Content
Objective
Strategies for Specialised Mass Hiring
1. Have a mass hiring plan in place
2. Expand your candidate sourcing
3. Bring your candidates together
4. Develop a fast screening process by using AI based Technologies
5. Structured Interview Process: Avoid cattle call approach to interviewing:
6. Don't forget to follow up
7. Plan the training and onboarding process
8. Ask your new hires for referrals
Recruiting Budget and Cost Per Hire
1. Recruitment Budget?
2. Cost per hire
3. How do you calculate cost per hire?
4. What's a good benchmark for cost per hire?
5. What's a good benchmark for recruiting costs?
6. What should be included in recruiting costs?
Recruiting Budgeting Steps?
1. Calculating the number of hires
2. Estimating Basic Recruitment cost
3. Calculating the fixed cost
4. Recruiting Technologies Cost
5. Miscellaneous allowances e.g referral bonuses
6. Calculating Cost per Hire
7. Sample Sheet: Cost Per Hire
8. CPH (Cost per Hire) Calculation Formulae
Talent Sourcing Strategy
1. Create candidate persona to hire better
2. Source candidates who are similar to your candidate persona
3. LinkedIn X-Ray Search
4. Find a way to connect with your leads
5. Craft your personalized message to engage candidates
6. Always value the candidate's time
7. Always nurture your passive leads
8. Mind passive candidates
9. Keep track of your sourcing and recruiting metrics
10. Build your employer brand
11. Use social media and various platforms
12. Don't forget about employee referrals
13. Use AI in sourcing
14. Final word: Experiment, Experiment, Experiment
1
Strategies for Specialised Mass Hiring
Objectives of Study
· To devise recruitment / hiring plan for 250 Automotive Mechatronics Engineer by 2020
· To devise recruitment / hiring plan for 300 Motor Vehicle Mechatronics Engineer by 2021
· To devise recruitment / hiring plan for 100 Mechatronics Specialists by 2021
· To prepare financial budget for recruitment of 650 to 700 Mechatronics and Automobile Technicians
1
Bulk Hiring
Recruitment Strategies
1. Have a mass hiring plan in place
One of the first things you want to do is have a mass hiring plan in place for this eventuality. And you will want to have people help you execute your mass hiring plan accordingly.
Requirement: You don't necessarily need lots of recruiters to help you, although a few who can source and a screen candidate is always going to be beneficial. But you might just need data analysts, or people who know the company well, and understand what kind of people you are looking for.
To start with:
1. Create Goal: Analyze and understand what and how many jobs you need to fill. You want to have a goal that you can achieve.
2. Understand the local job market. You have to know what you're up against with regards the type of local people who could come and work for you. You won't be able to catch fish if there aren't any available to catch.
3. Make it abundantly clear what you're looking for. If you can, ask people who already excel in the role you're hiring for to help you conduct a job analysis. Have them define the essential skills that candidates have to have, in order to do a top-notch job. The selection process is then created with the job analysis as a guide.
4. Plan the timeline for your hiring. Set out an achievable timeline and break down each section of your mass hiring into stages.
5. The earlier you can start recruiting the better. If you're planning a mass hiring for the Christmas season, don't leave it until the beginning of December, for example. As a guide, for winter season hiring, start advertising around September, and for summer hiring, start advertising around April.
6. You might need to hire for some positions earlier than for others. You'll know this by pre-determining what and how many jobs you need to fill.
7. Don't underestimate the costs. Your average cost per hire metric might not work here. Mass hiring costs significantly more than your standard, standalone hire.
2. Expand your candidate sourcing
Think about how you can reach your potential candidates and utilize multiple channels.
1. Use programmatic ads.
2. Leverage referrals from existing employees.
3. Tell your networks.
4. Be active on social media.
5. Host hiring events.
6. Accept walk-in applications.
7. Consider partnering Academics job training institutes.
3. Bring your candidates together:
Integrate the online applications with your applicant tracking software / AI based recruiting tools to help you weed out any obviously unsuitable candidates early on.
4. Develop a fast screening process by using AI based Technologies
Automate what you can. The easiest way to develop a fast screening process to handle mass hiring is by implementing technology to help. Because the chances are, if you start aggressively advertising openings, you are going to be inundated with an avalanche of applications, and not all of them will be suitable.
Gather basic data about all your candidates, including their availability, their experience, their skill sets, for example, and use AI to scan the results and rank candidates according to suitability. If you have specific skill sets or experience in mind, you could even implement a short online assessment and use AI to spot qualified candidates quickly and screen out unsuitable applicants.
