The rapid migration to digital technologies driven by the pandemic has accelerated the need for digital recruitment. With so many business disruptions happening, HR functions increasingly feel the need for effective digital solutions and a new reformed agile recruiting approach to anticipate and meet the changing needs of the business. The article explores how a recruiter can become more equipped with the required agility and future skills to respond to the changing hiring needs and ensure business growth.
“Covidization has brought the real digital revolution, which will stay forever. This digital revolution has brought some of the key agilities that each recruiter must start learning and be open to unlearning what they already know which is the most difficult aspect.”
With so much dynamically and drastically changing in the current scenario, its impact is being observed thoroughly not only on the economy, business models, financial transactions, and organization’s stability but also on how businesses wish to evolve their strategic talent planning. This also calls out for the overall ecosystem impact on the new question of “buying talent” v/s “building talent” in various contexts of the organizations’ goals. No matter how much we shy away from accepting, this is the real “VUCA“’ experience for everyone across the geographies. This is the real change management; with simple, easy to adapt, and highly impactful methodologies leading to highlight an equally sustainable approach can really turn the tables around.
The traditional approaches and mechanisms have seen a digital topping on making it highly experiential & effective for the talent scouting for jobs and organizations aiming to fulfil talents. The next question arises, how a recruiter can become more equipped; not only with sufficient resources but also with a new set of agility to ensure the business support is even more favourable and candidate experience goes ultra-positive. Needless to mention, that such agilities will play a pivotal role in making all TA enthusiasts highly competitive & skilled as per future market demands. After witnessing and being a part of numerous discussions within & outside the industry, I have realized a 360-degree shift on how a recruiter sees themselves in terms of their current agilities & competencies v/s what the future market demands. Whilst it’s going to be a long and comparatively slow process, I do anticipate it to give a positive twist towards adapting more agile & sustainable ways for new-age digital recruiting.
Be an Influential Story Teller
Sounds fancy, right? This is one such agility which a recruiter must start adapting & keep improvising. Ever spoken about an organization’s journey that makes any listener/ audience extremely hooked to what you express? If not, then here’s how you must start narrating the organization’s journey or business model explanation in a screenplay format; be your own writer and direct it as unique as possible.
This is not just confined to how you narrate in a conversation, but also in the ways you design your presentations. Bring about the message at the core and on the periphery, have the stories of the brand or the business ecosystem, add vicissitudes with each learning that made it realize the importance of being what it is in the current landscape. To ensure the key message is delivered to the listener(s) whether it is the role of selling or the organization selling.
One way to make your storytelling more interesting is how you introduce the role (job) to the entire scene. Example: let’s say, you are speaking to someone with the potential to fulfil customer experience. Talk about the journey of the organization with respect to where it has been so far, with respect to customer experience, and what problem statement it’s trying to solve via getting someone from the market. Highlight how they will play a concrete role in bringing “that change” which the organization demands in that domain. Such conversations are less mechanical or Q/A based and come with more dynamism & depth. It leaves an ever-lasting favourable impact on any listener(s) or candidate(s).
The Digital Digestion
The era for the real digital mindset is right now! The last 90 days have given each of us quite a few revelations on the business side and otherwise as well. With more than 80% of organizations now moving to 100% digital interview method, being digital-savvy takes even a priority spot for every recruiter. It is not just confined to using the platforms. Everything has become digital now; almost everything is possible virtually these days. Covidization has brought the real digital revolution, which will stay forever. This digital revolution has brought some of the key agilities that each recruiter must start learning and be open to unlearning what they already know which is the most difficult aspect. How would a recruiter assess the skill sets and competencies of the potential talents digitally is going to decide the real success measures of any talent fulfilment process.
From using artificial intelligence to natural intelligence, a few of such intangible aspects would definitely change how the interviews are being done. One key change and impact it would bring will be the turnaround time of the entire hiring process. The introduction of panel interviews can be another aspect that can be looked upon while working on some strategic hires. This calls for a more collaborative outcome with a common rating mechanism, which assessors can refer to make informed decisions. Keeping everything in mind, a bias-free interview approach needs to take a more structured competency-based hiring method.
