Recruiting, hiring, training, paperwork, and a laundry list of other day-to-day tasks means location-based hiring managers’ heads are spinning these days. They barely have time to think about eating lunch, much less respond to candidates within 24 hours or thoroughly evaluate candidates to determine who might be a good fit for the position.
Candidates are looking at many job options and the best people get hired quickly, so applicants who don’t receive an immediate response are more likely to move on to the next option.
Once a person is attracted to the position and sees themselves being part of the brand, it’s really about speed. You have to immediately get qualified candidates into a process where you can learn more about them and they can know that the company is interested.
A critical component of moving the process along quickly is a talent management system that enables hiring managers to eliminate or reduce the time required for things like completing applications, scheduling interviews, answering applicants’ questions, and assessing their qualifications. Being able to send a quick text message or rapidly schedule an interview not only increases the likelihood of a positive interview experience and the potential for hire, but also helps prevent interview ghosting.
Hiring managers need to be empowered with fast and efficient ways to engage interested job candidates, schedule interviews, quickly decide whether or not to hire them, and then get them all set for their first day without any snags.
Automating these four functions can be a game-changer when it comes to recruiting and hiring hourly workers.
1. Increase applicants with Text Recruiting
Today’s candidates —mostly Millennials and Gen Zers — live on their phones. They hate taking phone calls and sometimes email isn’t even fast enough. It’s been shown that:
- 88% of the hourly workforce prefers texting
- 98% of texts are read vs. just 20% of emails
- Texts get a 10x faster response than phone calls or emails
And that doesn’t just apply to how you communicate with candidates, it’s how you enable them to apply as well. When an applicant has the option to use a feature like Text-to-Apply, they receive information and links to branded pages specific to their location and fit. Lacey Navarrete, Director of Talent Acquisition for Scooter’s Coffee, has found that with 1,500+ openings across their locations at any given time, it can be confusing for candidates to find the right store to apply to. “Text-to-Apply makes it super easy and sends them right to their location,” she said.
2. Find the right applicants quickly with a conversational AI Chatbot
A conversational AI chabot can create an engaging and easy way for applicants to fill out an application and engage with your brand — without requiring hiring managers to be involved until the interview is scheduled.
Structured conversations can help candidates complete applications, assess their qualifications, and schedule interviews within minutes — not hours or days. Automating the application process can decrease applicant drop-off rates to as low as 12% and reduce time-to-apply by 84%.
3. Decrease ghosting with Automatic Interview Scheduling
Recruiters, HR, and hiring managers simply sync their calendars to their talent management solution, select time slots for interview availability, and enable automated scheduling for the positions of their choosing. Hiring managers can then select a default interview scheduling link and a default qualification rule to apply to incoming applications. If the candidate matches the set qualifications, they will be automatically extended an invitation to schedule an interview based on the manager’s availability.
For the applicant, upon completion of the application, those that are qualified can immediately select from the list of open time slots to schedule a time to interview and can easily reschedule if needed. This feature also allows HR and hiring managers to configure automated notifications to remind managers and applicants of upcoming interviews and make rescheduling for both parties simple — which greatly reduces no-shows.
4. Cut down on manual data entry — and errors — with Employee Sync
Once you find your next employee, ensure that new hire data is synced across all of your business-critical systems, such as payroll, workforce management, etc. This eliminates additional and repetitive work for hiring managers and decreases the chance of a manual entry error. Studies have shown that every single data entry performed without the use of HR technology costs a company $4.51. Recording and reporting onboarding tasks alone could cost $48.14 per employee. Think about what that could add up to for your business.
When your talent management solution includes integrations that ensure background checks are run and received, no duplicate entries are made, and compliance is maintained throughout the onboarding process, it saves hiring managers, HR professionals, and franchisees time and money.
Niche solutions might meet your needs if you’re looking to solve a single problem, but it may not integrate with your current system, which will in turn make your hiring process even longer. For the complex process of hiring hourly employees, you need a complete solution that integrates AI-based, low-touch management.
TalentReef automates workflows throughout the sourcing and hiring process to make it easier for managers to handle the responsibility of recruiting by eliminating some of the repetitive, time-consuming tasks. Learn more about how TalentReef makes hourly hiring easy.