5. Follow Structured Interview Process: Avoid cattle call approach to interviewing:
Interview only those candidates who have already passed the initial assessment. Plus, a structured interview process will allow you to conduct the interviews in an objective manner as possible, keeping common hiring biases to a minimum.
6. Don't forget to follow up
Candidates in each stage of the mass hiring recruitment process will be curious about how they're doing. So put a system in place whereby you can keep in touch and let them know how they're getting on, what the next stage of the selection process is, and what they can do to prepare for it. Begin by telling them, at the end of their interview, when they can expect to hear from you about your decision.
7. Plan the training and onboarding process
In mass hiring you need to plan it ahead of time to ensure you have a structured and efficient process. Sort the new hires into groups so they can go through the onboarding together and meet their new colleagues. Don't forget to check in regularly to see how they're doing.
One of the top reasons for early employee turnover is the lack of effective onboarding. Ensuring that your new hires have a positive on-boarding experience will not only prevent the unwanted turnover but also help them become productive faster.
8. Ask your new hires for referrals
If you're still looking for new hires, or if you want to get ahead for the next mass hiring event, ask your new hires for referrals as soon as you can. Keep your talent pool topped up, because you never know how many new hires quit, or if you need to hire more in the near future.
You could even make the referrals process part of the onboarding process. And because people are likely to only refer people they think are suitable (who would want to refer someone who would only embarrass them?) you could even make an exception to your recruitment process for referrals and fast track them through, because there is a wealth of data that suggests referrals are among the best ways to hire.
Conclusion
Mass hiring can be stressful for everyone involved. You're under pressure to fill in all the vacancies on time and candidates are anxious about the results of the hiring process…
You can manage this by having a well-prepared mass hiring plan that you execute carefully. Don't be afraid of utilizing technology but at the same time, don't neglect the human element in your recruiting.
2
Recruiting Budget and Cost Per Hire
Recruitment Budget?
The recruitment budget is a comprehensive estimate of costs that will be incurred while driving hiring activities throughout the year. Whether it is direct expenditure on channels such as job boards and staffing agencies or other unplanned recruiting costs that pile up through the process, planning the recruitment budget requires a correct understanding of the hiring requirements and overall recruitment plan of the company. Also, if you want the recruiting budget to get approved quickly from the CFO, it has to be aligned to the businesses' overarching goals.
Cost per hire
Cost per hire is the average amount of money you spent on making a hire. This metric is useful when you are creating or tracking your recruiting budget. For example, if you plan to hire 100 people in a year, and your cost per hire is $4,000, you can estimate a total spend of $400,000 for recruiting. You can compare annual cost per hire over several years to spot any significant changes.
How do you calculate cost per hire?
The Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM) collaborated with the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) to create a standard formula for calculating cost per hire (CPH): (Note: all of these variables should refer to the same time period.)
What's a good benchmark for cost per hire?
A recent survey by the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM) found that the average cost per hire is just over $4,000. This number is the average across all the companies SHRM surveyed.
However, several factors may affect each company's individual average. For example, cost per hire depends on hiring volume. The more people you hire, the lower your cost per hire will be. This is because some fixed costs can be spread out over a larger number of hires. Also, some roles and industries (e.g. engineering) have longer time to fill and the accumulated costs of a longer hiring process result in higher costs per hire.
Depending on the size of company and industry, a good benchmark is a value between $3,000 and $5,000.
What's a good benchmark for recruiting costs?
Recruiting costs depend on each company's needs. A good way to approach recruiting costs is to begin by creating a detailed budget while keeping your average cost per hire in mind. Afterwards, measure recruiting costs using a spreadsheet or an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system that tracks expenses and ensures they don't exceed budgeted amounts.
It's best not to obsess over recruiting costs. If higher costs translate into better people for your team, your investment is worthwhile.
What should be included in recruiting costs?
Internal recruiting costs are organizational costs and internal expenses, like recruiters' salaries and money you spend on your referral program. External recruiting costs refer to every expense you pay outside of your company, like job board fees, agency fees and costs associated with a background check service.
1. Job boards and advertising fees. What you pay job boards to display your job openings
2. Candidate assessment costs. Fees for companies that offer pre-employment tests or coding challenges
3. External recruiter expenses. Money spent to pay individual recruiters, recruiting agencies or staffing firms.
4. Employer branding efforts. Funds spent on events related to recruiting, like campus recruiting days and careers fairs.
5. Careers page costs. Expenses that include the setup, maintenance and redesigning of your careers page.
6. Internal recruiters' costs. Often the highest recruiting line item, this includes recruiters' salaries, benefits and travel expenses.
