outcomes such as productivity and sales metrics.