What can Talent Acquisition Teams Learn from a TV Chef?

The other day I watched a famous TV Chef make the Italian classic, Spaghetti Bolognese.?He appeared ‘screen-ready’, with the exact utensils and ingredients he intended to use, all laid neatly in front of him.?The pots and pans were ‘stage-ready’ on the hob, ready to be whipped to use, just in time.

This got me thinking about the Japanese #justintime (JIT) philosophy made popular by Toyota in the 1970’s.?I learned about JIT when studying Economics at University. I remember thinking how cool it was that cars could be produced in a lean fashion and in record time to meet customer demands ‘just-in-time’. ??Of course, since then our lives, expectations and consumer habits revolve around JIT products hence the rise of the entire ‘last-mile’ industry. ?

Think Amazon, Deliveroo, and the host of apps that deliver everything from milk to petrol, #justintime .

So, what can Talent Acquisition (TA) teams and leaders learn from organised Chefs who cook using #justintime philosophy?

Grab a cuppa tea, and let’s weave through kitchen analogies and recruitment scenarios, to serve up something palatable.

Prepping the Kitchen

Cooking a meal with pre-prepared ingredients on the counter, clearly makes things easier for any Chef.?Imagine grabbing what you need when you need it.?Organised Chefs can plan their ‘kitchen-time’ with precision and minimise unpredictable outcomes (eg: missing ingredients).

Switching to the recruitment world, how strategic are companies with their hiring plans? How prepared are Leaders and Talent Acquisition teams prior to a job becoming live? ?Of course, there will always be unplanned attrition, though does it need to take us by surprise entirely??

In an ideal world, companies would invest in building a long and healthy #talentpipeline (particularly for evergreen, niche/technical roles.).?This would then replenish their #talentpool , allowing them to locate talent fast and reduce time-to-hire.

Given that 77% of recruiters go back to their #talentpool to hire candidates that initially didn’t appear to ‘fit’ the job (Jobvite Recruiter), I’d want to know about the quality and depth of the #talentpool they ‘go back to’. ?

According to Jobvite’s 2018 research, 75% of recruiters experienced candidates changing their mind when it came to offer acceptance.?This isn’t a new phenomenon even if the research is circa 4 years old.?What it shows is that recruiters desperately need to ensure they are building a strong enough #talentpipeline and #talentpool , to be able to ‘go back’ and ‘recheck’ candidates after their initial choices reject offers.

Building talent pipelines is a smart pre-curser to all hiring.?

With a healthy #talentpipeline , companies can create qualified talent pools to dip into JIT.

Just like pre-preparing ingredients, so cooking is a whizz!

Chopping Veg and Recruiting

Let’s bounce back to our TV Chef and imagine the planning and preparation that goes into cooking on a TV show.?As the cameras roll, there can only be a certain number of retakes when the onions are already sizzling and spluttering………………Golden-brown not chargrilled please Chef!

Consider the steps our Spag-Bol Chef (or his production team) went through before the camera take.?Someone prepared a shopping list. ?Someone scoured and shopped for the ingredients in the exact quantities needed. Someone ensured the correct utensils, pots and pans etc were all at hand.??Someone washed, peeled and chopped the onions and tomatoes. Someone grated the parmesan and placed all the ingredients in pretty-looking bowls. Someone checked the appliances, cleaned the kitchen, pre-heated the oven. Someone filmed and edited the show etc.??

The time-consuming pre-prep, non-glam, often thank-less part of the job, draws parallels with ‘top of funnel’ #talentresearch and #sourcing elements of #recruitment activities. ?

I mean before a perfect candidate can be presented, someone has to do #candidateresearch , #mapping , #sourcing , #talentengagement , #qualifying and #shortlisting . ?

And let’s face it, this is the super time-consuming part of #recruitment , which must remain ‘switched on’, if #recruitment is an ongoing activity within an organisation.

According to research (McLean & Company), #recruiting has remained a No 1 priority for companies since 2020 to date.?However, HR, #talentacquisition effectiveness has gone down by 8%, even though #talentacquisition teams are spending 25% more time on talent acquisition compared to 2021.

So why are TA teams less effective despite spending more time on #recruitment activities?

Or put another way, what recruitment activities are draining recruiters’ time to make them less effective?