7. Training Cost-Cost incurred in freshers or specialised person training
8. Background verification Cost: Background check services usually charge an amount per candidate. Funds spent on selected candidates Previous employment, Education, Police Check, Drug check, Physical Address Verification
9. Visa Processing Cost: Visa processing cost incurred in case of overseas manpower required by the client/company
10. Referral program Cost: incentive costs like bonuses given for the referral
11. Interview Travel/Relocation Cost: Paying for their travel and accommodation expenses
12. Applicant Tracking Systems Cost: Applicant Tracking Systems are a monthly or annual cost, though they can help reduce overall costs by saving hiring managers' time and making the hiring process faster.
Recruiting budgeting Steps?
· Calculating the number of hires
· Estimating Basic Recruitment cost
· Calculating the fixed cost
· Recruiting Technologies Cost
· Miscellaneous allowances e.g referral bonuses
· Calculate Cost per Hire
Step 1 – Calculating the number of hires
Along with these numbers, you will need
· Expected designation – Knowing if the roles are for interns, managers, senior managers, etc. will help estimate what the likely expenses, both quarterly and annual, are for specific teams.
· Skills – In case you need to collaborate with external agencies, having a good idea about the niche skill sets your organization is looking for help; also, you might have to start this process early.
Step 2 – Estimating Basic Recruitment cost
Recruitment costs refer to basic expenses associated with the hiring and recruitment process. These expenses are mostly recurring and often billed early in the year. This cost may vary for each organization, but you have to consider common expenses across boards to have rough estimates.
· Job boards
· Online job listing sites
· Salaries
· Employee Branding
· Interviewing Expenses
Steps 3 – Calculating the fixed cost
Internal Salaries – Calculate internal salaries for existing employees
Partnerships – Calculate the cost of any yearly partnerships which you plan to commit to.
Recruiting events – Make a list of all upcoming recruiting events like job fairs and conferences you plan to attend in the near future and budget them in your sheet.
"I found that fees associated with events such as job fairs including air travel and lodging can be easily missed. Remember to think of each event from start to finish and all the necessary logistics involved."
External recruiting agencies– Most of the companies tie up with external recruiters agencies or independent recruiters who help them hire candidates, especially for niche skills
Step 4 – Recruiting Technologies Cost
Technology is a great enabler. As HR evolves with enabling technologies like talent assessment software and video interviews, companies can expect better recruitment and overall management.
E.g Companies have also been using HackerEarth talent assessment software for university hiring by evaluating candidates remotely. Reducing large cost (travel, stay, man-hours, etc.) associated with campus placement.
Video Interview Software
Video interview software like EasyHire and Kira Talent come to the rescue. It would be good to budget for these as well. HackerEarth Talent assessment software is accompanied by video interview software called FaceCode, which helps you assess candidates on their real-time coding skills while interviewing them. Since these features are bundled, there are more savings to be had!
Background Check Service
A background check is an essential service used by organizations to verify a candidate's credibility. Major global organization work in this field and charge relatively high fees in verifying all the relevant information. With increasing usage of social media and networking, referral hiring is a good way to save on the background check service. Calculate the cost accordingly.
Application Tracking System (ATS)
Application tracking systems have not evolved much since their inception in the mid-90s. But due to high dependency on them, most of the organizations still prefer to have a good part of their expenses dedicated to ATS. Application tracking systems help follow the entire journey of a candidate, from sourcing, interviewing, joining, to exit. Some of the top ATS across the globe are Taleo, Greenhouse software, iCIMS, JobVite.
Step 5 – Miscellaneous
Ensure you make allowances for miscellaneous expenses which pop up frequently in your hiring cycle. A few expenses relate closely to the internal campaigns you decide to run with referral bonuses taking up the major chunk.
Step 6 – Calculate Cost per Hire
And the most important step, calculate the cost per hire before finalizing the budget. If you have a previous budget to refer to the cost per hire for earlier years, then calculate expected expenses for the coming year.
Calculate it by adding the actual recruiting expenses from last year and divide by the number of hires you made. Then, multiply your average cost per hire by the number of hires you plan to make this year. Add all projected internal and external costs.
The basic formula for cost per hire is
Cost per hire = (Internal Cost + External Cost) / Total Number of Hire
CPH or Cost Per Hire is one of the widely used HR metrics to measure the effectiveness of the recruiting process.
It is advisable to have low CPH while recruiting. It should be kept in mind that maintaining the quality of recruit is also necessary.
Cost Per Hire Calculator helps to calculate the costs associated with the advertising, recruiting and staffing etc borne by a company to fill an open position. In other words, Cost Per Hire or CPH means expenses incurred by an employer for recruiting a new staff from advertising to joining an employee against the total number of recruitments.
