The Agile Talent Acquisition scrum for trello board (published on June 24, 2020 on Trello) outlines the recruitment workflow that recruiters, talent acquisition specialists and HR professionals can use in their respective organizations.
Growth Mindset in Talent Acquisition
It is essential for People Operations professionals, especially talent acquisition specialists, to constantly source and retain individuals that are flexible to change and constantly seeking opportunities for progress in order to ensure success in organisations. They need to source individuals with the frame of mind that embraces learning, growth and improvement. Talent acquisition specialists are mainly accountable for the long-term recruitment, development and retaining of talent required to contribute to the future success of the organisation.
The recruitment aspect of people operations can play an essential role in identifying individuals with a Growth Mindset from the employment interview and assessment phases. Individuals with a Growth Mindset are accepting of change, broad-minded, observant, and willing to learn and transfer information. People operations professionals need to use these characteristics as a benchmark to recruitment of individuals as well as offer incentive to keep individuals happy and encouraged.
During the interview phase, people operations professionals can identify individuals with a Growth Mindset based on the type of questions asked by the candidate. They need to be cognisant of the questions that reveal that the candidate is inquisitive, seeking growth and advancement. People operations professionals can ask behavioural and adaptability interview questions to identify individuals with a Growth Mindset, this can be done by questioning candidates to assess how receptive they are to challenges and, they dealt with change and failure in the past. People operations professionals can use pre-employment assessments as a tool to identify individuals with a Growth Mindset, by using assessments such as individual adaptability assessments, cognitive aptitude tests and personality tests that evaluate an individual’s adaptability to change and willingness to learn.
People with a Growth Mindset believe that intellectual capabilities can be learned and developed at any stage in life . People operations professionals can help instil this mentality in their new and existing talent by applying their organisational development, and learning and development expertise. In terms of organisational development, people operations professionals change management techniques such as culture mapping, Kotter’s eight step change model, Kurt Lewin’s change model and ADKAR analysis. People operations professionals can apply their learning and development expertise to help cultivate a culture of learning and change this can be done by providing e-learning and training and development opportunities. People Ops professionals can ease the shift from a rigid way of thinking and help retain talent with a Growth Mindset by recognising and rewarding employees’ efforts, creating a culture that values feedback and promoting learning opportunities. Employees need to feel safe in their effort to grow and adapt, talent needs to be welcomed as well as treated with all integrity and care to reach their full potential.
In all it’s promise, Growth Mindset will reshape our future and benefit individuals from a work and well as a mental health perspective creating a progressive and healthy world.
Talent Acquisition Framework– Are You Agile Ready?
The war for talent acquisition framework continues. Companies are still grappling to gain a foothold in hiring the right talent within a short cycle time, amidst internal and external organizational turbulence. Why? What are those factors causing the hindrance?
Traditional hiring process is time consuming – skills and capabilities required for open requisitions are not whittled down to essentials, candidate application forms are not user-friendly, turnaround time between interview and offer roll out is huge, lack of timely collaboration across Talent Acquisition dyads (hiring managers and recruiters), and lack of timely feedback to candidates. Any or all of these factors negatively impact hiring efficiency, employer brand and talent experience.
Agile methodology is one of the major trends, now being applied to TA process. Prioritization, execution of work in short time-boxed cycles called ‘sprints’, a collaboration between cross-functional teams, reviews and retrospectives at the end of each sprint are some of the agile practices that are integrated with the TA cycle.
Implementing agility reduces cycle time, reduces costs, experiences positive talent with a major emphasis on creating opportunities for talent engagement during the talent acquisition cycle, and helps strengthen the employer brand Is found.
Agile talent acquisition
Interpersonal collaboration, constant feedback culture and open communication, thus creates value for employers and candidates.
The traditional process cannot be made agile by thinking only through these. The talent acquisition team needs to develop an agile mindset, follow some key principles, behave, and take the following actions:
- Conduct intake meetings and strategy with key stakeholders and leaders to obtain clarity on open requisitions and whittle out essential skills and capabilities
- Set a goal for talent fulfillment within a short cycle time
- Growth hacking techniques to source, screen and assess talent
- Pay attention to talents’ attitude and their zeal for learning, instead of screening ‘only’ for education and/or experience
- Implement Lean, Agile methodology to eliminate inefficiency and deliver higher value
- Participate in sprint ceremonies and operate as a cross-functional collaboration team
- Leverage technology to maximize Talent Acquisition phases and overall process
- Set up metrics and indicators (quantitative and qualitative) and for every sprint evaluate the Talent Acquisition cycle progress
- Develop courage and commitment to collect timely feedback from the hiring team
- Share feedback with candidates on a timely basis
- Practice open transparent communication flow within teams and between candidates and Talent Acquisition team
- Strive toward continuous learning
- Enhance employer brand value by nurturing positive talent engagement experience
When lean agile concepts are integrated into the talent acquisition process, Agile promotes agile acquisition profiling.
Curious to know about Agile talent acquisition framework process and practices, along with the functionalities and specific roles? click here to enroll for (APF CTC)™ or (APF CTSM)™ courses.
The Success Factors in Talent Acquisition
Agile talent acquisition espouses cross-collaboration, continuous feedback culture and open communication, thus creating value for employer and candidates which helps to succeed organization.
Research | Early decisions made by talent on job acceptance
Robust research conducted by Robert Half and well explicated by ERE.net highlight astonishing data about early decisions made by talent (aka candidates) on job acceptance
- Only 9% of talent wait until they have completed their interviews, to make a job acceptance
- 7% of talent hold their job acceptance decision until contract negotiation phase
- Remaining 74% of talent make early decisions of “I do want this position” or “I don’t want this position”
Organizational leaders and HR Practitioner(s) need to redefine their company’s talent-strategies and processes, if they want to nurture positive experience and engagement with their talent, and create an effective employer branding in today’s ‘war for talent’ market.
The Rise of Agile Work Practices in Talent Acquisition
Agile HR is the application of “agility” to the function of Human Resource Management.
Agility here means developing nimble & responsive management practices that involve constant feedback loops, and teams working in short work cycles & engaging in frequent retrospectives.
The concept of “agile-methodology” came into being during the 1990s in the area of software development. The developers wanted a flexible (agile) solution for the stumbling blocks they were facing in the process of software development.
Over time, it has become a widely recognized management method across various functions, departments, and industries, adopting a proactive approach rather than a reactive one.
