Chapter 1: Introduction
What does the phrase "Lean Recruiting: bring to mind?
A small talent acquisition team making the most
of a limited budget.
Bare bones recruitment methods?
Lean recruiting has been adapted from the
concept of lean manufacturing, and it continuously improves the talent
acquisition process by eliminating waste and increasing efficiency.
Why exactly should recruiters focus on this
continuous improvement method?
We often discuss the importance of developing
consumer-quality career sites, and building talent pipeline. These strategies
take time and resources. Should talent acquisition leaders also continuously
monitor these efforts, and terminate with indifference those variables that are
consistently inefficient?
Sort of; recruitment strategies should not be
implemented and then unceremoniously tossed out the window; but HR leaders
should be fully prepared to review their efforts, acknowledge process that are
wasteful and unproductive, and make serious changes or adaptions in response.
In this chapter we will explain the concept of
lean recruiting and highlight three takeaways for your talent acquisition
strategy. This chapter is not intended to inspire you to completely change your
tomorrow; it’s meant to make you think
of recruiting process improvements from a different angle.
So What is Lean
Recruiting?
Lean manufacturing is a method for eliminating waste within
manufacturing process. Famously developed by Toyota in mid-1990s, some refer to
this system as “just in time” production. By reviewing and changing the
manufacturing process to remove inconsistent and overburdened workloads, waste
in reduces.
Toyota’s approach led to more flexible and adaptive
manufacturing system, focused on the values that customers are willing to pay
for. Talent acquisition leaders who see the global talent war as really a
competition over supply chain management can see the parallels here between
manufacturing and recruitment.
Typically supply chain transfer raw goods through the
manufacturing process and end with finished products a customer bu. The human
capital supply chain takes relationship and recruitment data and transform that
into candidates hiring manager choose from looking at the process on its most
basic level, recruiters more something of value (people) from a source to the
customer (employer)
So lean recruiting, review the talent acquisition process
as a whole, identify wasteful and inefficient components, and eliminate or
replace them.
But how exactly can recruiters implement these ideas into
their talent acquisition strategies?
1)
Strong Metrics and Talent Acquisition Strategies.
Lean recruitment starts with looking at your entire talent
acquisition strategies. What are the different process involved in filling an
open position? How are those processes tracked and measured?
Your recruitment methods need to be analyzed, adapted, sometimes
change entirely, to remain cost – effective and successful.
So first step is to establish of your talent acquisition
strategy, and determine the metrics you will use to monitor its success. Some
of the big sources of waste in lean recruitment include overproduction and over
processing. In lean recruiting, running too many process to source candidates,
and analyzing too much data, is more likely to hinder your results than improve
them.
2)
Recruitment Metrics and Strategy Review
At this stage
you need to review every component of your TA methods and identify area of
improvement. We already mentioned two important sources of waste in your human
capital supply chain. Now it’s time to look for defective production, motion
and waiting.
Waste from defects is pretty simple; something is not
working as it should and your team waste time and resources finding and fixing
the problem. This can lead to both motion (people and resources in action more
than is required) and waiting (interruptions to the system while waiting for
one process).
Is one of your job board expensive, but consistently
returning sub-par candidates?
Does your team spend too much time analyzing every data
point?
Are manager kept waiting too long before they can interview
quality candidates?
These are just few examples of waste that can arise. Taking
serious look at your process will help you eliminate inefficiencies and adapt
to changing trends.
3)
Continuous Improvement Based on Results
So you have established your recruitment strategy and the
metrics you will use to measure its success. You have reviewed the whole system
and found some genuine room for improvement. How do you move forward?
Change is hard, but if you can accept that not everything
will work perfectly the first time, you will end up with a much more flexible
talent acquisition strategy.
Inventory is an important source of waste to consider here.
Perhaps your team has spent a lot of time building up talent pipeline; but when
opening actually arises, most of those candidates have already found other
jobs.
Was it worth your time to develop the talent pipelines?
Some HR says no, or at least that talent pipelines are
leaky and inefficient if built incorrectly.
They point out that in IT, some managers bypass HR and
source their own candidates; much in the same way they use agile software development
to continuously improve their product. If your own colleagues are ignoring your
efforts to hire employees, it’s time to adapt your strategy. Let your ability
to strategize, execute and adapt based on the result demonstrate the true value
of your talent acquisition team.