How To Manage an Increase in Workload: 5 Tips for HR and Recruiting Teams
A new demand to fill job vacancies will inevitably increase the workload for hiring teams and recruiters. This can often occur due to high volume recruitment, surges in hiring, seasonal intake and hiring with a short space of time.
Follow these tips to help maximise your hiring journey.
1. Managing hiring timeframes
Take a step back and look at the complete hiring process. This is an opportunity to map out timescales for key stages, as well as note down important deadlines and targets you wish to achieve. Simple planning can help create an overall visual that breaks down the hiring process into manageable areas.
What do you want to achieve in the first 10 days?
2. Prioritise areas for improvement
Which areas require the most work? Understanding this will give a greater understanding of which hiring stages take the most time and will, therefore need additional help when experiencing an increase in demand.
3. Find new ways to complete tasks
Approach your hiring strategy with a new perspective. If you have determined areas for improvement (as mentioned above) these are the vital areas that could use a little help. Not necessarily does this mean gathering additional recruiters to help with a potential influx of job applications but instead there are many recruiting areas that benefit highly from technology.
Examples such as:
Job application filtering
One of the most time-intensive areas for a hiring team is managing a high intake of job applications. Particularly if there are tight deadlines and an urgent requirement to fill positions.
Resume filtering technology automates the process of screening and matching job applications against open vacancies. A method that consistently reviews applicants in seconds and in turn takes the pressure off of hiring teams to support a rapid intake of job applications.
Talent rediscovery
Sourcing for potential new candidates can be a time-consuming process. When faced with the pressure to hire under tight deadlines it is important to look towards talent you may already have.
Automated candidate database search automatically searches past applicants in the ATS database. This saves the recruiter time in undertaking a brand new search for talent outside of the existing pool as well as the time spent manually searching through the database.
Interview scheduling
To arrange multiple different interviews across a team of HR and recruiting professionals can be time-consuming. Especially for teams experiencing a surge in job demand.
Solutions such as this interview scheduling software make it easier to coordinate interviews across an organisation. As well as keep track of the type of jobs people are being interviewed for, the interview stage, the potential employee and even the interview location. Making it much more manageable and convenient for the whole hiring team to understand upcoming interviews and scheduling.
AI initial interviews
An increase in job applications will result in more job interviews. To handle this surge, AI-powered initiatives automate first-round interviews to assess applicants for potential roles. Technology such as Adaface – which focuses on initial tech-based interviews. Programmed to analyse the candidate’s thought process, ask to follow up questions and shortlist the most qualified candidates for the role.
4. Ensure high levels of communication
This is important internally (recruiter to recruiter) as well as externally (recruiter to the candidate) for many different reasons.
- To maintain a positive relationship with the candidate
- Communicate effectively within a team to minimise mistakes
- Keep updated with the work of others to understand the overall hiring journey
- Aim to provide job updates to applicants to maintain a positive candidate experience
Within your role, if the workload becomes overwhelming, express your concerns to those around you. Colleagues may be able to help and managers can understand that the demands and expectations of your role may not be obtainable. Helping them evaluate the overall hiring aims and strategy.
5. Small ways to manage workload stress
Complete tasks in order – write down what you have to do and tick off the finished items to help visualise your workload plan
Do not multitask – under tight deadlines, multitasking can be in fact counterproductive. Instead, workers can improve overall performance, complete tasks quicker and retain more information by focusing on one task at a time.
Work productively in the time you have – ensure when your work days begins you work productively. The best way to do this is to, set daily aims, tasks and weekly targets. It is also useful to take short breaks in-between to avoid work saturation.
