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Candidate-Centric and Cost-Effective: Walmart's Strategic Move to Talkpush for Technical Aptitude Tests

October 31, 2023
5 min read
Having closely worked with Walmart on this transformative project, I'm thrilled to share our collaborative journey. We embarked on a mission to enhance Walmart's recruitment process, focusin...
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      Nikky Enemchukwu
      Nikky Enemchukwu
      Recruitment Automation Expert at Talkpush

      Managing a Hiring Ramp-up with a Small Team of Recruiters

      Ready to level up your recruitment?
      Let’s jump on a call and explore how Talkpush can help your team.

      Worried about your ability to deliver the next hiring ramp-up due to the small size of your recruitment team? We have listed 8 killer strategies that will multiply your team’s output when the going gets tough.


      MEME

      Building a high-performing hiring engine that can ramp up its output to support the needs of the organization requires having the right people, with the right skillset, enabled with the right resources and strategies.

       

      Traditionally, the way large employers handled hiring ramp ups was by increasing the size of their team of recruiters - to do more call-outs, more interview, more events… more everything! Whether these extra headcounts are either brought in as internal staff or via a staffing agency, they represent a big cost to the company, at a time when it is already strapped for time and resources.

       

      Technology has come to the rescue in recent years with tools that can multiply the team’s output during the rush.  Take for example Genpact, and Afni, two companies that do almost half of their annual hiring volume in a 2-month period, which were able to double recruiter productivity when it counted. 

      Looking at the methods of these two companies, along with dozens of others who have succeeded in building a recruitment team that is truly responsive to the needs of the business, we have identified 8 key actions you can take to manage hiring ramp-ups with a small recruitment team.

       

      1. Eliminate all unqualified candidates automatically before they speak to a (human) recruiter

      res2When resources are tight, the first thing to eliminate is time wasted. You can make sure that recruiters do not spend a single minute with candidates that do not meet the minimum qualification criteria by pre-screening candidates with knock-out questions and automated assessments. You can call upon chatbots and automated workflows to take care of pre-screening, sorting, and scheduling of qualified talent without human intervention. We have seen some teams increase their output by 5x within a year of initiating automated pre-screening.

       

       

       

      2. Remove the (human)bottleneck within your hiring process

      Automation can be applied at almost every stage of the recruitment process. From the first click on an ad to the first day on the job. With automation, you can move candidates to the next steps based on set criteria without human intervention. For example, you can initiate the sequence to collect employment documents as soon as candidates are shortlisted and make sure that through automation, these documents are chased automatically without taking time away from the recruiters.

       

       

      3. Implementing an AI assistant that never sleeps.

      iPhone Images 3Recruiters need to rest, eat, and take time off to recharge. When this happens, the recruitment process is halted until they resume. Implementing AI assistants like chatbots which are available 24/7 ensures the recruitment process never ends even when your human recruiters take a break. Talkpush-powered chatbots help take the burden off recruiters, especially during volume hiring. Recruitment assistants like chatbots help you handle the large volume you attract on social media, prescreening applicants to ensure your recruiters only interact with qualified candidates.

      These chatbots can also schedule interviews and even help onboard new hires. 

       

      To ensure the chatbots reflect your employer brand, Talkpush gives you the flexibility to give your chatbots a personality, designing an AI assistant that also tells your brand story. You can implement chatbots to engage with candidates on  WhatsApp, Messenger, and even Instagram, meeting your candidates where they are.

       

       

      4. Stop wasting time manually consolidating data! Integrate your tech stack. 

      Artboard – 35It's normal for recruiting teams to work with multiple recruitment platforms, but without integrating your different tech platforms, your recruiters may be wasting valuable time navigating these platforms, pulling out data, and trying to consolidate them in one place.

      The smartly integrated tech stack works with your ATS as the backbone, and maybe four or five additional tools that perform specialized activities. For example: video assessments, language analytics, and social media sourcing tools (leading ATSs are notoriously poor at social media integration). Or, you can pick a tool like Talkpush that helps you successfully integrate all your tech stack, even bridging the gaps your ATS is not able to fill like helping you source on social media and providing all you need to efficiently manage the large volume you attract via social channels.

       

      So, how do you begin this integration?

       

      Do a count of what tools you’re currently using and spot ways to make the process more effective. Are you using an assessment tool, but having to manually input scores into your CRM? This is a simple fix; Talkpush integrates with your assessment tools, and social sourcing channels and can help feed all the data gathered from these platforms into your ATS for management and storage. And it’s also an easy way to make your process faster, and your recruiters more effective.

       

      When following this step just think of all the stuff that makes life a little more tedious for your team, an integration can usually fix it. It’s worth asking IT to spend a few hours identifying your pain points so you can save hundreds of recruiter man-hours (and thousands of candidate waiting hours) down the road.