A pre-work on such aspects such as customized parameters for each scenario or question, asking more situational questions and mapping the desired behaviours as outcomes, etc. can help the organizations give a practical interview experience. The interviewing panel also has the liberty to access the archived discussions and also track real-time data & supporting readings shared by candidates at each stage. All that is needed: proactively adhering to an experiential interview journey & more objectively assessing the talent over judging them.
“It is scientifically proven that people prefer to socialise with people who are similar to them. The term has been coined as affinity bias, which refers to the tendency to warm up to people like ourselves. This results in the need… Click To TweetBig Thinking & Action
Yes. It’s not just a ballgame only for the C-Suite population in the organizations anymore. This one behaviour needs to be demonstrated by everyone contributing to the business growth in every possible form. For recruiters, it’s all the more needed to think outside of the traditional hiring ecosystem and start linking things more with business drivers. This is one string gap that I have observed in most of the hiring processes and even fixed largely. In these times, each recruiter must start acting as a P&L head themselves- entrepreneurship spirit with a strategic mindset is all that it demands.
Every role, every position, and every talent that is being fulfilled must have a business outcome & orientation especially when it comes to capturing their experience. Circle back to each of your hires and see how they have been working and performing. Such facets help you get a sense of some of the unseen parts in any candidate’s journey from becoming a potential hire to a top performer.
Cognitive flexibility has been described as one of the future-skills. It means the ability to adjust the way of thinking to new situations, along with the ability to overcome our customary automatic responses or thoughts and adapt them to the new reality. You can bring reforms in your hiring process and bring substantial changes in the overall candidate experience with such findings. One thing that’s going to be an everlasting behaviour from each TA professional will be “being a strategist and hands-on” as well. Set stretched goals for yourself and the business, look at the most unseen/ unheard ways of optimizing the recruitment cycle, and see the kind of self-led entrepreneurial ways of work that would define the entire voyage of greater attainment.
Datafication – The Dominant Driver
When it comes to data and driving insights independently, the first thing that comes to my mind is how would a recruiter look at the key business data points with hiring metrics at micro and macro levels? There are more elements to take into consideration other than cost-consciousness and the total timelines. These are important, but often conventional metrics restrict the view to even narrower than what one would expect it to be.
“Cognitive flexibility has been described as one of the futureskills. It means the ability to adjust the way of thinking to new situations, along with the ability to overcome our customary automatic responses or thoughts, and adapt them to the new reality.”
Let’s talk about ageing of the interview at every stage, reasons for such delays, and how it impacts the candidate experience overall should be some of the points a recruiter must also consider while defining their own success measures in any hiring lifecycle. This can help them do a comparison in their individual performance in one v/s another fulfilment. Citing another example can be how their hires have performed & contributed to the business. A recruiter can also check and ask for their hires’ first productivity milestone and add on to the overall scorecard to showcase the impact of the talent they brought. A business should not shy away from sharing the success of the growth by talent with the one who actually brought them (You must be thinking, it’s subjective. Yes! this is quite subjective, however, can be tweaked for every business unit/ model).
Also, in the absence of data points, how a recruiter deep drives into various themes that decides their and business’ performance collectively; talks volumes about collaborative ways to identify, define, solve, and manage the key problems that may impact the overall hiring landscape of the ecosystem.
Well, nothing works with a kneejerk reaction! Everything takes time to develop, nurture, and show signs of its impact on a larger growth. Change is the only thing we must start looking forward to and be ready to adapt certain things instantaneously and some eventually. HR folks are expected to wear business hats! High time for businesses to also wear HR hats and add people related digital analytics into their overall scorecards. The world has experienced and witnessed how hiring trends and processes have changed over the last few years and with the current landscape, it’s imperative for every recruiter to “partner” with the business and upskill themselves with the required agility and future skills to outshine and make a difference to the entire fraternity.
