What is high-volume hiring? A practical guide for hiring at scale

Here’s the easiest way to boil down the high-volume hiring meaning: making a lot of hires in little time. But exactly what “a lot” of hires looks like will vary across organizations; there’s no fixed number that officially defines this approach.

Hiring 10 people might seem like a massive undertaking for a 50-person company, while a global enterprise won’t bat an eye at hiring hundreds of workers in the same timeframe. 

Context matters more than raw headcount, as several different factors shape high-volume hiring:

• Organization size: Smaller teams feel the impact of volume a lot faster. A startup hiring 15 support agents in a month might be stretching their recruiters thin, while it’s business as usual for a large retailer. Volume is relative to the people, processes, and tools you have in place.
• Role type: High-volume hiring is typically used for roles with similar scope and requirements (e.g., retail staff, warehouse associates, or entry-level operations roles). Because these jobs repeat, recruiters can more easily standardize screening, interviews, and onboarding.
• Timing and urgency: High-volume hiring is often tied to a deadline, whether it’s a seasonal spike, a new location opening, or a major contract win. Hiring 50 people over the course of a year looks very different from hiring 50 people in four weeks. The tighter the timeline, the more likely it is to qualify as high-volume hiring.
• Complexity and concurrency: Understandably, this hiring approach can come with a lot of moving parts. Multiple roles, hiring managers, locations, and approval steps can add complexity, while dozens or hundreds of candidates moving through the process at the exact same time creates concurrency. Without the right structure in place, high-volume hiring can feel even more daunting and difficult.

High-volume hiring doesn’t mean pressing “fast forward” on your typical recruiting and hiring processes. It requires a different approach — and, often, far more intentional systems, specific high-volume hiring tools, and plenty of coordination — to keep things moving speedily and smoothly.

High-volume hiring and traditional recruitment share the same goal: finding the right people for the right roles. But when you amp up your hiring needs and the time pressure you’re under, the process for getting there looks a lot different.

Here are a few of the biggest differences you’ll see day-to-day:

Application volumes

• High-volume hiring: Recruiters manage large applicant pools, with numbers climbing into the hundreds or even thousands, depending on the size of the organization. This impacts everything from how applications are reviewed to how quickly candidates move through the funnel.

• Traditional recruitment: Recruiters typically manage a relatively small, curated candidate pool for each role.

Speed and responsiveness

• High-volume hiring: Recruiters need to make quick decisions and communicate with candidates promptly to minimize the risk of them dropping out or accepting other offers.

• Traditional recruitment: Recruiters can space out interviews, follow up manually, and spend more time with each candidate.

Screening and decision-making

• High-volume hiring: Recruiters use clear criteria, structured interviews, and repeatable workflows to make fast but fair decisions.

• Traditional recruitment: Recruiters conduct deeper and far more personalized candidate evaluations, including closely reviewing resumes and tailoring interviews to each candidate

Coordination across teams

• High-volume hiring: Recruiters coordinate with multiple hiring managers, interviewers, teams, and even locations at the same time to align on timelines, expectations, and decisions.

• Traditional recruitment: Recruiters work with a smaller set of stakeholders, making it easier to manage communication, scheduling, and approvals on a role-by-role basis.

Compounding risk

• High-volume hiring: Seemingly minor inefficiencies and small snags (such as unclear requirements or delayed feedback) can quickly affect dozens of candidates at the same time.

• Traditional recruitment: Mistakes or delays typically impact a single role or candidate, making them easier to fix without disrupting the entire hiring process.

Ultimately, the difference in high-volume recruitment comes down to scale and pressure. Traditional hiring allows some wiggle room for customization and unexpected hiccups, while high-volume hiring demands structure, speed, and tight coordination to keep everything moving. 

This type of hiring is more than high-volume — it can also be high stress. As your application numbers climb and tight deadlines loom, even the most well-run recruiting teams can start to feel the strain. 

In those cases, it’s tempting to point the finger. However, many of the most common high-volume hiring challenges relate to your processes (and not your people). 

1. Handling large numbers of applications

With hundreds or thousands of applicants stacking up all at once, it’s tough to keep up. Recruiters might struggle to review applications quickly, identify qualified candidates, and avoid feeling overwhelmed by the sheer volume coming in. It’s one of the many reasons why choosing the right ATS is so crucial. 

2. Keeping screening moving

Particularly as volume increases, screening can quickly become a bottleneck. Limited recruiter time, overstuffed inboxes, or slow feedback from hiring managers can keep applications stuck early in the funnel. This pushes out your timeline and increases stress across the team. 

3. Preventing candidate drop-off

High-volume hiring moves fast, but so do candidates. In fact, 48% of candidates say waiting to hear back from an employer is “highly frustrating.” It’s high-risk too. When responses or next steps take too long, candidates might lose interest or accept an offer elsewhere. What feels like an inconsequential delay internally could be the difference in landing that applicant or missing out.

4. Maintaining consistent hiring decisions

Hiring at scale usually involves multiple recruiters, hiring managers, and teams working together. If you aren’t aligned on clear criteria and shared expectations, standards can shift and lead to uneven quality, confusion, and perceptions of unfairness in your hiring process. 

5. Avoiding recruiter and hiring manager burnout

Burnout is a common concern among hiring professionals, and high volume inevitably turns up the heat. Recruiters and hiring managers are often pulled in multiple directions at once, with little to no breathing room between interviews, approvals, and their day-to-day responsibilities.

The good news is that these hurdles are avoidable (without pushing your people harder). The right process — one built with scale, speed, and consistency top of mind — makes high-volume hiring feel far more manageable. 

Seasonal retail hiring is one of the most common high-volume hiring examples, and it’s a challenge that Lush knows well. Every year, the global cosmetics retail brand needs to hire large numbers of seasonal staff across many locations, all within a short timeframe.

By using Pinpoint as its high-volume hiring ATS, Lush brought structure to a fast-moving process. Recruiters standardized how roles were advertised, how candidates were screened, and how decisions were made across stores, even as application numbers continued to climb. 

But equally important to Lush was making sure the candidate experience remained a top priority. With clearer recruitment workflows, better visibility, and smoother collaboration, applicants benefited from a more consistent journey, even during peak hiring periods. 

💡 Interested in learning more? Read the full Lush case study.

High-volume hiring is used whenever you need to bring on a lot of people in a short period. But, while the pressure is real, the stress often comes less from the volume itself and more from trying to manage it with the processes you built for one-off hiring. 

Hiring at scale isn’t business as usual. It requires a more intentional approach that’s specifically built to handle a lot of candidates at the same time. With that clear and repeatable hiring flow, it’s easier to stay organized and achieve your ultimate goal: a lot of great hires, without a lot of stress. 

Need help? See how Pinpoint supports high-volume hiring.