William Wong June 2019
Recruitment Strategy
Mapping out our Battle Plans
You've just been approached by a stakeholder to look into their staffing needs. What now?
How do we scope out the project and conduct workforce planning? How many people do we put on this search and more importantly, do we even have the capacity to take on additional workload? Is there a systematic approach to figuring out this resource allocation dilemma?
Who's going to develop the master sourcing strategy and what does it look like? And once we do, what metrics do we throw in place to track success?
And lastly, how do we manage stakeholder expectations and manage delivery.
"The secret of my success is that we have gone to exceptional lengths to hire the best people in the world.” - Steve Jobs
FRAMEWORK
My approach is simple - I run every staffing project thru a framework so nothing slips thru the cracks. This "back to the basics" concept works because we're bound to miss things with so many competing priorities in our lives.
We need an easy button now and then - this is mine.
Figure out who all the hiring managers are and sic your teams on them.
Cover the when, what and where components (e.g. Is there a timeline on when we need all these butts in the seat? Is there a phased approach and if so, what does the entire staffing plan look like? What roles need filled? Are they req based, pipeline, or both? Where can we house them?)
Based on what you learned above, create a workforce plan to spell out the roles/quantity and when we need those boots on deck.
Scope out the situation to find out as much as you can about the logic behind this push. Why the need? Also, is it just a sustaining strategy or part of a growth plan?
HMs
Workforce Planning
Reason
The Five Ws
Resource
Allocation
Now that we know our timeline, type and quantity of roles, we needed to figure out how our existing team can handle the workload. I pulled hire metrics for the last two years on each of these (or similar) pipelines to develop a baseline. This is used to estimate how many hires each of my staff can produce per month (also factored in a period for ramp-up). Multiply that by the amount of staff I have in disposal and that will be my target achievable hires. Need headcount minus what my team is capable of is the delta.
Solve the
Delta
There's several ways to bridge the gap between the goals and what my team is capable of.
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Raise the Bar: first thing I look at is if there's any areas where I can improve the performance of those past benchmarks. To do this, along with hire numbers, I also pulled the following data for each pipeline (amount of reach outs, response rate, pre-screens, screens, loops, offer. With these numbers I can calculate % such as pre-screen to screen, screen to loop, etc.).
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RPO: should we utilize additional help from our partners in India and Philippines? If so, how much would that help? Look at their past performance and see how it tally's up.
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IOU: is there a team I can borrow some resource for temporarily?
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Contractors: is the pace of this hiring spree sustainable? If not, then we can augment our headcount using consultants.
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Additional HC: this is the last resort and I hate to go down this route unless it's absolutely necessary.
Establish
Goals &
Metrics
I am a big proponent of being data driven, but always caution my team to not follow it blindly. Below is my guiding principles on metrics:
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Source of Baseline: how did we come up with this benchmark? Is it from historical data or thin air?
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Validate Data: conduct due diligence to ensure accuracy. Is the number relevant to my needs? Does it make sense? Are we comparing apples to apples? Does something look off? Backtrack to the source of the data self-verify the calculations.
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Measure of Success: now that we've validated the data and have a goal in mind, what metric would you look at to make sure you're on track with that goal?
I share my investigative work with my team and get their buy-in. Give them the data and ask them what number can I expect from them, creating real ownership. This data is used as an internal driver and also acts as a pretty awesome progress report for the client.
The How
Sourcing
Framework
Break down the sourcing strategy into several phases. Info sharing is done in real time and tactics/timing is re-calibrated in our daily standup. A primary and secondary objective is outlined for each phase. Check out my Guiding Principles and Sourcing Framework.
Execute
Strategy
I coach on thought process and leave implementation to the team. This is probably the best part of my job - seeing my folks blossom, grow and develop ideas that are 10x better than what I could have mustered. They become the SME on the search and bring back best practices to share with the team. Base on those intel, we pivot and shift our strategies as needed.
The Hunt
Stakeholder
Management
Approach differs depending on the audience. Typically your senior leadership wants to see the strategy & timeline, while their direct reports want the deeper dive into numbers, pipelines, etc. Whatever the case, make sure your customers are well informed in the manner they want. Throw in a survey in the end to keep things real.
The Debrief