9 High Volume Recruitment Strategies & Best Practices for 2025

When I started my first real job in 2016, my boss asked me to put together a job ad for a marketer. I asked, very naively, “But what if too many people apply?” to which he said, “That’s a great problem to have.”

It was not. It turned out to be a big problem. About 90% of the 300+ job seekers did not read the description or meet the basic criteria, and we were overwhelmed with trying to find the best person for the job.

Yep, finding top talent is hard. And this problem only intensifies when you’re hiring at scale and dealing with a flood of unqualified applicants for multiple open roles. All at the same time.

To find your needle in a haystack, we’ve gathered some of the very best high-volume recruitment strategies our team personally uses and that we’ve confirmed others do, too.

TL;DR — Key Takeaways

• The most common challenges of a high-volume hiring process are needing more time, using the wrong application method, providing a poor candidate experience, and having a poor quality of hire.
• The best high-volume recruitment strategy is to automate the most time-consuming tasks in your recruitment process.
• Use data to identify the best channels for hiring and reach out to previous applicants to reengage them.
• The best practices for high-volume hiring include choosing the right ATS, keeping the process candidate-centric, and balancing speed with thorough candidate evaluation.

What are the most common challenges of the high-volume hiring process?

There are quite a few hurdles to overcome with your high-volume recruitment efforts. These are the most common ones a recruitment team might face and ways to overcome them.

Lack of time

Hiring managers have strict deadlines to meet. Yet, the average time to fill a position is 44 days. This means that usually, from the moment a job advertisement is posted until the moment they sign a contract, HR teams have about a month and a half to find a great candidate.

To make matters worse, the best talent is off the market in just a few days, leaving a short time frame to capture the cream of the crop in the available talent pool.

It boils down to two main problems.

• Not enough time: No matter how big your hiring team is, you can’t possibly review 100 applications in one day. And with some positions, that’s an understatement: the typical remote job posting could get 1,000+ applications.
• Too many roles: If you’re growing your team, just got a major funding round, or urgently need many roles filled, it can spell disaster. As you need to fill many roles simultaneously and quickly, this can lead to major errors and poor hiring decisions.

Application method

With large hiring needs, your application methods need to be adapted. The recruiting process should be simple and easy for the candidate and the hiring team.

For example, instead of a complex five-step application process, you can allow the candidates to apply with a skills test and sign in with their LinkedIn profile. Here is where we (usually) suggest placing skills tests in the hiring process, especially for high-volume recruiting.

Remember to make the application easy to access from any device, as candidates (e.g., those coming from social media ads) are likely to apply from their phones.

It all starts with job postings on the job boards. Indicate:

• Whether the position is open or not
• What the salary is
• What the required skills and experience are
• What is necessary and what is nice to have
• Whether the position is remote, hybrid, or on-site
• What the perks and benefits are
• What the rest of the hiring process is going to look like, for full transparency

With all of this information in one place (and a simple application process), you can ensure only the most qualified candidates apply.

Poor candidate experience

With so many applicants coming through quickly, your candidate experience (and, ultimately, company culture) suffers. As part of your high-volume recruitment strategy, try to avoid the common pitfalls of bad candidate experience, such as…

• Not informing candidates about their application progress
• Taking too much time to get back to the candidate after the application (or not getting back to them at all)
• Giving the disqualified candidates canned feedback (or no feedback at all)
• Not setting clear expectations for your open positions

This matters because 72% of candidates who’ve endured a candidate experience will talk about it with their peers. On the flipside, 65% of rejected applicants who enjoyed a good candidate experience are likely to apply to your company again.

Nailing a positive candidate experience can feel like a chore, but it’s a major asset to your employer brand and company culture. With tools such as Toggl Hire, you can automate major parts of the hiring process (especially communication), so handling large volumes of applicants is a breeze.

Poor hire quality

When you combine a lack of time with a large volume of job openings, the result is a suboptimal quality of hire. With thousands of applicants per role, most just won’t be great. However, you’ll have to spend time on them to find quality candidates and not let them slip through.