Efficiency

I watched Spag-Bol Chef with ‘envy-eyes’ wishing life in the ‘real kitchen’ was as easy as he made it look.?Wouldn’t it be great if we all had helping hands lining up bowls of chopped, sliced, diced, and grated ingredients, exactly when we wanted them, in the exact quantities and temperatures required….JIT baby!

How incredible would it be to have everything pre-prepared and laid out, as one tries to rustle up the kid’s dinner whilst the dog whines to be walked.?

In reality any of us home-Chefs can follow the TV-Chef’s example and aim to arrange our cooking activities in such a way, so our dish is cooked with efficiency.

Though also in reality, many of us well-meaning (but somewhat disorganised) home-Chefs sometimes begin cooking only to realise a key ingredient is missing or our knives are so blunt that our onions resemble chunky cuboids over tidy dices.

Perhaps most can agree that pre-preparation is key when it comes to meal-planning.

So how does all this cookery-malarkey relate to #talentacquisition ?

Recruiting and Cooking

An organised Chef can teach Talent Acquisition teams, Hiring Managers and Leaders a great deal about #talentresearch and strategic #talentpipelining .?If Talent Acquisition teams used their time, resources and bandwidth to create #talentpipelines strategically, then like the Chef’s ready-prepared bowls of ingredients, they could aim to create ready-made #talentpools .

With a well-defined level of preparedness, Talent Acquisition teams could dip into their pre-created #talentpools to engage with talent with the right skill set, at the right salary level, within the right locations, who are ideally ‘warmed-up’ and ready for #engagement , just in time.?

This is how some of my super strategic clients design their #recruitment processes. ?It can be done, if hiring is prioritised across the board and the right skills deployed on the right tasks.

With ready-made #talentpools that have either a) been pre-prepared some time ago or b) prepared in record time #ondemand , response rates and #timetohire can be shortened.?

Since recruitment (and the cost of making a wrong hire) can be eye-watering, activities focusing on reducing open ‘vacancy days’ should be front and centre.

Research shows that 55% of companies who keep #hiring ‘switched on’ consistently slash their #timetohire (Accurate). This makes total sense, since their #talentpipeline is constantly moving, their #talentpool is refreshed on a real-time basis.?

Done well, streamlined #talentacquisition activities can become the game-changing strategy that enable organisations to win more work and scale.?

On the other hand, if companies turn away work, due to not having the right people just in time, then someone needs to whip out the magnifying glass and look at the entire span of #recruitment activities and #retentionstrategies and culture.

When countries like Singapore have headlines stating that “Manpower (shortages) will pose challenges to growth in the longer term” (Singapore National Employers Federation- SNEF President Robert Yap -April 22), leaders really need to dissect how macro policies will impact micro-level hiring, and strategise around it.

Chaotic ‘Kitchen’

Imagine how the busy #talentacquisition and #recruiter feels when various stakeholders ask them to hire talent across divisions, in multiples of x, with an urgency of ‘tomorrow’. Worse still, if the #talentacquisition team has limited budget, tools, skills and experience, and/or a lack of a decent #ATS system, then #talentresearching , #mapping , #shortlisting , #sourcing and #engagingpeople is like running a sprint shackled to the hilt.?Goodluck with that. ?

This explains why 4 out of 5 of the #recruitment challenges companies faced during the pandemic have put #talentacquisition teams on the back-foot.?According to TalentLyft’s 2020 research, #recruiters top 5 challenges were:

1) Volume hiring

2) Difficulties filling jobs,

3) Digitisation of #recruitment

4) Hiring budgets cut ?

5) Firing staff

If hiring budgets are cut, clearly this sends ripples throughout the entire #recruitmentprocess , ending in an eruption somewhere off the Richter scale.

Using our Chef analogy, it’s obvious that a Chef with limited ingredients in tight quantities can only do so much, regardless of skill. ?

Extra Hands- Light Work

Some companies engage external partners to help build their #talentpipline and #talentpools .?This makes total sense when bandwidth (and sometimes skills) are challenged.?However partnering with external specialists needs to be done with a careful lens on ROI (another article for another day).

Though when Linkedin research tells us that 89% of #talent accept jobs faster when contacted by a #recruiter , it’s probably wise to have #recruiters (internal/external) partnering with you and helping with outreach.

