11 Creative Ways to Hire Blue Collar Workers in India

How do you hire blue collar workers in India when 85% of the jobs are blue collar and there’s barely a handful of portals serving this mammoth population? After a slumpy 20 months, blue collar jobs are abundant again. But where is all the talent to fill the vacancies?

As many as 7 million blue collar jobs are up for grabs by the end of 2021. Sectors like eCommerce are reeling under manpower crunch as a shop-happy populace is resetting online shopping records. Even giants like Amazon and Flipkart do not have the answer to delivering such gargantuan bulks of customer orders. 

Higher demand than ever 

For the first time in over 15 months, the demand for blue collar workers has surpassed the pre-covid demand for blue collar talent. Now that most of the population is vaccinated against covid, economic activity is also on the rise across industries.  

If you are in the blue collar hiring space, you might already know there’s little benefit with conventional hiring portals. We have listed out 11 creative ways in which you can hire blue collar staff not just around you but across India. 

1. Extend your referral schemes

Most blue collar recruiters work with referral schemes of some or the other kind. If you have been using referrals, too, it is time to think above and beyond. Increase the stake for your present candidates so that they participate in the process out of their own volition.

Consider delivery boys. They need to deliver at least 5 or 6 orders to make a hundred rupees. If your referral scheme covers such rewards for lesser legwork, people will happily refer their friends. Given the high customer acquisition costs for both online and offline channels, this is one method that all recruiters cannot negotiate with.    

2. Try both category-heavy and niche portals

Informal hiring has lots of bells and whistles. It is nearly impossible for a single portal to cover everything at once. You have to make sure that: 

• The candidates are legitimate
• They are actively looking for a job 
• Their qualifications match their resume 
• They aren’t casual job hoppers 

While these sound quite simple, it is impossible to find all of these on a single app. The best idea is to go with a few different platforms. Try both multi-category apps as well as niche category apps which hire for a particular domain (or blue collar job title) only.  

3. Look for interns 

The best thing about hiring interns is that you never have to worry about the energy levels. Almost all career starters are high on energy and it is basically up to the supervisor to make good use of them. Hiring blue collar interns is also a great way to make sure that your recruitment budgets are in check. 

In case you are finding it difficult to hire interns, there are several apps that help you do it. All you need to do is mention that you need interns specifically. This way, you will save costs otherwise incurred on results of mixed optimizations.  

4. Offer jobs to multi-skilled candidates 

The secret about blue collar jobs is that one person with a pack of a few skills is fit for several jobs. The mistake that almost everyone is making is they are looking for people with specific skills to fill specific positions. 

We will do well to understand that a delivery executive can be a security guard and vice versa. With the correct use of such permutations and combinations, the entire bank of resumes can be strengthened.  

5. Share unheard of benefits 

The blue collar marketplace is quite saturated as far as payments and rates are concerned. Unlike white collar hiring, there is no 30% hike for switching jobs either. So once people settle down into their jobs, there is seldom any incentive for switching jobs.

Savvy recruiters understand this only too well. This is why you must think outside conventional terms when it comes to differentiating their benefits. This may range from better incentives to higher rates for the top 20% performers. Whichever way you want to entice people to apply for your jobs, make sure the benefits are real and legible.      

6. Evaluate talent faster 

Several informal recruiters come from a white collar recruiting background. Hiring for white collar positions like developers and designers takes weeks if not month. It is squarely unfair for recruiters to use such durations of time for closing positions in the blue collar space. 

In blue collar industry, hiring depends on two factors alone: 

• How many you hire 
• How quickly you hire 

At this, it is incumbent on the recruiters to close positions faster. To be able to do this, you will need to evaluate talent at lightspeed. 

7. Tap into the mobile-friendly audience 

There is a huge audience in the informal economy that is extremely mobile savvy. Thanks to games like PUBG and entertainment apps like TikTok (and its newer reincarnations), almost everyone is using a smartphone now. 

It is borderline criminal if your hiring campaigns are not factoring in the mobile friendly nature of your blue collar crowd. It is not only savvy optimization of cost, but also supremely effective. From social media  campaigns to push notifications on mobile, recruiters are using every trick under their sleeve to lure the mobile audience.  

8. Leverage the power of video 

The world is consuming videos by the terabytes. If you are not using videos in your recruitment (blue or white collar), you are leaving money on the table. That is not acceptable if you wish to evolve into an ace recruiter. 

You can leverage video for: 

      Engaging your audience who could become potential candidates 

• Creating awareness about the differentiated benefits for them
• Running ads for targeted campaigns like candidate sign ups

Videos attract more eyeballs and are highly favored by social media and search engines alike. The best blue collar recruiters are also posting their job descriptions in video format.  

9. Create multi-location job posts 

You can improve your hiring chances by several factors if your job post is able to attract talent from not just one but several places at once. If you wish to do this with conventional, white collar portals, you will definitely need to pay them an arm and a leg. 

However, with blue collar hiring, it would be counter-intuitive to pay extra for posting jobs in multiple locations. Yes, there are some job portals that let you post the same job in several different locations, and that too, for extra cost. Find them and make use of them.  

10. Invite blue collar agencies

When making mass hiring drives, you should not be allergic to any means. If that means reaching out to blue collar agencies that specialize in mass blue collar hiring, so be it. Yes, a lot of fluff candidate resumes get flooded along with the good ones and you might be in for some serious sorting and skimming. 

In the larger scheme of things, a blue collar agency is worth having when you need to show quick results. However, you should not be overdependent on such agencies because they tend to charge incrementally. You should rather focus on developing and tuning your native hiring processes.  

11. Get a specialized blue collar hiring subscription  

If you are looking to close specific positions, it will be a wise decision to get a customized subscription from a job portal, preferably one that specializes in blue and grey collar hiring. If you are in urgent need of such a portal, look no farther than EZJobs. 

EZJobs has a range of quintessential features that help you meet your blue and grey collar hiring goals, however small or large they might be. If you are on a tight budget, EZJobs can help you find quick blue collar resources with the best hiring cost optimization.  

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