Managers that employ a large hourly workforce typically wear many hats, with hiring and recruiting responsibilities being just one of many tasks that a hiring manager has to find time for during the day. It can be a struggle for managers to recruit and hire hourly workers, making it difficult to keep a location staffed and retain employees. Here are three tips to ensure a steady flow of new employees, all while making the process easier.
1. Share Hiring Responsibilities
Many hiring managers have a crew of other managers, or at least an assistant manager to assist them with their day-to-day tasks. However, the role of talent acquisition is often placed upon a single individual. By delegating hiring responsibility between managers, your recruiting process becomes more efficient and less time intensive.
According to an article from QSR magazine, 52% of applicants are “extremely likely” to move forward in the hiring process if contacted within 24 hours. By having multiple managers in charge of reviewing and reaching out to applicants, you can decrease the amount of time it takes to contact candidates — reducing the risk that they get hired somewhere else! This also ensures that candidates are responded to in a timely manner when one person is off or overwhelmed with other responsibilities.
2. Don’t Overlook Part-Time Candidates
High-volume hiring is especially tricky when mixing full-time and part-time employees. They sometimes even feel like two separate workforces, because the way you approach hiring for each is very different. You may need certain qualities from an employee based on their hours, and some employers make distinct positions based off availability. This distinction is a cause for many common staffing errors.
If hiring managers view full-time employees as “more valuable” and fail to engage with part-time job seekers, they may inadvertently pass on many quality applicants that can still fill position needs. Because of the value many hiring managers put on full-time employees, another mistake can be over-staffing full-time employees. While it’s true that some candidates are turning down positions because said positions don’t provide enough hours, hiring an abundance of full-time employees can result in fewer hours per full-time employee. This means turning away staff as they slowly lose their hours, which in turn results in a net loss in employees for your business.
Part-time employees can be core to staffing a business and are especially valuable because they can provide quality work while not taking hours from full-time employees, meeting the needs of all parties involved. Even if they’re only looking to work a single day a week, overlooking them can mean losing quality candidates that could be a great fit for your business.
3. Use Technology to Your Advantage
The truth is, many hiring managers still use outdated hiring processes. While pen and paper applications and in-person interviews worked in the past, times have changed quickly in the past couple of years. Virtual interviews are on the rise, making the interview process faster and more flexible for both applicants and recruiters.
Mobile devices are now at the center of any job search, and hiring managers should be make use of text within the hiring process. 90% of texts are read within the first three minutes, and texting has a 10x faster response rate than calling or emailing. Reaching out to applicants through text communications — especially when you can send and receive messages from a single platform — also has the benefit of being faster for hiring managers, meaning less time spent on the recruiting process.
A talent management platform with an AI chatbot helps move along the application process, automatic interview scheduling means the hiring manager doesn’t even have to spend time setting up an interview with the candidate. Use technology to your advantage for a more effective process, and more time for managers to attend to other responsibilities.