How to Leverage Skills Tests for High Volume Hiring in Recruitment

In September 2020, Amazon announced it had 33,000 corporate and tech positions to fill. To get the job done as efficiently as possible, it held a one-day virtual job fair online where applicants could submit their resume and talk with a recruiter.

It is not surprising that Amazon can pull off a high volume hiring strategy of this magnitude. However, volume hiring in recruitment poses significant challenges for the majority of companies regardless of industry.

For most, the true test of a sustainable high volume hiring strategy is whether it enables them to quickly and effectively place the right candidates in the right positions. Since the number of unemployed Americans reached record levels this year due to the Coronavirus pandemic, recruiters have been receiving hundreds, if not thousands of applications for each job posted.

Before you attempt to recreate Amazon’s one-day job fair, consider leveraging skills tests to manage volume hiring in recruitment. eSkill’s innovative pre-employment assessment solutions enable recruiters to forego outdated resume scanners and time-consuming phone interviews. Instead, hiring teams can use eSkill’s advanced automation to quickly and accurately verify candidates’ skills and competencies.

What is Volume Hiring in Recruitment?

Volume hiring in recruitment is the practice of hiring a large number of employees within a given time frame. Retailers and logistics companies commonly use high volume hiring strategies to add staff during the holiday season or when opening new locations. As in Amazon’s case, rapid expansion often necessitates implementing a high volume recruiting strategy.

While there is not an exact number of hires that constitutes “volume hiring in recruitment,” there is a consensus among talent acquisition professionals that high volume hiring refers to a situation where there is a greater than average need to hire workers.

The Challenges of Volume Hiring in Recruitment

Screening, shortlisting, and interviewing a large number of applicants can feel daunting. While there are many challenges to filling hundreds of positions at once, these are the most significant.

1. Limited Time: As the name implies, screening and processing a large volume of applicants takes significantly more time than typical hiring situations.
2. Limited Resources: Screening, shortlisting, and interviewing more candidates than usual also requires more resources, including the human capital required to review and interview large numbers of candidates.
3. Maintaining a Positive Candidate Experience: The candidate experience can turn negative quickly if HR managers do not maintain clear communication throughout the hiring process.
4. Staying Organized: While staying organized when hiring for just one or two positions is relatively easy, screening hundreds or even thousands of applicants requires an advanced system to track and manage candidates.

High volume hiring challenges occur during each phase of the recruitment process. When organizations do not adequately prepare, hiring outcomes suffer, which results in wasted time and resources. Hiring managers also risk losing top-quality candidates who give up and move on to other opportunities.

HR Technology Enables Recruiters to Overcome the Challenge of Volume Hiring in Recruitment

eSkill automates and streamlines the shortlisting of top talent and helps HR managers overcome the challenges of volume hiring in recruitment. With eSkill’s intuitive skills testing platform, organizations can manage thousands of applicants seamlessly.

Leverage eSkill’s employment tests by:

1. Clearly defining critical skills and competencies needed for open positions
2. Selecting from eSkill’s “ready-to-use” tests or building custom assessments by combining multiple subjects to create tests that are tailored to match any position
3. Automatically sending job-relevant skills tests to applicants
4. Reviewing score reports and auto-ranking candidates based on results
5. Auto-progressing candidates to the next stage of the hiring process

Your dedicated U.S.-based Client Success Manager will walk you and your hiring team through the testing process from test selection and administration to automating candidate communication.

Configure Skills Tests That Directly Align with Position Requirements

With the most extensive library of customizable skills tests in the HR industry, eSkill makes selecting and configuring an online skills test for any position in any industry simple. 

eSkill’s extensive library of skills tests include:

• Job-Specific Tests. With hundreds of “ready-to-use” job-specific skills tests such as Account Representative, Data Entry Operator, Paraeducator, and more, recruiters can easily find a job-relevant assessment that they can customize.
• Skill-Specific Tests. eSkill has hundreds of single-subject “ready-to-administer” skills tests, such as Accounting and Bookkeeping Principles, MS Office, and General Scholastic Teaching Skills.
• Cognitive Aptitude Tests. eSkill offers a selection of validated cognitive aptitude tests that compare test-takers results against a global percentile. Years of research and numerous studies indicate that cognitive aptitude tests are the single best predictor of job performance and training success.
• Job Simulation Tests. eSkill offers various job simulations, including a Call Center MS Office and Digital Literacy that replicate on-the-job tasks so you can see how employees will perform on the job. 

eSkill enables recruiters to customize skills tests by:

• Combining multiple tests to create a comprehensive assessment
• Editing, adding, and deleting individual questions
• Setting time limits for questions or entire tests
• Creating customized test instructions
• Adding open-ended questions
• Setting the difficulty level of questions
• Including timed typing or data entry exercises

Unlike other testing providers, eSkill gives recruiters the power to create a truly unique and streamlined hiring process for employers and candidates alike. Before you begin high volume hiring, carefully consider how eSkill’s tech-driven hiring solutions can help your team organize, screen, and shortlist candidates faster and more effectively than ever before.

Interested in Leveraging Skills Tests for Volume Hiring in Recruitment?

Learn more about the benefits of using eSkill’s employment skills tests to find qualified candidates quickly.

Request a demo today.