4 Ways to Improve Your Frontline Recruiting and Hiring Processes

About 70% of employees in the United States are frontline workers. What is a frontline worker? People who work hourly roles and/or must show up to a physical location in order to do their job, like healthcare workers, restaurant employees, grocery store staff, truck drivers, retail employees, and factory workers, just to name a few.

Companies that need to hire frontline workers usually do so en masse, often hiring hundreds or even thousands of employees in a very short amount of time. To do this well — and quickly enough to fill these open roles — they need frontline recruiting and hiring processes that are efficient and able to capture quality candidates before their competitors.

Upward mobility for frontline workers is extremely important for building an inclusive workplace, and organizations can also benefit when they help promote their advancement. But first, they need to hire them.

Here are four ways to boost your frontline recruiting and hiring efforts and attract top talent to your organization:

1. Engage More Candidates with Personalized Experiences

Candidates today are looking for a personalized experience when they apply for a job — and frontline workers simply don’t have time to sift through your company’s career site to find relevant open opportunities. A great way to truly personalize the candidate experience is to implement technology like a conversational chatbot that can interact with candidates in real time and offer job recommendations based on their skills, location, or even browsing history.

Unfortunately, only 15% of Fortune 500 companies last year utilized an AI-powered chatbot to do so — an extremely low number for something that companies can easily adopt.

Hiring frontline employment can have challenges due to the need for special skills and certifications, remote locations, and non-traditional working hours, but implementing AI-powered technology that can personalize the first step in the application process for candidates is a no-brainer. It gives candidates a great first impression of your company and a quick list of roles they’re suited for.

2. Streamline the Application Process Through Mobile

Almost everyone has a cell phone, and organizations that offer efficient application processes via mobile use are losing out on talent. A great way to attract frontline workers is to streamline the application process through text-to-apply and mobile pre-screening capabilities.

Again, implementing a chatbot that can pre-screen candidates for open roles — often in as little as a few minutes — is a great way to improve your frontline recruiting processes. If you can notify candidates almost immediately that they are qualified and ready for the next step in the process, they are much more likely to continue that process with you. In addition, most chatbots can gather passive leads based on candidate expression of job interest, even if they don’t continue with the application process.

Another way to streamline the application process is through SMS. SMS capabilities that allow you to send candidates 1-to-1 or 1-to-many SMS messages to promote open roles, follow up on interviews, arrange next steps, or even communicate offers is a game-changer. SMS capabilities can also be used by TA teams to create and launch campaigns that allow candidates to text a keyword to receive information about jobs, FAQs, events, and more.

When you’re hiring frontline workers en masse, this always-on, automated communication is a must.

Related reading: How Circle K Tackles Always-On Recruiting

3. Minimize Recruiter Intervention with Automated Workflows

On the recruiter’s end, intelligent automation technology can help drastically reduce time to hire by automating tedious tasks like candidate sourcing, scoring, screening, and scheduling.

For frontline workers interested in your company, these automated workflows can enhance the experience greatly:

Always-on campaigns can provide candidates with information that matters most to them, including benefits and perks
Teams can move hiring decisions forward faster, increasing the likelihood that candidates will choose you

Related reading: The Definitive Guide to AI for Recruiting

4. Automate Screening and Scheduling

Another way to gain a competitive edge by quickly connecting candidates with jobs, interviews, and hiring managers is through automation. With AI scheduling and one-way interview technology, for example, many manual processes are put on auto-pilot, freeing up your recruiters to focus on building candidate relationships.

AI Scheduling can sync candidate and hiring team calendars as well as schedule and even reschedule interviews. This all happens automatically, eliminating the time-consuming back-and-forth between recruiter and candidate.

One-Way Interviews allow candidates to complete interviews from anywhere and on-site hiring teams can review when convenient for them, saving time for all parties involved. Not to mention, this technology helps candidates feel confident in delivering a great first impression.

Using automation in these ways makes the frontline hiring process fast, frictionless, and flexible for candidates, recruiters, and hiring managers, allowing you to capture top talent quicker than competitors.

When it comes to hourly or frontline employment, candidates are looking for an application process that is quick, easy, and personalized. Using AI-powered technology, you can automate many of the tasks slowing recruiting teams down — without sacrificing quality for quantity.

If you’re ready to learn more about boosting your frontline recruiting and hiring processes, check out our High-Volume Hiring Playbook.

Maggie Blehar

Maggie is a writer at Phenom, bringing you information on all things talent experience. In addition to writing, she enjoys traveling, painting, cooking, and spending time with her family and friends.