Agile Recruitment: Is it Better than the Traditional Approach?

An effective recruitment approach will act as a foundation for your company to build teams of high performers. Many companies still prefer the traditional way of recruiting which, in some cases, is no longer viable in today’s VUCA environment. As a result, the organisations need an approach which can help them choose the right people faster and does not break the bank. This is where Agile recruitment comes in.  

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What is agile recruitment? 

Agile recruitment was established based on the Agile Methodology which is commonly used in software development. “Agile” in the world of software development is the collaboration, the lean and continuous result delivery. 

The concept is adapted to the recruitment context and is favoured by many HR professionals nowadays. Instead of diving into the sea of tasks and solving everything blindly as one giant project, the entire recruiting project is split into smaller, "bite-size" tasks, and each is given a designated time period for completion.  

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The goal is to create as many opportunities as possible for feedback, learning, iteration, and correction. As a result, the agile method of recruiting brings flexibility, efficiency as well as visibility to both the recruiting team and the hiring managers.

Agile recruiting vs. Traditional recruitment process 

Traditionally, the first step of the recruitment process is to identify the currently vacant positions, set up budgets for hiring new recruits, onboarding, and training.  

The next step is job analysis. Once done, a job description is drafted and then shared on various platforms to attract job seekers, such as newspapers, social media platforms, career sites or online job boards. After that, the recruiters collect CVs, screen shortlists and proceed to contact the qualified candidates for interviews.  

Subsequent tasks including background checks, draft offer letters, notify unsuccessful candidates, and conduct orientation and onboarding. The traditional method put a great emphasis on obtaining as many portfolios, CVs as possible via mass recruiting 

Read more: 3 Key Recruiting Challenges Facing Vietnamese Businesses Today

On the other hand, agile recruiting focuses on finding the most suitable candidates first prior to recruiting, identifying a series of performance objectives instead of listing out skills and experiences. 

With agile recruiting, various “checkpoints” are established to ensure that the hiring team is in the right direction. By dividing up the hiring projects and set clear time goals, the team can get instant feedback from the hiring manager whether the job description, the candidate's profile or the recruiting method is up to par with the managers' requirements.  

Agile recruiting is particularly valuable when you have multiple complex and vacant positions that need to be filled but the requirements are not yet well understood. This method also keeps the hiring team focused.  

Compared to traditional hiring, agile recruitment strongly focusses on the preparatory process instead of concentrating on the specific goal. An agile approach might support a business to hire more suitable people in a shorter time and with less administrative overhead.

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The benefits of agile recruitment  

Speed up the recruitment process  

The slow recruitment process can negatively affect both the candidate experiences and the recruiter experiences. The recruiters can lose the star candidates because the recruitment process took too long. 

As agile recruiting involves frequent feedback at the pre-determined checkpoints, it has enabled the necessary actions to be drawn much faster, making the hiring managers engaged throughout the entire project. 

Enhance team collaboration 

Agile recruitment allows the employees to communicate constantly and regularly to improve the collaboration between the recruiters and hiring managers, or between the recruiters and the job seekers. Collaboration is the key to keep the motivation of everyone on the team.  

Instant feedback  

Unlike the traditional recruiting process, agile recruitment does not wait until the end of the process of sourcing and pre-screening to get feedback, it is done more often. This means when you finish your target, you can re-focus and re-target to save both of yours and the candidates’ time.