We're Getting Out of Reactive Mode

from ERE Exchange by Michael Goldberg

Jun 5, 2009, 5:22 am ET

Our
recruiting team has been examining its existing processes. This
evaluation discovered that even though a firm foundation existed, each
recruiter managed the recruiting life cycle differently. With this
realization, each recruiter was charged with blueprinting their
individual process. They presented their findings and through a
collaborative workshop, developed a uniform recruiting workflow that
created standardization at each critical recruiting touch-point. They
also focused on increasing and improving dialogue with the hiring
managers.

The impact of these changes, which I'm writing about in the July/August issue of the Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership,
resulted in the team's ability to deliver a consistent and recognizable
recruiting experience, facilitate increased communication opportunities
with hiring managers regarding their position/candidate status, deliver
a consistent approach from which accurate and objective metrics can be
applied, and allow for dynamic job postings (which increase candidate
interest more than standard static postings).

With the process reengineered and hiring managers fully engaged, the
recruiting team had a better understanding of the positions they were
working on and are able to more quickly respond to the managers' needs.
This positioning allowed for the final phase of the process improvement
effort: pipelining talent. With a better understanding of our business
owners' needs and a process that dramatically shortened our time to
fill, the recruiters were able to become proactive instead of reactive.

The team used its newly acquired knowledge to begin pipelining
efforts to strategically source frequently needed talent. The
pipelining implementation started by targeting critical business areas
such as Sales and Operations. Pipelining talent required new skills to
be developed and used by the recruiting team. Time was spent shifting
the current mindset from "filling" to "sourcing," asking probing
questions about a candidate's potential versus ability to perform a
specific task, and creating relationships versus selling a position
(see the graphic).

Recruiters began to research candidates through various sourcing
methods, developed comprehensive search strings, and continued to work
with our internal business partners to anticipate future openings for
these newly sourced individuals.

This focus on our sourcing efforts resulted in a 30% increase in visits to our careers site in a one-year period and an increase in our applicant pool by 23% in the same period of time.

With the process streamlined and the support systems in alignment
with the overall strategy, the next area the recruiting team addressed
was education and training. Training was focused on hiring managers.
The first deliverable for this group was the creation of an online
Hiring Managers Guide that was accessible to all Freeman managers and
supervisors.

The guide clearly articulated Freeman's hiring process, and provided
helpful interview techniques and document templates for use throughout
the hiring process. Immediately following the deployment of the hiring
guide was a series of recruiting webinars which covered topics on our
company's hiring process, available recruiting resources, interviewing
techniques, and specialized sessions - such as "Face-to-Face Interview
Techniques" - focused on building the managers' recruiting skill-sets.

With the goal of improving the partnering relationship, each hiring
manager was given a survey to establish a delivery expectation baseline
from which recruiting goals would be developed. A SWOT analysis was
also completed. The newly initiated partnering approach resulted in a
94% overall recruiting department satisfaction rate.

As I mentioned above, I'll talk more about it in the July/August Journal.