CPH (Cost per Hire) Calculation Formulae:
· Cost Per Hire = Direct Expenses + Indirect Expenses / No of Candidates Recruited.
· Advt. Cost Per Candidate = Sum of all advertising expenses / no. of CVS received
· Reviewing Cost Per Candidate = No. of HR staff employed X No. of days X Cost per Day / No. candidates selected for the interview.
· Interviewing Cost Per Candidate = No. of interviewers X No. of days X Cost Per Day / No. of Candidates Selected.
· Joining Cost Per Candidate = Medical Examination Expenses + Training Expenses + Other Expenses / No .of Candidates Recruited
· Misc. Cost per Candidate = Background or reference check + Other Costs / No. of Candidates Recruited
· Direct Expenses = Salaries of recruiting staff, expenses incurred by recruiting staff, candidate background checks, reference checks etc.
· Indirect Expenses = Recruiter Fees, Advertising costs, Career Fair Expenses, Job board postings etc.
· The CPH varies according to the size of the organization, recruitment channels, the seniority of the position etc.
*****
3
Talent Sourcing
Strategy
Candidate sourcing is the process of searching for, identifying and contacting potential candidates for roles you are either recruiting for or will be recruiting for in the future. LinkedIn reports 90% of people are open to learning more about new opportunities, but only 36% of candidates are actively searching for a new job.
Building an effective sourcing strategy in recruitment is essential. Over 80% of companies currently source proactively.
1. Create candidate persona to hire better
2. Source candidates who are similar to your candidate persona
3. LinkedIn X-Ray Search
3. Find a way to connect with your leads
4. Craft your personalized message to engage candidates
5. Always value the candidate's time
6. Always nurture your passive leads
7. Mind passive candidates
8. Keep track of your sourcing and recruiting metrics
9. Build your employer brand
10. Use social media and various platforms
11. Don't forget about employee referrals
12. Use AI in sourcing
13. Final word: Experiment, Experiment, Experiment
1. Create candidate persona to hire better
An ideal candidate persona helps you identify the right channel, message and strategy to source more qualified candidates. Creating a candidate persona is a multi-step collaborative process, so you would need to talk to your team, hiring managers and do some research before you fix on a persona.
2. Source candidates who are similar to your candidate persona
These candidates can be present on a number of platforms, however, depending on your candidate persona, you can choose a platform(s) of your choice. If I am recruiting developers, I would choose StackOverflow or GitHub as a candidate source, whereas if I am recruiting designers, I am better with Dribble or Behance. There are multiple tools out there using which you can enhance your sourcing efficiency:
3. LinkedIn X-Ray Search
LinkedIn X-Ray search tool helps you create boolean queries to do an X-Ray search on LinkedIn. It gives you a list of LinkedIn profiles, which match your search criteria.
Recruiterflow Chrome Extension
Once you have a list of LinkedIn/Xing/Angel.co/GitHub/Behance profiles, whom you want to reach out to, just use the Recruiterflow Chrome Extension to import these profiles to Recruiterflow in 1-click. You can not only import their personal details but professional details like Experience, Education, Skills as well. Hence expand your search-
Sourcing candidates directly is one of the top recruitment priorities for organizations.
StackOverflow SQL query generator: When you are looking for a developer, there's no better plan to find them other than StackOverflow. However, searching through StackOverflow is not as simple as LinkedIn. In order to search through StackOverflow, you need to build an SQL query. But even if you are not a developer, you can this StackOverflow query generator to create an SQL query by just giving some manual inputs.
4. Find a way to connect with your leads
Finding a set of perfect candidates for a job is just the step in creating your talent sourcing strategy. Connecting with these leads and turning them into applicants is the major objective of any sourcing exercise. First things first, decide which channel to use to reach out to these users. I typically prefer LinkedIn messages to reach out to a sales guy vs emails when it comes to reaching out to a developer.
Get their email if you want to reach them through emails. You can use tools like Hunter.io, ContactOut or Lusha to get their email address. In case you want to reach out to them using social media, it's always good to connect with them using a mutual contact.
5. Craft your personalized message to engage candidates
One message doesn's suit all. This is true for recruitment! You need to personalize your message to candidates to get more replies and enhance engagement. Talk about common hobbies, common skills, why they are suitable for the role etc! Keep it short and sweet and never try to oversell a position. Remember, these candidates are not actively looking out and any overselling will only hurt your employer brand.
You should talk about your culture, team, vision and what drives your company in the 1st email.
One email is never enough, depending on your position, you should always follow-up with your candidates. At Recruiterflow, we have seen reply rates close to 45% for email sequences with 3 touchpoints and spread across 20 days. While your first email needs to be personalized, your follow-ups can be templates and should be automated to help you save time.
