How to hire many people at once.

When you hire many people at once, things tend to go wrong in the same places. The ad goes up before anyone agrees what a good hire looks like. Applications arrive faster than anyone can call them. By the time a recruiter reaches applicant 300, the best people have taken other offers. Working harder doesn’t fix this. Making decisions in the right order does. This plan assumes one job, many people to hire, and about four weeks.

Start from the number of hires and work backwards

Before you write the ad, work out how many people you need at each stage. The numbers below are an example. The rates are assumptions, not industry averages, so replace them with your own as soon as you have a week of real data.

Say you need 40 people to start on the same day.

So in this example, hiring 40 people means roughly 650 people need to open your first-interview link. If your job ad reaches only 300 people, you know in week one, not week four, that you won’t have enough applicants.

The same numbers tell you how much work to expect. If 313 people finish the first interview over two weeks, that’s about 30 a day to review. At five minutes each, that’s two and a half hours a day. If you phoned the 390 people who started instead, at 20 minutes a call, that would be about 130 hours of calls.

Week 0: agree what a good hire looks like before the ad goes up

Spend one meeting with the hiring manager and settle four things.

• The three to five skills that matter most in the first 90 days. Keep it to what really matters, not a wish list. For a support job that might be staying calm, explaining things clearly and taking responsibility.
• The level you expect for each skill. Expect a beginner level for a first job, and an intermediate level for experienced hires.
• The must-haves. Shift availability, location, the legal right to work, start date. Ask about these as simple questions, and read the answers yourself.
• Who makes the final call. Name one person who makes final decisions. Decisions by committee slow down large-scale hiring more than anything else.

Then write the first-interview questions, each one testing one of those skills. Five or six questions about real work situations (“A customer calls and says…”) tell you more than ten questions about the résumé. Keep the interview short, around 15 minutes. Every extra minute means fewer people finish.

Week 1: open applications

Put the interview link in the job ad, so applying and taking the first interview are the same step. Put the practical details in the ad too: pay range, shifts, location, start date, and what the first interview involves. Candidates who can’t work nights should find that out before they spend fifteen minutes on an interview.

By the end of day three you have real numbers. Compare them to your assumptions:

• Few people open the link: the ad isn’t reaching enough people. Post it in more places, or ask current staff to refer people they know.
• Many open it, few start: something in the ad or on the interview’s first screen is putting people off. Check the length you state and the wording.
• Many start, few finish: the interview is too long, or a question is confusing.

Make changes once, early on. If you change the questions every day, candidates become hard to compare.

Weeks 2 and 3: review every day, decide fast

When you hire at this scale, a fixed daily routine matters most. Set aside the same hour every day to review candidates, and treat it like a meeting you can’t move.

1. Review everyone who finished since yesterday, strongest first.
2. For each person, look at the reasons behind the score, not just the number.
3. Put each person in one of three groups: next interview, on hold, or not this time.
4. Send invitations to the next interview the same day.

People who applied to you have applied to other jobs too. A same-day reply is often what decides whether they accept your offer or politely turn it down. Hold final interviews at fixed times, for example two afternoons a week, so hiring managers can plan around them.

Week 4: offers, start dates and filling gaps

Make offers in groups, with a clear deadline to reply. Keep a ranked list of strong candidates you haven’t made offers to yet. The number of people who accept and actually join will almost never match your assumptions exactly. That list lets you fill the gap without starting over.

Tell everyone who finished your first interview where they stand. A short, kind message is enough. If candidates hear nothing after an interview, that silence is what they remember about your company.

Who does what

Large hiring drives often slow down because the recruiter and the hiring manager each think the other person is handling something. Write down who does what.

The hiring manager doesn’t need to watch first interviews. They should read a few each week, so the standard doesn’t slowly drift away from what they wanted.

Where AI interviews fit

The first interview is the stage that takes the most hours when you do it by hand. An AI interview lets every applicant take the same interview as soon as they apply, even at 11pm or on a Sunday. Your daily review then has the same kind of results to read for everyone.

In LessRounds, you choose the skills, the level you expect for each, and how much each one counts. You share one link in the ad. Each candidate gets a score for each skill, with a quote from their interview behind each score. Each link also counts how many people opened it, started, finished, passed and were shortlisted, which gives you real numbers for the bottom rows of the table above. The software sorts candidates. A person on your team still decides who moves forward.