Agile Recruiting and 3 simple steps to implement

Two items on every recruiter’s wishlist are more efficient processes, and the ability to hire the right-fit consistently. With an agile recruiting approach this can be a reality. In this article we shall take a look at the roadblocks that occur in-house, as well as the 3 simple steps that can streamline recruitment, making it a positive experience for all stakeholders.

Common challenges of recruiting 

A common issue that can cause time loss and a poor candidate fit is a lack of clarity across the board. The manager responsible for recruiting is unclear on what is expected from the role. There may be a lack of awareness of the state of the current hiring market; what candidates are available and the expectations they have of a future employer. Also there can be a knowledge gap with what the current team requires from a new member. Hence, it is important to ensure that the new addition will enable the whole team to do their job to the best of their ability.

How Agile Recruiting can help

Overall an agile approach to recruiting can ensure clarity with what the team needs and therefore have a clear understanding of the ideal candidate. This removes time wasted  interviewing and potentially hiring a poor fit for the role. Then, when engaging with external hiring managers you will be confident in knowing that they are basing their candidate sourcing off a well defined brief and only bringing forward individuals that will satisfy your business needs. Streamlining your hiring process, ensures you continue to achieve the goals set and grow as a company with the right people on the team. 

Implementing Agile Recruiting

Setting Agile Recruiting in motion can be a rather straightforward process if it is done right. Following the below steps will surely help.

Step 1 - Research

Determine the missing capabilities within the team. Take the time to align with the entire team to discuss in detail which areas are lacking, check if these capabilities need to be sourced internally through training or externally by recruiting candidates with missing skills. 

Once the team decides that hiring a person is the way forward, researching the current recruiting market is what follows. This part of the process is where expectations meet reality; you may be searching for a Senior ML/AI/NLP Engineer with JavaScript expertise and this collection of skills may not exist in one candidate alone, resulting in hiring two people.  

Some key research points to cover: 

• Titles and job descriptions. 
• What type of people are typically in this role.
• Compare job profiles and individuals’ profiles hired to similar jobs. 
• Reach out to people to ask them about their experience in the role and to see if it is an accurate reflection of what you are looking for.

Step 2 - Ideal candidate persona

From your research and team brainstorming session generate an aggregated persona of the ideal new team member. 

Elements to include: 

• Motivation: what drives this person? 
• Key goals: what should they be able to achieve once they are onboarded? 
• Focus areas: what are their skills and what will their day-to-day activities be? 
• Personality: what type of person fits best in this team? 
• Nice to have: what are the attributes and skills that are worth having in mind? 

Step 3 - Need help? Outsource

This may seem like a lot of work for a manager and team to undertake but thankfully outsourcing fits well with agile recruiting. Whilst it is important to brainstorm and create the candidate persona within the team, by collaborating with external recruiting managers the market research and candidate sourcing can be outsourced. Once the recruiting managers have interviewed and collated a shortlist of suitable candidates they will provide you with a scorecard and recommendations, so that you can quickly assess the candidate's capabilities and decide if you would like to proceed with a culture fit interview. 

If you are looking to implement agile recruiting and speed up your hiring process then speak with one of our recruiting experts. Find us here: https://expertlead.com/expertmatch