Agile methodologies: what they are and how to apply in recruitment

Agile methodologies are a set of techniques used to accelerate the delivery of a project.

Whether it's a multinational company or just the family business down the street: all organizations are looking for ways to effectively increase productivity. And when we think of increasing productivity, agile methodologies are gaining more and more popularity and are being applied in different sectors. But do you know what they are?

What are Agile Methodologies?

In short, agile methods are a set of practices that help accelerate the delivery of high-quality projects. To do this, they divide the process into small steps, which allows you to better track and align the development of the project with the needs of the areas and objectives of the organization. 

In this way, it is also possible to correct any possible problems quickly and easily, and to review the planning whenever necessary. They are also a philosophy that promotes teamwork, collaboration among employees, and collective intelligence.

Today, there are several methodologies: Kanban, Scrum, Lean, eXtreme Programming, Feature Driven Development, Microsoft Solution Framework, and, your company can choose to work with more than one.

The development teams were responsible for initiating and adopting this methodology, but the strategy can be applied in any project, including your recruitment.

How to apply Agile Methods in recruiting?

A few years ago, recruitment started to benefit from technology: we saw the popularization of online selection processes and the emergence of ATS's, for example.

However, even with this advance and all the benefits it brings, if there is a lack of planning and agility some steps may extend, the area requesting the position may not be aligned with the recruiters as they should be and even the scope of that position may change. And that's where agile methodologies can help!

Think of your recruiting as a project: define the stages, the deadline, and make everyone involved aware of the progress to completion.

It is nice to remember that you can -and should- use more than one method to accelerate your recruiting. The important thing is that you adapt these practices to your reality, with the possible and available tools, okay? Let's go!

1- Work in sprints

In the Scrum methodology, a project is broken down into smaller tasks to be worked on in cycles, or sprints. A sprint is the amount of time defined for teams to deliver their activities or specific parts of their project (in this case, their recruitment).

They usually last between a week and a month, and it is on the first day of this cycle that the team looks at its backlog (the next projects, in the case of recruitment would be the jobs to be worked on) and defines in order of priority the tasks that will be handled during that period and what will be left for the next sprint.

It is during these days that the team stays focused, aligned, and motivated in their next deliveries.

2- Have daily meetings (daily scrum)

Still in the Scrum methodology, a step considered essential are the dailys, or daily meetings. They are fundamental to do a daily follow-up of the tasks prioritized in the sprint. Implement them as a ritual for the entire team to share the current status of the projects: what was done the day before, what will be done on the current day, if there is need for help, etc.

Ideally the dailys should be quick (15 to 30 minutes) and happen at the same time every day, usually in the morning.

3- Use a visual dashboard of your tasks

To follow these sprints, we can use a Kanban visualization dashboard, so that everyone in the team can visualize the development of the projects and have an idea of the urgency of the demands and the amount of work of each team member. It is through this dashboard that you will be able to see all the tasks worked on in that sprint: those in progress, completed and not started.

Another example of using the dashboard: to track a selection process, in this case each column is a stage and each card is a candidate.

For the creation and use of Kanban boards for your sprints, there are tools like Trello. And it was precisely in it that we prepared a template that can be used to initiate agile methodologies in your recruitment: set up and control the phases of your selection process or even create the board that will be used in your daily follow-up meetings.

In addition to helping with organization, internal communication, and increased productivity, agile methodologies also improve the experience of the talents involved in the selection process. It is better for recruiters to know to whom and the right time to send feedback, for example. Digital transformation has already become a reality in almost all sectors, so counting on these methodologies is fundamental to improve your projects, deliveries, and results!

And if you are having difficulty with your recruitment and want to know how 99Hunters can help you by joining the largest global community of headhunters and using agile methodologies on a daily basis, schedule a conversation with our team right now: