Agile recruitment? Part 2

Here in Norway, particularly within business and technology, the word agile is on “everyone’s” lips. We hear about agile software development, agile project management, agile product development, agile growth, agile culture and much more. But! We hear little about agile recruitment or agile talent acquisition.

So today we discuss another four agile principles in brief and how they can affect how you secure the best talent for your company.

Building recruitment projects around highly motivated individuals. Even though most of us appreciate that recruiting good talent is essential for the success of a company, many still see recruitment as a bit of a chore and hassle. This results in less motivation and thus causes poor results. So it is essential that the whole organisation, from line manager to senior manager to talent acquisition are all motivated to ensure a process that secures the best talent. Candidates are primary measure of success. Yes, it is as simple as this. In other words, it helps little if you measure your success on how good and nice the processes, tools and methods are, if you are left without securing the best talent. Frequent face to face updates with candidate and recruiter. If the process drags on due to holidays, sickness or for other reasons, staying in touch with the candidate will keep the candidate warm and even strengthen their motivation for working in your company. A 10 minute video-chat costs “nothing” if it ensures you secure the best candidate. Simplicity is essential and this comes back to the point of over complicated processes, out of date tools and out of date methods.  The simpler you keep the process, yet without jeopardising the thoroughness the bigger chance it is for you to have more candidates in the pipeline and risk losing less candidates due to complicated processes.

And if you wondered, why is there no such thing as agile recruitment and agile talent acquisition?

Our co-founder, Erik Falk Hansen, has stated that he believes that the recruitment / headhunting industry has invested a vast amount of time and money into complicated tools and processes, and the worry is that “agile” would tear all these tools and processes apart. In many ways, Erik believes, the recruitment industry is scared of significant change.

 Rede People, previously AvantGarde Search, leads the way in being the driver for more modern and agile recruitment processes, in an industry often slow, overly structured and overly priced. In this series of 3 posts, we will share how the 12 agile principals can be tailored into recruitment practises that give your company a competitive advantage when it comes to securing the best people for your business.

So that was a very brief intro into another four agile principles that could, and should, be used when it comes to securing the best talent, irrespective of your company handling the recruitment yourself or if you use external suppliers.