At the same time when we hear that 40% of employers kept their #recruitmentprocess in-house to save on costs (LinkedIn, 2019), you kind of wonder if the whole ‘penny wise pound foolish’ scenario would ultimately play out.?

I mean sure, you could ‘save’ costs by #outsourcing less, but what if the result is increased #timetohire , how much would that cost? If #vacancies remain open longer, then what is the daily cost of that ‘hole’ internally and on other colleagues taking up the slack?

What if the inability to #recruit fast enough, results in your business not being able to pitch or win work??How does that impact growth?

‘No money, no honey’ comes to mind.

Here, data and diagnostics, with a keen eye on ROI should be applied, instead of a blanket ‘in-house’ only policy.

?

Rolling Boulders Uphill

I have seen many #talentacquisition teams buckle under the weight of rolling lofty boulders uphill.?It’s a common theme to see internal stakeholders adding their talent requirements to the ‘shopping list’, at disproportionate levels to providing the necessary support and resources for #talentacquisition teams to actually deliver. ?

I mean just because the shopping list is huge, doesn’t mean the load can actually be carried efficiently, even if there is an army of in-house recruiters.

And if #recruiters are spending more time on #recruitment activities but being less effective, then it doesn’t really matter how many open jobs the company has. The outcome will be increased #timetohire , and eventually an unhappy team member.

Activities must be viewed strategically, with bold leaders performing pattern-interrupts, and possibly entire pattern-disrupts on parts of their hiring process.

It’s Their Job!

Sure, TA teams are hired to #gotomarket and undertake #talentresearch , #outreach , #source , #talentengagement , #shortlist , #interview and submit #candidates to their stakeholders. It’s their job!

But if an individual/team hasn’t been sufficiently ‘enabled’ to carry out those time-consuming tasks, then it’s no surprise when CVs can’t be submitted in time (forget about #justintime for the moment).?

Who does a better job at creating talent pipelines, an enabled Talent Acquisition team or a restricted one?

It’s not that #talentacquisition teams aren’t capable, quite the contrary.?It’s about looking at the activities they have to perform, and figuring out where time is best spent.?

More time spent on #recruiting doesn’t always result in equitable output.?It depends ‘where’ the time is being spent.

There are certain parts of a job that may be best performed by someone else. In the TV-Chef analogy, the Chef may be better at cooking than filming/editing his own show.?Likewise, a #recruiter may be better at #talentengagement than researching/sourcing. #talentresearch and #sourcing activities require different skillsets entirely.

Where should #talentacquisition teams focus their time? Where is the #ROI best crystalised??How can #talentacquisition teams be more streamlined and look at all activities to drive #justintime efficiencies into their #recruitmentprocess ??

The question isn’t ‘Can this be done in-house’, the question is ‘Should it all be done in-house’?

I’m fortunate enough to have a cleaner to help me manage my home. It’s not that I can’t clean the house myself, the question is should I clean, or free up those hours by outsourcing, so I can spend more time with my kids instead??

One may be able to do the entire gamut of recruiting activities, but should they?

Hot Market

Imagine a hot #talent market where everyone wants to attract the same skills in the same place. #Recruiting in a tight talent market requires different skills all together.?Finding #talent is not the issue (anyone can search Linkedin). Attracting #talent is a different story altogether.

This requires innovative #recruitmentstrategies (everyone and their dog is trawling Linkedin, sending stale vanilla InMail’s).??

How is an overburdened (hopefully not burnt-out) #talentacquisition team supposed to go up against competitors, plus other #recruitmentagencies and #headhunters (who are specifically trained to hunt heads) in a hot market looking for the same skill set, in the same market at the same time?

And no, having a Linkedin Recruiter licence isn’t the holy grail to #talentresearch and #sourcingtalent , when everyone is doing the same thing and candidates are inundated with messages.???

Supermarket Mayhem

Taking our Chef example, reactive #recruitment is akin to starting to cook a dish, only to realise you have missing ingredients, causing you to rush out to buy the missing ingredients, the same time as everyone else, in the same store, at the same time.?That’s mayhem!

Now imagine if there is only 1 unit of that ingredient left on the shelf.?Fastest (aka most enabled), and sometimes most 'aggressive' (aka most persistent) Chef wins!

