Agile Recruiting: What’s in it for you?
2/10/2022
Agile Recruiting: What’s in it for you?
What is Agile Recruitment?
As obvious as it may seem to some, agile recruitment can be unknown to many a recruiter, and so it’s only right to begin by stating what Agile Recruitment is:
Agile Recruitment
/ˈæʤaɪl rɪˈkruːtmənt/
noun
A step by step process that uses sprints, prioritisation and periodic feedback to ensure hiring runs as smoothly and effectively as possible.
Hmm. Seems simple enough right?
It can actually be even more complicated than that, but simply put it’s an intelligent way of ensuring every important step is achieved with appropriate feedback whilst also ensuring positivity for everyone during the recruitment process.
Humble beginnings…
With its origin story as the iconic 2001 Agile Methodology (or the more technically correct ‘Manifesto for Agile Software Development’),the term Agile, from its software point of view, has become an irreplaceable technique which developers use for problem solving.
And it is since these humble beginnings, that agile recruitment has redefined how we recruit today. The desire to create a more responsive, efficient and less risky method meant generating a process based on these elements from the original methodology:
Individuals & interactions
Working software
Customer collaboration
Responding to Change
Now it may seem odd to consider these ideas with a hiring ideology in mind, but they work. Below is an (adaptable) process demonstrating Agile Recruitment within 6 steps:
Defining Job Requirements
This step can be defined as a pre-kickoff step, it’s the initial phase before you commit to the actual hiring process. This step is all about clearly identifying the job requirements, and setting clear expectations on your expected success.
2. Assembling a team
Much like a successful band, you’ll need a team to execute an effective process. A project owner and leader is needed to be responsible for execution and determining its success. This team can then branch out to find suitable staff to fill roles such as a recruiter, sourcer, recruitment assistant, and any other necessary members you may need.
With roles filled, responsibilities are then divided - an initial meeting can help outline the goal, expectations, task assignments, and workflows.
3. Sourcing candidates
This step can be considered the first major step in the actual hiring of new employees. Again it may seem intimidating but luckily these overarching tasks can be broken down into smaller segments to be as easy as possible.
Once complete, hold meetings to reflect on your progress and if necessary, refine your strategy.
4. Screening & scheduling
This phase enables the reviewing of hard data surrounding your outreach strategy. As a team, you review and shortlist the candidates to determine how the outcome aligns with your recruitment goal.
The process of shortlisting, screening, and scheduling preliminary interviews, again, demonstrates whether your method is heading in the right direction, and if not, then it’s time to re-plan.
5. Accepting / rejecting candidates
This stage is a continuation of step 4 and gives your team another chance for reviewing candidates that fit your criteria, and then refining your list.
Again, the whole process of agile recruitment is the reflection, so ensure you discuss how successful or unsuccessful your strategy is performing.
If you’re able to hire a candidate, congratulations! If not, then it’s time to cycle back to step 3 and refine your strategy further.
6. Reviewing your process
Finally, step 6 is all about closing out the agile recruiting process. It’s important to review how well that candidate performed and how they fit within your original goal. It is equally important to review key performance metrics and determine if your process was as efficient as possible.
What’s in it for me?
So now you’ve, hopefully, understood the general concept of agile recruitment, but you may still be wondering about its benefits. After all, it’s a challenging concept to incorporate if you already have set methods in place right?
Well, the perks of agile recruitment are not so far and few, and these are the points to make you consider using agile methods during your next recruitment:
It continuously improves your recruiting strategy by embedding the need for reflection, refinement, and data-driven decision-making.
It resolves common inefficiency problems surrounding systematic identification whilst also removing barriers in the hiring process.
It can lower the cost-per-hire and enables a more efficient use of resources.
You gain better candidate experiences by making the process faster, cohesive, and fairer.
You have flexibility in managing the projects, tactics and strategies.
You gain transparency through regular visibility and two-way communication around the progress, goals, and outcomes.
There is more prioritisation of effort as you empower team members to work on tactics and strategies.
It generates a collaborative culture through regular feedback and open communication.
Now what?
Okay, so you’re sold. Agile Recruitment is something you wish to bring back but you don’t know where to begin despite the ultra-informative article you’ve just read. Luckily, there is a simple solution: Leo.
Leo is an all-in-one agile recruitment CRM and ATS system designed by recruiters, for recruiters. Our mission is to create a future where only a singular, all encompassing utility is necessary for recruiters to succeed.
Leo is capable of email marketing, human resource management, candidate tracking, job posting, candidate engagement, client management, video messaging, sales management and unbiased recruiting.
So if everything you need and more is at the touch of your fingertips, why not book a demo today and see how you could recruit with ease!