Automation with online skills tests solves this problem entirely. As the first step of the hiring process, candidates take a skills test to see if they meet a certain threshold set by the employer. Everyone who scores above the required grade goes to the next round. This lets you handle a large talent pipeline at a low cost.

9 great high-volume recruiting strategies for 2025

The talent acquisition landscape in 2025 is changing. An increasing number of remote jobs means a higher number of applications. At the same time, many companies are looking to streamline the way they get to new hires with an applicant tracking system, hiring CRM, or similar tool.

To find the right candidates in a sea of applicants, provide the best candidate experience, and make the right hiring decisions, you should consider recruiting strategies specifically built for high-volume needs.

1. Automate time-consuming processes and tasks

Any high-volume recruitment cycle contains a mix of repetitive tasks and processes. To keep things flowing, try to automate as much as possible without sacrificing the candidate experience.

For example, you can automate:

• Resume screening and skills testing with ATS tools to whittle down the pack and find the most suitable applicants
• Scheduling interviews with hiring tools so candidates select the most suitable time and date without the back and forth of an email chain
• Maintaining communication with potential candidates, for example, using automated feedback to inform candidates about their test scores or invite them to the next stage of the recruitment process

2. Diversify your sourcing channels

With the right high-volume recruitment strategies in place (and the right tools), you can afford to cast a wider net. In other words, besides the channels you traditionally use, expand your reach and try out new ones to determine what brings the best candidates.

Some places you can look into are:

• Specialized job boards (e.g., for remote roles, for specific industries, for certain minority groups)
• Online communities (LinkedIn and Facebook groups, subreddits, forums, etc.)
• Social media ads
• Referrals
• and others

As applicants start coming in, you can run the numbers and determine which channel brings the highest ratio of qualified to total applicants. Speaking of which…

3. Use data to optimize hiring processes

If you examine previous hiring cycles, you can unearth precious insights that save time and money today. You can examine possible bottlenecks, the best sourcing channels, candidate behavior, feedback, and more.

For example, you can consider:

• The quality of hire: Which hiring channel is the most likely to lead to a job offer?
• Application completion rate: Which types of job ads lead to the highest completion?
• Candidate Net Promoter Score: What type of application leads to the highest candidate satisfaction?
• The interview-to-hire ratio: What kind of interview process leads to the highest offer acceptance rate?

The more you hire, the more data points you can collect and refine your hiring efforts. Use those to create a robust database of recruiting analytics.

4. Reengage with past applicants

Building a talent pool of past applicants is one of the most rewarding activities you can do as an HR team. As you disqualify candidates for one reason or another, save their contact data and reach out occasionally to stay on their radar.

As you begin hiring for a new role, contact previous applicants. They’re now passive candidates and likely to seek a new role. More importantly, you’ve already done the hard work of screening them.

As time passed, they may have picked up new, valuable skills that would make them a great asset to your team.

5. Invest heavily in the candidate experience

A positive candidate experience is easier to achieve with 50 than 500 applicants. However, maintaining great relationships with candidates is not impossible. Investing extra effort can do wonders for your employer brand in the long term.

Some ways you can do this include:

• Communicating promptly: Informing candidates if and when they move to the next round
• Maintaining transparency: Setting candidate expectations for the hiring process and being honest about your hiring practices
• Managing expectations: Telling candidates when they will hear from you and holding up to your word

6. Use skills tests as the first step

Skills tests can be the shortcut you need to get to qualified candidates fast. While they’re useful at any step during the hiring process, they are invaluable initially. For example, you can include a link to a skills test in the job application instead of asking candidates to apply with their resume or cover letter.

The best part? Skills tests take less time to complete, and they eliminate the least qualified candidates at the very start.

7. Batch interviews or use async interviews

Even when you reduce the list of applicants, you’ll still have interviews to host. Although there’s no way to avoid this, you can batch the interviews and host a few at once to save time and resources. For example, consider a two-hour block with four interviews at a time.

You can also run asynchronous interviews and ask candidates to record themselves answering specific questions. This makes it easy for your team to review many applicants at once. Candidates love this approach, too, as they can squeeze the interview into their own busy schedule.