Or imagine if one store is ‘out of stock’, then the Chefs need to run around finding other suppliers, or just delay cooking the dish all together.?Not ideal if you are expecting guests in the evening.

This is no different to what challenged #talentacquisition teams do, when they are on the back-foot having to source talent with urgency and limited resources with no/limited/stale #talentpipelines and #talentpools to refer to. ?

It’s not uncommon to see #talentacquisition teams hit the market, using similar approaches, similar scripts/templates/outreach with the same licences to the same job portals.

Maybe that’s why Linkedin research show that most people discover new jobs through referrals.?Wouldn’t you rather avoid an over-crowded supermarket, fighting for the same ingredient?

A dollop of ‘recruitment creativity’ is required, with sprinklings of skillful persistence.?

And in my experience at least, some #talentacquistion teams simply don’t have the time, resources or bandwidth to work at crazy hiring pace at crazy intensity, non-stop.

Avoiding Mayhem

In our Chef example, assuming they have the required skill and equipment, they simply need the right ingredients at the right quantity stored at the right temperature to be able to execute their dish.??

Consider for a moment, a disorganised Chef (aka my son last week, who randomly decided he wanted to try and bake banana bread, till he realised there were no bananas in the house).

If the Chef appeared on TV without having done their preparation, then the entire show would be a mess.?If the Chef wanted to spontaneously cook Spaghetti Bolognaise, they would first need to have the right ingredients and tools at hand.?

If they began cooking the sauce, and realised they didn’t have the pasta, they’d have to quickly pop out to buy the pasta.?

This disorganisation would create delays, inefficiencies, kitchen-chaos, frantic panic-buying for potentially sub-standard ingredients (whatever is left on the shelf on the day) and could effectively ruin the entire cooking experience.??

Granted sometimes everything turns out OK in the end, but in business, we don’t really enjoy leaving things to chance and luck.

Perhaps a little pre-preparation would make all the difference.

Energy-Game

Where #talentacquisition teams tend to differ in output, is in what I define as their ‘energy’ to create active #talentpipelines and #talentpools with depth. ?This ‘energy’ (or fuel/gas if you prefer) is dependent on many factors but broadly speaking it comes down to 3 things:

1) Individual skills

2) Tools and resources

3) Efficient hiring processes

Cookie-Cutter

#Recruiters using ‘cookie-cutter’ methods to research/source/engage #talent will continue to struggle as the market for certain skills just gets tighter (think tech/pharma/IT/renewable energy/fintech sectors right now).?

It’s clear to see the #recruitment world is being urged to think creatively. ??Just imagine how #recruitment will look when the #metaverse kicks in (more on that another day).

HR as the Heart

With #HR functions not placed at the heart of the business, it’s not a surprise when I’m told about the lack of budgets allocated to hiring teams.

If #talentacquisition teams are to be successful, then organisations need to set them up for success in the first place.???We wouldn’t expect a Chef to slice onions with their hands tied behind their back.

Or perhaps we can give the Chef an onion with no knife, and they can gnaw it to pieces….since budgets are tight and all that.

Leadership should consider how to enable #talentacquisition teams to create #talentpipelines for:

a) Active roles

b) Strategic roles

c) And to gather insights to make better informed hiring decisions.??

An enabled #hiring team should have resources to deeply research the market using an array of tools.?This research part can’t be skipped, since the success of the #talentengagement outreach, is dependent on how the initial research was mapped out.?

No Bandwidth

Like our plucky-lucky TV Chef (who probably outsourced parts of the preparation process to a production team), #talentacquisition teams should map out the time-consuming parts of their #recruitmentprocess and decide how they can deliver the best results #justintime .?

Should they focus on repetitive, time-consuming (yet critical) tasks like market research and mapping, or can they be released somewhat to focus on the higher-value-add parts of their job i.e.: creating an excellent #candidateexperience , listening and advising internal stakeholders, solve #hiringchallenges , improving #talentattraction ratios and #hiringexperiences , creating a great interview, orientation and #onboarding experience etc.

If the TV Chef can focus on cooking, instead of research, planning, preparing, filming, editing, marketing his show etc, then he’s using his skills where they add most value.

