Nine days to hire

In June we had the pleasure of setting an all-time record in relation to solving a recruitment project. This time it was with one of our amazing technology clients in Stavanger who needed to make a hire within their commercial team.

I received a phone call mid-June from the client and with our focus on agile services, there was no reason to wait to get started. In other words, I decided to hit the ground running as soon as the phone call finished. Guess what? It took only a total of nine days from we started working on the recruitment project until the candidate had signed and accepted.

Today, I want to share how your company can benefit from implementing agile principles to your recruitment processes. And the benefits are huge:

• Higher chance of not losing candidates due to longwinded processes
• Strengthen your company′s employer brand 
• Save time and cost

Companies often contact us because they do not have a person on their “to-hire-list” or the extended network required to find the best talent quickly. In those instances, we stress to the company that that urgency and agility is an absolute requirement to secure the best of the best within the shortest amount of time.

So, what needs to be in place in order to achieve a fast and agile process?

• Don`t waste time in delaying the start of the process. Start as soon as you can
• Be prepared for quick turnaround in relation to reviewing CV`s, sending out prospect and hosting interviews
• Clear your calendar. Give recruitment a priority and commit to it
• Use mini sprints to work out what will give you the best results
• Create a detailed prospect of the position that you send to all relevant candidates, thus saving time in relation to screening and interest (more information, less questions)
• Reject candidates as you go along
• Move candidates into the process as soon as he or she applies
• Ask candidate(s) if you can call references in between interview 1 and 2
• Send details of job offer to candidate prior to creating full contract
• Always be open to learn and adjust

There are also other things you can do in order to speed up the processes and the below you can actually do well in advance:

• Create default invitation emails for interview invitations
• Create the base of the prospect
• Create the base of the advertisement
• Create the base of the rejection email

This time we managed to complete the project within nine days. Some may perhaps question how you can achieve the highest level of quality? Well, within these nine days we had a process that contained all the stages in which a 5-6 weeks recruitment process involves: prospect issued, screening, interview 1, interview 2, references, offer & accept.

Hopefully this will give you some pointers on your next hire. Let me finish of with another thing I've learned so far in recruitment and what motivates me to move fast:

As soon as a company decides to hire, the wish they hired yesterday. As soon as the candidate wants a new job, he or she wants to start tomorrow.