8. Balance speed with quality of hire

Time is of the essence, but sometimes, going fast can result in dropping great applicants.

In other words, you should be speedy at the beginning of the hiring process because most job applicants won’t be a good fit. This is when you should employ recruitment tools that help you trim from 100 to 10 applicants.

In the following stages, spend more time with those ten applicants and give them the attention they deserve.

9. Use artificial intelligence mindfully

AI tools such as ChatGPT can save massive amounts of time and money, but take care how you use them. Some solid rules to follow. 👇

Don’t use algorithms or keyword tools in your ATS to comb through your applicant lists faster. You could miss some amazing talent if your candidates don’t optimize their resumes for the right keywords.

Don’t use AI to craft job ads. You’ll put off more candidates than you attract and may even introduce gender bias into your job descriptions if you use vocab like “rockstar” or “ninja,” known to be masculine-coded.

Best practices for high-volume hiring (and common mistakes to avoid)

At Toggl, we typically receive hundreds to thousands of applications for each role. We’re accustomed to high-volume recruiting, and today, we’ll share the best tips to help you start the process.

Choose the right ATS

Your applicant tracking system should be purpose-built for high-volume hiring. This means it should be equipped with features such as:

• Robust analytics
• Integrations with the rest of your HR tech stack
• User-friendly interfaces for your hiring team and applicants
• Scalable plans and pricing options

When choosing an ATS, first determine the volume of candidates you may want to hire and then check out the features offered in the plan that suits your needs.

Don’t sleep on the importance of a candidate-centric process

No matter how many positions you have open and how many applicants are waiting for your response, never give up on providing a superior candidate experience. Even though it may sound complex and obscure, you can deliver an exceptional experience in just a few steps. For example:

• Always include the salary in the job description
• Be crystal clear about the responsibilities of the role
• Always follow up, even in the earliest stages of the hiring process
• Do not automate feedback for candidates that have gone through the later stages of the process
• Be transparent about the length of the hiring process, as well as each of the steps involved
• Treat each candidate like a human being, no matter how many applicants you have waiting in the queue

Consider candidate-centricity a long-term investment in your employer brand.

Balance speed with thorough candidate evaluation

It may seem like speed and attention to detail are at opposite ends of the spectrum with high-volume recruitment, but this is not the case. With the right tools and processes, you can have your cake and eat it, too.

Some examples include:

✌️ Evaluating candidates in two stages, like a skills test first and then a longer, take-home test where the applicant can really show their skills. You can then invite the very best applicants to an interview.

📄 Using a skills test as the first step in the hiring process to create a shortlist of candidates to interview.

🧑‍💻 Hosting structured interviews! Have an interview script to make it easier to stay on track and compare answers. Set up batches of interviews simultaneously and try techniques such as async interviewing to save even more time.

Which recruiting metrics should you use in your high-volume recruiting process?

The best recruiting metrics will depend on your unique goals and challenges. Typically, for high-volume hiring, these specific metrics should be on your radar:

Candidate experience

Measure this through surveys and feedback from candidates you hired or made it through the later stages of the hiring process.

Time to hire

The average time it takes from the moment someone submits an application until they accept a job offer.

Quality of hire

A measurement of how well someone performs after they’ve accepted the role and gone through the onboarding period. Measure this through performance, retention, cultural fit, and workplace engagement.

Offer acceptance rate

The ratio of job offers you have given and those the candidates have accepted. Ideally, this value should be as high as possible.

Sourcing channel effectiveness

A comparative measure of how well different channels perform in terms of bringing great candidates (e.g., job boards vs. specialized communities).

Screen a large number of candidates with Toggl Hire

High-volume recruiting can often feel like a compromise because you have to balance a large number of applicants with delivering a great candidate experience to each. But despite its challenges, effective high-volume recruitment is possible.

Tools such as Toggl Hire help you cut through the noise and save time where it matters. Regardless of the number of applicants, Toggl Hire reduces the initial pool to a handful of high-quality interviewees.

You’ll save time and money, provide a better candidate experience, and improve your quality of hire.

Try Toggl Hire out today by signing up for a free account or schedule a demo with our team.