Teams that have traditionally focused on building only functional capability and process discipline in their recruiters need to call out the need to be creative and agile.
“The Truth is Out There”
More years ago than I care to admit, this line from the popular series The X-Files fascinated me and my friends to no end. It thrilled us, to know that somewhere in the future there are new worlds and ways of being waiting to be discovered. Over the year, the corporate world found its own variation on this theme, with endless papers, programs, and learning devoted to the “VUCA” (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous) world and how to navigate it.
Well, the wait has ended. The future is here. The question is – what are we going to do with it? The Talent Acquisition teams have found the new leveler across industries and locations – remote or virtual hiring. This is challenging for sure, but also possibly the greatest opportunity the function has to redeem and transform itself. Whether we can do this or not, depends on three key aspects.
Team agility in the face of ambiguity
Literally overnight, the lockdown was clamped in various parts of the country and world, and the hiring teams were expected to switch to remote hiring. And to be fair, the virtual workforce was not a completely new phenomenon. Flexible work options have been gaining popularity across the world over the last decade, and not just in the new age economy.
Ideally, the hiring teams should have read the signals and started moving in this direction a while ago. Taking the cue from large organizations, which have mechanized and outsourced the initial sourcing and screening processes to be truly virtual in nature. It’s interesting to think about the regular feedback from hiring managers & candidates on recruiters being so process-focused that they couldn’t accommodate profiles or methods which deviated from the normal. Such a hard-nosed process orientation will turn out to be a liability in such fast-changing times.
It’s still not too late. Teams that have traditionally focused on building only functional capability and process discipline in their recruiters need to call out the need to be creative and agile. They need to consciously invest in interventions that will help team members feel on top of the situation, rather than be overwhelmed by it.
Being Tech-ready
One consistent theme in all HR studies and conferences has been the need for digital acceleration, mirroring the digital transformation that most organizations have been going through. Sadly, the investments haven’t always been as aggressive and consistent. Faced with the inevitable cost pressures and high-pressure demand, many HR leaders may have paused or slowed down on this agenda.
There’s hope yet. See the plethora of start-ups in the recruiting product space, screening, and assessment tools, offering analytics as a service. Data from Aptitude Research Partners1 shows that the number of companies who have invested or plan to invest in chatbot solutions has jumped by over 500% in 2019. Likewise, more than 9 out of 10 companies who’ve turned to text-based recruiting methods have chosen to stick with them. Even on the candidate front, the game has changed – LinkedIn continues to dominate the scene as a professional network, and research from the Aberdeen Group2 suggests that 73% of millennials found their last position through a social media site.
This momentum needs to continue, and solutions need to be built for the long term and not as a stop-gap. The more obvious area to focus on is the erstwhile interview process – provide tools for whiteboarding & proctoring to our business. But it would be more strategic to look across the entire candidate life cycle and ideate on how to digitize every single step. Imagine creating virtual connect sessions with passive talent pools in far off locations or replacing traditional interviews with new techniques using AI or making the JDs a VR experience; the possibilities are endless!
A value-driven and inclusive organization
One of my favorite interview questions is ‘How has your interview process been with us so far?’. The range of responses I get throws up interesting insights not just on the process and the candidate’s own skills, but on whether our hiring managers and leaders truly live our values.
This question will become increasingly important. The ability to create personalized candidate experiences, accommodate unusual requests within the larger process frameworks, avoid letting bias creep into situations where we get a peek into candidates’ personal lives, maintain an iterative dialogue through the process – all this depends on whether the individuals concerned are inclusive and empathetic.
Depending on what that hard introspection throws up, we may need to think about how to build this muscle for the future; because more now than ever before, organizations across the world will need to hire and retain talent that steers them out of the crisis with agility, speed and innovation. That talent is rare and discerning and increasingly, a lot smarter about making long term career choices with organizations that they resonate with.
So instead of trepidation, the Talent Acquisition leaders should be excited about the future – building agility, embedding data & technology, and creating values-driven systems.
Or, to (mis)quote another television series from my generation – “To boldly go where no person has gone before…”!
Disclaimer: The views expressed in the article above are those of the authors' and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of this publishing house