The introduction of the Agile methodology during the 90s impacted more than just the tech industry it was conceived for. Agile adaptability and positive attributes attracted the attention of industries like education and Human Resources (HR). Of all Agile biggest fans and interpreters, the HR sector has mastered the art of infusing Agile in all its internal and external structures.
Specifically, the recruitment aspect of HR has gotten a complete makeover and changed the trajectory of recruitment forever. But before we get into looking at the differences we first have to know the basics of recruiting.
Recruitment is an important arm of HR, it is through the recruitment side of things organizations acquire, assess and evaluate talent. Traditionally, the recruitment process is characterized by identifying job vacancies; analyzing job requirements, reviewing applications, screening, shortlisting and selecting the right candidates.
The traditional way of recruiting is business-focused; it is fixated on handling hiring issues as they come. The old way of doing things is detached from organizations and the goal is to provide a hiring service to the business in need. The process is fixed and the resources are allocated on a timely basis, considering top-down forecasts of a business.
The traditional recruiting process presents candidates to recruiters at the very end of the process of sourcing and pre-screening. According to Kalyani Pantangi a senior HR Consultant, “As recruiters, we’ve all been in a situation where you do all the work just to be told that this type of candidate profile wasn’t really what the hiring manager had in mind.”
This way of operating shows a clear lack of frequent interaction between recruiters and hiring managers. The traditional route of the recruitment journey fatigues recruiters who can’t possibly keep up with the cycle of sourcing candidates and losing them over and over again.
Because of its importance recruitment is a full-time job that involves a high level of finesse and strategy. Organizations have individuals, called recruiters whose purpose is solely to focus on getting qualified candidates for job vacancies. For big organizations, it could be a team of recruiters and for smaller companies, it could be just one recruitment manager.
At its core recruitment is the foundation of any organization or business, it is through it, that organizations source their best and biggest resource, its human capital. Agile methodology’s influence has added to recruitment responsibilities and changed how organizations interact with individuals of interest or prospective candidates.
Agile recruiting is project management methodology infused. It utilizes technics like sprints; prioritizations of tickets and periodic feedback checkpoints to bring flexibility and efficiency to the recruiting team, and visibility to hiring managers. The cycle of Agile recruitment has more frequent touch points and shorter sprints. It places hiring managers in a more involved position in the process overall.
Agile recruitment has cross-collaboration across recruiters, hiring managers, and relevant stakeholders. All players involved in making the process a success are all included and up to date on the progress. The interaction between recruiters and hiring managers is frequent.
Agile recruiting does not have to wait until the very end of the process to get feedback. So presenting candidates’ profiles or resume to hiring managers and getting their feedback is done more often. The process is continuous, sourcing is done regularly based on bottom-up projections and this process also encourages staff redeployment, based on availability and need.
The goal of Agile recruiting is to focus on leading talent acquisition for an enterprise. In Agile recruitment the hiring is predictive, the ‘use market intelligence to tell the business what it needs’ method is employed. The focus of the agile recruitment process is Talent. Recruiters are working round the clock to assess what is needed, what are the weaknesses and how they can be addressed with the right talent at the right time.
The Benefits of Agile Recruitment
While Agile is still a fairly new concept in HR its benefits are clear to evident. In recruiting the benefits range from the process’ flexibility of workflow in accordance to requirements; to efficient communication, to optimized efforts by recruiting teams, to amplified efficiency that does away with bottlenecks that are counterproductive.
The Job as a Whole
Job recruiters are responsible for crafting job descriptions and updating them as they see fit. They are in charge of conjuring up new and better ways of sourcing candidates with the aid of methodology like Agile. They oversee the process of advertising for vacancies; going through applicants’ CVs, communicating responses to applications, running background checks, and conducting and evaluating interviews. Recruiters can even look within their organizations for talent to fill job openings.
Types of Recruiting in HR
Recruiters in HR can employ one of four methods; internal recruiting, retained recruiting, contingency recruiting and reverse recruiting. As the name suggests internal recruiting entails finding candidates within one’s organization. Retained recruiting is when an organization uses an external HR firm to cater to its hiring needs.
The external firm does the leg work and the seeking organization makes the decisions on whom to interview and take on. Contingency recruiting is similar to retained recruiting but in this case, there is more than one external HR firm. Lastly, reverse recruiting is when candidates actively pursue organizations they feel would be a good fit for them.
Like most things recruitment is evolving for the better; with faster, more effective and agile strategies being employed for satisfaction. It serves HR practitioners well to employ such methodologies and be on the lookout for further developments.
Authors: Kalyani Pantangi and Hazel Lifa