      The more platforms you have integrated, the more accurate your data will be and the easier it will be to access all of it (without spending tons of time scraping, comparing, and making the 8084th Google Sheet.) 

       

      This is definitely easier if you’ve been purchasing tools that offer integration capabilities through an open API. It’s also a smart idea to check in with other departments and see what tools they’re already using to avoid potential overlaps — this is also a chance for a little stack clean-up. Sometimes a combination of tools, say having one for sourcing, and another for candidate screening isn’t necessary if you can find a tool that can do both jobs. When doing your tech recon, look for opportunities to consolidate, integrate, and simplify.

       

      5. Eliminate sourcing channels that don't convert

      res3We understand the need to spam every channel with job ads in the hopes that you find the right candidate in the most unlikely place. Finding the right channels that give you the steady flow of traffic you desire to face hiring ramp-ups is critical. It will eliminate sending your recruiters on a wild goose chase and having them double their efforts which reduces their productivity.

      To discover sourcing channels that generate traffic and help you build a steady flow of candidates and a large talent pool you can tap into in situations such as hiring ramp-ups, you must carefully examine: your data from every source, how campaigns fared, how much traffic these channels sent to your recruitment platform, look at how much time candidates from those sources spend on your site, how many clicks it takes for them to finish their application, and use all this information to make life easier for candidates and even recruiters.

      Once you understand each of your channel’s true ROI, you can re-adjust your recruitment budget, save your recruiters tons of time, and optimize the Marketing Cost Per Hire (MCPH). 

      From experience, we've seen over time that candidates live on social media and with the right combination of creative job ads, your ad budget, and an automation platform like Talkpush, you can confidently face hiring ramp-ups!

       

      6. A careers page made to increase conversions = more time for your recruiters

      res4Everyone agrees they need to have a “good career site” but the way to measure what is “good” is for discussion. Many employers are turning to ad agencies to help them build a comprehensive career website that talks about their culture the way a job listing from an ATS never could. 

       

      Unfortunately, those beautiful websites end up being digital resources rather than conversion channels, and often suffer low conversion rates of about 5-15%.  

      We do not suggest building a boring website, with only a job listing from your ATS or any other recruitment platform, but we do recommend building websites that have a high conversion rate, focused on your core audience and core message. A good career website built with these principles in mind can save a bunch of time for recruiters by delivering leads that are qualified (pre-screened by your on-site AI assistant), as well as informed by answering their questions right on the site. Plus, if you add on automated scheduling as part of your bot flow, you have candidates that are applying, pre-qualified, and scheduled for their first interview all in a matter of minutes without ever having to leave your site.

       

      Talkpush offers high-converting landing pages to customers without the time to build those. Talkpush Career Site Services include websites that have a clear call to action, moving candidates to the next steps in the recruitment process, whether that’s an online assessment or a scheduled call with a recruiter, and giving candidates an option on where the conversation should be continued.

      Marketers can also churn out very effective landing pages using affordable services like Unbounce, WordPress or WebFlow which allows them to take control of your digital assets.

       

       

      7. Re-engaging past database

      Having an existing talent pool that you can continue to re-tap is one of the ways you can always confidently take on hiring ramp-ups with a small team. How do you attract the candidate volume you need to build talent pools? By leveraging the power of social media! Sourcing on high-volume generating platforms like social media presents you with the opportunity to build a database of leads you can re-engage whenever you have hiring requests. And with a recruiting platform like Talkpush, you can seamlessly build hiring campaigns for social media and Talkpush will help you prescreen applications you receive, segment your leads and save the leads you do not convert for retapping in the future.

       

       

      8. Group interviews for screening

      We understand that sometimes, you need face time with applicants before you can decide if they make the cut. But how do you achieve this during hiring ramp-ups when you don't even have enough recruiters? Group interviews have proven to work and help you complete your candidate selection exercise in a fraction of the time required for one-on-one interviews. To do this, simply schedule an interview with about 10 candidates at a time and try a Q/A session where the candidates ask you questions and you ask them questions in return. Make sure you make a list of what you are looking for in your ideal candidates so you can easily identify those traits during the group interview and quickly complete each round of interviews.

       

       

      So there you have it. Follow every step and you won’t have to hire any more recruiters to tackle the increased candidate volumes, as well as positions that need to be filled. You also won’t have to sacrifice your candidate experience with extra barriers to help you act as a filter. Instead, you’ll have an active talent pool with happy candidates that you can tap into now or in the future.

       

       

       

      👉👉👉 Which strategies will you be implementing to boost productivity? If you're thinking about automation, Talkpush can automate 95% of the top-of-funnel recruitment tasks. Schedule a call with us to discuss your specific business needs. 

      Let's Talk!