Now of course, some of you may be thinking ‘Well Dee, not all of us have the luxury or budgets to hire kitchen help to prepare pretty little ceramic bowls of chopped tomatoes’, and that is a fair point.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t work towards preparedness in all areas.?It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try and pre-plan and pre-prepare strategically. In the #recruitment world, if a #talentacquisition team is overstretched, the first thing they need to ask themselves is not always the ‘How can we fill 1000 jobs by tomorrow’ question, but the ‘WHO can help us fill 1000 jobs by tomorrow question’.?

It’s the WHO over the HOW that can make strides when there are surges in workload.

If a Chef has to cook for 1000 guests, they need all the extra hands they can get, to deliver tasty, hot meals.?If they don’t have the resources, then diners can expect cold, sloppy, mediocre meals……or worse no meals at all.?

Who can get those 1000 meals ready with the Chef within budget?

Too Simple

Now of course I’ve massively over-simplified the comparison of an overburdened #Recruiter to that of a disorganised Chef.?In reality, there are multiple challenges that in-house #Recruiters face, that my simple analogy just doesn’t give credence to.

However, instead of being drawn into the missing parts of my admittedly simplified analogy, I encourage you to consider the question of WHO over HOW, which is the crux of this article. ??

Who can help increase your recruiting bandwidth, so you can focus on the most impactful parts of recruitment?

Should #talentacquisition teams time spend the bulk of their time on #candidateengagement , improving the #hiring experience and #stakeholdermanagement etc.?Or should they be cut/pasting their 70th Linkedin connection message, whilst waiting for a response from the previous batch of 100 they messaged yesterday?

WHO then HOW

I invite #talentacquisition teams, #recruiters and #leaders who are currently under pressure to meet recruitment demands to consider the following questions:

·??????Who can create #talentpipeline #talentpools (internally or externally)?

·??????Who can approve resources to enable effective #hiring ?

·??????Who has the tools (vendors/partners) to improve candidate #gotomarketstrategy ?

·??????Who can help #upskill my #talentresearch , #talentsourcing and #engagement skills?

When budgets allow and bandwidth is thin, you can also consider asking:

·??????Who can help us research #talent in the market?

·??????Who can do the initial #outreach for us?

·??????Who can deal with the to/fro with initial #candidate messaging

·??????Who can conduct first-level #engagement to weed out the non-interested?

·??????Who can present interested and vetted #candidates to me?

·??????Who can feed leads into our #ATS system and save us time?

·??????Who can give us #talentinsights real-time on my target #talentlandscape ? ?

·??????Who can help us reduce our time-to-hire?

In Summary

A Chef can single handedly cook for a certain number of guests.?When quantities go up, the Chef needs assistance, extra hands, ingredients, utensils etc.?

It’s not about the ability of the Chef to handle everything single-handedly or with limited help, it’s about the Chef being efficient by using their time on the most critical aspects of running their busy kitchen.

Likewise, talented #talentacquisition teams may be fully capable of running 360-degree #recruitmentactivities .?But should they? With a #datadriven HR culture, companies should be able to identify which recruiting levers to switch up to ensure ROI.

If businesses can meet #hiringdemands by sufficiently enabling their #talentacquisition team, then they may be best placed to run end-to-end #recruitment internally.

If however, businesses are stretched with surges in #hiring , thin on bandwidth and have the budget to get support, then who can provide this whilst proving ROI?

If you were given ‘ready-prepared’ #talentpools , all sourced, vetted and ‘warmed-up’ ready to speak to you (assuming quality is on-point), that would save swathes of time.

Let’s face it, open vacancies are rarely good for business. ?

I’d love to see the industry adopt more #justintime principals, so #talentacquisition teams could work towards having access to what they need, when they need it.?

• Then perhaps they can minimise #recruitment mayhem and focus on actually cooking their next culinary masterpiece.

Written by Dee Allan- Vice President- WhiteCrow Research . I'm a Mama, food, and theatre-lover. Recruiting and Talent Acquisition veteran. Certified Futurist who loves a natter about the #futureofwork ...with a cuppa Earl Grey. Contact me to discuss talent research, pipelining, and sourcing.

I love writing, and am the Author of Gritty Girl letters via The Butterfly Letters . My views are my own peeps.