Agile recruiting is one way companies are gaining top talent and streamlining the hiring process. The methodology emphasizes collaboration, flexibility, data-driven decision making, and effective customer experience delivery.
Recruiters have a lot more to consider than just filling vacancies with the best possible candidates. They must also work closely with departments across the organization to ensure hires meet corporate objectives as well as long-term goals. Agile recruiting empowers recruiters to be equipped to find the perfect fit for each role without sacrificing productivity and efficiency.
Understand the Basics of Agile Methodology
Agile methodology has been gaining popularity as a project management approach, but what exactly is it?
Agile is a framework that focuses on iterative development, teamwork, and flexibility in response to changing needs. It emphasizes regular communication and collaboration between team members, as well as with stakeholders. Unlike traditional waterfall approaches, the Agile methodology encourages adaptability and encourages teams to deliver working products at a faster pace. By breaking down complex projects into smaller, incremental pieces that can be tested and evaluated along the way, Agile empowers project teams to respond quickly to customer feedback and market changes, ultimately leading to better outcomes.
If you would like to learn more about the Agile Methodology, checkout Asana’s blog.
Advantages of Agile Recruiting
Traditional recruiting methods are bogged down by lengthy hiring processes and outdated procedures. Agile recruiting takes a fresh approach, streamlining the process and improving overall efficiency.
One of the key advantages of agile recruiting is its flexibility. Recruiters are able to pivot quickly and adjust hiring priorities, responding to changes in the market or company strategy. Agile recruiting improves the candidate experience, by providing quicker feedback and a more streamlined hiring process.
If you are debating on whether agile recruiting could work in your organization, you would benefit from assessing the four dysfunctions of recruiting. A simple assessment of their impact on your process will quickly tell you that agile recruiting is the answer for many of your recruiting problems.
Agile Recruiting Increases Efficiency
In today’s fast-paced business world, speed and efficiency is key.
Agile recruiting is focused on how to maximize recruiting efficiency. Recruiting top talent is critical to the success of any organization. Unfortunately the process can be quite arduous and resource-intensive.
Recruiters are forced to constantly strive to increase their efficiency. From automated systems to improved communication methods, there are a number of innovative ways recruiters can boost their productivity.
Agile Recruiting (Sprint Recruiting) is focused on how to improve the efficiency sprint over sprint. One of the success tips in agile recruiting are the daily stand ups and retrospective meetings. These provide a time for recruiters and hiring managers to identify ways to increase speed, quality and efficiency. However, traditional recruiting process typically do not have this regular cadence of meetings to provide such insight.
Hiring teams are required to assign a point value to prioritize roles within the sprint. This is the first step in enhancing recruiting using the agile methodology.
When it comes to making progress and achieving success, iterative improvement is key. This process involves taking small steps towards a larger goal, constantly evaluating and adjusting along the way. It is one of the key steps in applying agile methodology in recruiting.
The goal? Breaking down a complex task into smaller, more manageable parts. This allows recruiters to make steady progress towards the desired outcome. Iterative improvement allows for flexibility and adaptability in your processes. Changes can be made and mistakes to be learned from without derailing progress. By embracing the iterative process, individuals and teams can avoid feeling overwhelmed and instead focus on making meaningful progress.
Agile Recruiting Improves Collaboration
Collaboration has become more important than ever before.
Agile recruiting is designed to be a highly collaborative process. Hiring managers, key stakeholders and recruiters work together during the sprint to achieve a common goal. The client outlines the prioritization of the sprint and recruiters work to meet that definition of success. The difference is how the two work together.
In traditional recruiting methods, the hiring managers and recruiters are at odds. This is typically because they are not aligned on what is truly important. Once the prioritization takes place, the recruiters are able to lock in on what matters most to the client. Every movement within the process becomes focused on that definition of success.
At the end of the sprint, both hiring managers (or hiring teams) and the recruiters conduct a retrospective to discuss what went well and what didn’t. This highly collaborative process allows teams to work smarter, more collaboratively, and focused.
The collaborative approach and its benefits are one of the cornerstones of agile methodology in recruiting.
Faster feedback
In today’s fast-paced world, waiting for feedback can be frustrating and counterproductive. That’s why the need for faster feedback has become increasingly important in recruiting. Rapid feedback allows recruiters to adjust their strategies and improve their performance on the fly. This always leads to better results in less time.
Agile recruiting uses a 48 hour turnaround time on feedback. Managers are required to meet this deadline on candidates presented or interviewed. The WIP limits help retrain the managers who want to interview more candidates to provide quicker feedback.
I have found that when this rule is enforced, the time to hire drastically decreases. There is visibility on which roles are lagging because of a lack of feedback. The recruiter’s search strategies become more sophisticated and targeted when feedback is provided.
I have implemented agile recruiting in several organizations to date and the results are the same. Quicker feedback leads to quicker hires. This does not sacrifice candidate quality for speed. In fact, in many organizations, the quality of the candidates improves once this rule is enforced.
If you are interested in learning more about how feedback impacts the success of agile recruiting, you’re in luck. I have several posts on hiring manager feedback.
Actionable data
In today’s data-driven world, the term “actionable data” has become increasingly popular. But what does it actually mean?
In simplest terms, actionable data is information that is presented in a way that leads to informed decisions and actions. It’s not enough to simply have access to mountains of data. Without proper analysis and presentation, data can quickly become overwhelming and meaningless.
Agile recruiting provides unique data points to allow leaders to make data-informed decisions. Rather than tracking the same old useless recruiting metrics, agile recruiting looks at improvements every sprint. You will be able to learn what day in the sprint jobs are most commonly filled. There is a data point to track where you should be at every point in the sprint to be successful.
When I train organizations on agile recruiting, I use an analogy. Over time, agile recruiting allows recruiting leaders to become highly skilled doctors. They can evaluate the charts and other data visualizations and be able to make quick diagnosis of symptoms. It is a completely different style of management in agile recruiting and it’s all based on data.
How to get started with Agile Recruiting
The Agile Methodology provides recruiting teams a powerful tool to significantly improve their efficiency. If you are looking for ways to adopt agile recruiting, I can help.
I have implemented Agile Recruiting (Sprint Recruiting) as a practitioner and consultant for several organizations. I enjoy partnering with organizations and walking them through the success cycle of the process. If you are interested in learning more, please contact me to set up an initial consultation.
About me
and Sprint Recruiting
I joined the HR industry in 2004 after working as a sales leader in the Financial Services Industry for eight years. After spending his first couple of years in HR trying to fit in, I found my voice. Now I leverage all of the things I once hated about HR to become a consultant and invaluable partner to the businesses I support. I contribute to the HRGazzette and to DataDrivenInvestor on Medium. WARNING: my writing style is raw and in your face, not what you would expect from an HR executive.
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