In a survey of about 1,126 HR professionals, SparkHire found that 84% of companies are actively trying to improve time to hire. 87% of those working to improve this KPI confirmed their internal resources are insufficient to reach their hiring goals.
That’s where agile recruiting comes in.
This post will discuss what agile recruiting is all about and provide six useful adoption tips for your hiring team.
But first…
What is Agile Recruiting?
The agile methodology is a framework that allows software development teams to work in short, iterative cycles called “sprints.” These sprints take about two weeks, and each sprint focuses on a particular aspect of the entire project. That’s the inspiration behind agile recruiting.
Agile recruiting is a talent acquisition approach that uses short cycles in various aspects of the recruitment process. Typically, hiring teams treat various recruitment stages like planning, candidate outreach, interview, and selection as “sprints.”
After each sprint, the team reviews what worked and what didn’t. Then, they make improvements as they go. The aim is to speed up hiring while selecting the best-qualified candidate.
According to McKinsey, companies that have adopted agile methodologies see the following results:
- 30-point increase in employee engagement.
- 5–10x faster decision-making and change implementation, and
- 30% increase in operational performance by focusing on continuous improvement.
Agile recruitment is not left out of all these benefits.
With the agile recruitment strategy, teams are more flexible as they can adapt quickly to changes in hiring needs or market conditions. Also, recruiters can reprioritize tasks, modify evaluation criteria, and even adopt new strategies based on market trends.
Another benefit of the agile recruiting approach is that complex aspects of the recruitment process can be tackled as a series of smaller, more manageable tasks. This allows teams to better focus on core needs. In turn, they achieve better candidate matches and reduce cost/time-to-hire.
Also, since the agile process is faster, the candidate experience is better. For one, recruiters can send timely responses so applicants move seamlessly through the process.
6 Agile Recruiting Tips For Your Team
We’ll now discuss six agile recruitment tips that will transform your talent acquisition process.
1. Analyze Current Recruitment Process and Cycles
The first step in an agile recruiting strategy is to evaluate your current process.
Review each part of the recruitment cycle from job posting, sourcing, screening, interviewing, to onboarding. The aim is to identify strengths to harness and find loopholes that the agile framework can fix.
Look out for:
- Costs incurred
- Delayed processes
- Communication methods/gaps
Also, assess the effectiveness of current tools like Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) and Candidate Relationship Management (CRM) software.
Collect feedback from core leaders and run a companywide survey to uncover details that hiring teams may not notice. If you have new hires, ask for their feedback too. You’ll likely find useful insight to inform your agile recruitment process.
Also, use ATS and other recruitment tools to get quantitative data.
2. Introduce Iterative Time-Bound Sprints
Changes in organizational systems typically come with some resistance. So instead of making a full switch all at once, it’s better to introduce agile recruiting gradually. Iterative time-bound sprints are a good start.
Here’s what to do:
Consider starting with short sprints lasting 1-2 weeks. These sprints should focus on the highest-priority aspects of your hiring process. You can also target a more pressing role the organization needs to fill. Doing this limits the scope of change and makes it less overwhelming for the team.
In time-bound sprints, your team needs these regular meetings:
- Sprint planning session where you define recruitment goals, map out the project workflow, and assign responsibilities with clear expectations.
- Daily stand-ups: The team discusses plans for each day and highlights blockers that need to be addressed.
- Sprint reviews: The team discusses progress and gets feedback from other stakeholders, external and internal.
Keep in mind that the initial adoption stage might be slower as teams are still adjusting to this transition. Providing adequate support that can boost team performance over time will be helpful.
3. Implement Employee Cross-Training
Agile methods are characterized by cross-functional teams, meaning that everyone on the team can perform multiple functions. That’s why employee cross-training is needed.
With cross-training, you equip employees with skill sets outside their primary functions so they can effectively operate in the agile environment. For instance, a food and beverage PR agency might train its marketing team on recruitment practices, enabling them to assist with candidate screening and hiring for marketing roles.
Cross-training can also improve team collaboration and give each team member better perspectives on their tasks.
For effective cross-training, first run a training needs analysis to determine potential skill gaps that must be filled to help you reach your recruitment objectives. Then, create a structured program that your team can flow with. Mentoring, shadowing, workshops, and rotational assignments are great starters.
4. Encourage Collaboration and Feedback
Collaboration is essential for agile recruitment teams. It’s how you ensure recruiters, hiring managers, and other stakeholders are on the same page. So, for a successful agile recruitment run, make sure every potential hindrance to collaboration is addressed.
Frequent feedback allows for iterative improvement, another essential aspect of the agile framework.
Beyond the daily standups and sprint reviews mentioned earlier, what else can you do to improve collaboration and feedback?
- Build transparency. Make sure everyone involved in the hiring process has all the information they need, like candidate insights, progress reports, decision criteria, etc.
- Encourage open communication. Individuals should be comfortable sharing concerns and ideas even outside of scheduled meetings.
- Prioritize sprint retrospectives. While sprint reviews focus on gathering feedback about a specific task in your entire project. Retrospectives focus on improving processes and collaboration for future sprints. So, your team can address issues that may hinder the flow of future projects and agree on actionable improvements.
Collect and act on your feedback to ensure your agile recruitment process is constantly improving.
5. Set and Monitor KPIs
Monitoring recruitment KPIs (key performance indicators) allows you to assess the effectiveness of your agile framework. You get real-time insights to pinpoint issues and help your team improve recruitment strategies.
Major recruitment metrics to track include:
- Time to hire
- Cost per hire
- Quality of hire
- Offer acceptance rate
- Candidate satisfaction
- Hiring manager satisfaction
These metrics should help you track long-term success and pinpoint potential areas for improvement.
For example, if you notice you have a consistently long time-to-hire, you can work on improving things like your employer brand and creating targeted social campaigns and job ads. Effective employer branding can help you get more Instagram followers and LinkedIn connections with qualified candidates already interested in your brand. This gives you access to a bigger talent pool and can reduce your cost and time to hire significantly.
6. Analyze Performance for Areas of Improvement
Another important thing is to assess your team’s performance for improvement areas.
What should you check here?
- How well the team works
- Quality of team decisions
- Broader organizational factors that influenced the flow of work.
Ideally, your sprint retrospective meetings should help you uncover these. But you can always go deeper into your performance analysis.
Benchmark your process against industry standards to identify gaps. Compare your metrics and processes alongside similar organizations. This should show you how well you’re competing in the talent market. Insights from data providers or industry benchmark reports by top recruitment firms would be great sources to check. These reports can also help you identify new trends to adopt.
Conclusion
The agile recruiting methodology offers a smarter way to source candidates for vacant roles. For one, your team can work more effectively by breaking down the project into tasks that are more specific. They can also make faster hiring decisions and improve candidate experience.
If you’re ready to bring “agile” into your hiring process, start by analyzing your current process and cycles. Then, introduce short, time-bound recruiting sprints. Next, cross-train your team so they can support each other across tasks. Encourage collaboration and feedback to improve on the go. Also, set clear KPIs and track them. Finally, review your overall performance and continue to make improvements.
Get started with these and you’ll build a recruitment process that flows better and delivers quality results.