6. Always value the candidate's time
A number of companies excel at sourcing candidates and reaching out to them. However, when it comes to the call to action in the email, they lose out on a large number of qualified candidates. Your call to action should always value the candidate's time. Never ask them to:
· Apply for a job as you are the one reaching out to them
· Give a test before explaining on a call about the role and recruitment process
· Send their resume or cover letter in the first email as you should have this information before you reach out to them
We studied close to 200k emails and the only thing that works best is asking the candidate to come on a 10-15 mins call as per their convenience, so that you can talk more about the role and the company. When you are asking a candidate to spend the next 2-3 years of professional journey with you, the least you can do is spend 10-15 mins with them initially to value and appreciate their time.
7. Always nurture your passive leads
Sourcing and recruiting passive candidates is always a challenge. That's why nurturing your existing candidate database is the key to maintaining a healthy talent pipeline. Whether you are recruiting actively for a job or not, you should always nurture your existing candidate database. Keep them updated about the latest happenings at your company, wish them on birthday and/or anniversary, reach out to them casually every 6 months. Nurturing your candidate database ensures that when the next time your candidate is ready to make a switch, they will surely reach out to you. Remember, recruiting is a marathon and not a sprint.
8. Mind passive candidates
Be wary of spending your time on passive candidates. Of course, they're a great potential resource, but tread carefully and do your due diligence. Are they interested in talking to you? Great! But if they're not, don't waste your time. For example, if you're looking at passive candidates, don't be surprised to discover their LinkedIn profiles are out of date. People who aren't interested in new opportunities have little motivation to update their profile and list all their current skills and experience.
9. Keep track of your sourcing and recruiting metrics
Ask yourself various questions and track different metrics, namely:
· How many messages and communication attempts it takes to get an initial response from a candidate.
· Engaging with candidates you've found is often the most overlooked step of the sourcing process. If you want to improve your reply rate, you need to:
· Get data on the types of messages that are actually effective.
· Establish template analytics to see which ones get the most responses.
· Track emails and see when they're being opened.
· How long it takes to nurture a candidate and convince them to apply for a role.
· How long it takes from the initial interview of a sourced candidate to hire.
· Whether candidates that you've sourced move through the screening and interview process faster than general applicants.
· Where are the best candidates sourced from?
Essentially, monitoring metrics allows you to build up a clear picture of where the top talent is hiding and how they like to be communicated with, meaning you can then optimize your approach to maximize your hiring success, saving you time and money.
9. Build your employer brand
Attract potential talent by marketing your company towards your target group. When you're working on company branding to attract customers, figure out employer branding too. Millennials are more inclined to work for and stay at a company they have an emotional connection with, so give them something to connect to. Check out these awesome killer recruitment videos for ideas.
11. Use social media and various platforms
Use social media and platforms to develop your company branding. Instagram is a great platform for building employer branding, for example.
Recruiters use social media to source candidates for various job levels, ranging from hourly employees to upper management.
12. Don't forget about employee referrals
The old staffing cliché rings true: "good people know good people". Referrals can be the top source for quality candidates. Ask your employees for referrals, encourage them to refer candidates who qualify for your roles and consider working up an employee referral program as an incentive. Employee referrals are known to reduce time-to-hire, improve quality of hire and increase retention rates, so reward your employees with the money you save.
13. Use AI in sourcing
Source from databases that use artificial intelligence (AI). Sourcing can benefit from AI in two ways – automation and accuracy. Automated sourcing uses recruitment technology to find candidates online who fit the requirements of your role. This not only improves your efficiency metrics but decreases time to fill and cost per hire as well. AI can find patterns in resumes and candidates who are better matches for a job's requirements. AI can also reduce bias at the sourcing stage by removing the need for human decision making.
14. Final word: Experiment, Experiment, Experiment
Finally, remember that sourcing strategies in recruitment are like snowflakes: no two are exactly alike because what your organization requires will be significantly different to what someone else wants.
Creating a talent sourcing strategy is an iterative process. You should always run multiple experiments for all the above 6 points and see what works and what doesn't work for your company. Define your KPIs before you start your experiments and always benchmark your results and iterate for getting a more efficient talent sourcing strategy. You can use tools like Tableau or an ATS like Recruiterflow or even Excel to record and get these numbers.
Lastly it doesn't matter whether you're running a recruiting agency or hiring in-house, trying to increase your organization's recruiting effectiveness, or just become a better recruiters yourself, these data driven talent sourcing strategies will help you build a better recruitment engine.
Thank You!
