Concise Guide to Strategic RecruitmentPart 2: Defining a Strategy
With the skill canvas completed, it is now time to progress to the next step of the process: evaluating the constraints that will shape the recruitment strategy.
Contents
Constraints Deadlines Team Availability Financial Considerations
Thoroughness vs Brevity The Game Plan Next Steps
Constraints
Recruitment endeavors are invariably bound by a range of resource constraints. Understanding them is crucial as it enables the development of a targeted and effective recruitment strategy, greatly enhancing the chances of success.
Deadlines
Deadlines pertain to the time available before a new employee should integrate into the team and start working independently or semi-independently.
When faced with a tight deadline, the time required for candidates to acquire any missing teachable core skills should be taken into account. This duration should be factored into their potential start date and if this timeframe exceeds the deadline, we must prioritize testing teachable core skills with heightened confidence, as we may not have the luxury of providing extensive training later on.
Strict deadlines also impose time limitations on the entire recruitment process. Insufficient time might hinder our ability to interview an adequate number of candidates, potentially resulting in choosing from a suboptimal talent pool. To mitigate this, there are two approaches:
- Employing multiple teams to work on parts of the recruitment process simultaneously, albeit with potential trade-offs in consistency.
- Reducing the thoroughness of the process in regards to the auxiliary and tangent skills specified in the skill canvas.
Team Availability
Another significant constraint revolves around the availability of the team members responsible for conducting interviews. Often, these individuals are extensively involved in core business operations and may lack sufficient time for recruitment activities.
Furthermore, they might not have the optimal interviewing skillset as it is usually different than the one required for their primary roles.
To address this constraint, several strategies can be implemented.
- Outsourcing certain aspects of the recruitment process enables existing team members to focus on the core business of the organization.
- Additional personnel can be trained for the purpose of conducting interviews.
- While it is beneficial to involve the most highly experienced and valuable team members in the recruitment process, their expertise in the core business may not be an absolute necessity and other personnel can be involved instead.
Financial Considerations
Tight financial constraints within the recruitment process can impose certain limitations.
While it may be desirable to minimize the outsourced elements of the process, this approach can negatively affect team availability.
Furthermore, financial constraints may cause external training to become impractical, leading to a need for increased confidence in evaluating externally teachable core skills. However, achieving this confidence comes with the trade-off of heightened thoroughness.
Thoroughness vs Brevity
The length of the interview process directly influences the ability to accurately assess the suitability of applicants. In essence, dedicating more time to each application reduces the number of candidates that can be interviewed, potentially diminishing the chances of finding the best fit. Conversely, allocating insufficient time may result in overlooking potentially exceptional candidates.
Additionally, candidates often continue to apply for positions at other organizations until they receive a satisfactory job offer. If an offer arises during the interview process, it is highly unlikely that they will complete it.
Fortunately, increasing the thoroughness of the recruitment process beyond a certain point yields diminishing returns. By carefully planning and considering the process, we can strike a balance that is both reasonably concise and ensures a high level of confidence in skill evaluation.
The Game Plan
Having acknowledged our requirements and constraints, it is time to articulate a strategy. This typically involves the following components:
- Determining the number of candidates to be interviewed and allocating appropriate time for each one.
- Establishing the desired confidence level for testing each skill outlined in the skill canvas.
- Identifying the assessment methods for each skill, specifying the stage(s) of the process capable of conducting them with the required confidence.
- Assigning responsibilities to individuals or teams for each phase of the recruitment process.
- Formulating a plan for training and onboarding the newly hired employees.
Once these components are defined, the recruitment process can be treated as any other project and similar project management techniques can be applied to ensure its smooth execution.
Next Steps
In the subsequent section, we will delve into some of the crucial steps of the recruitment process and explore how they can be leveraged to execute our strategy effectively.
Specifically, we will discuss the science of crafting job descriptions in a manner that maximizes our chances of attracting the right candidates.