Talent Acquisition, Forget The System, Process

As the market for talent acquisition software evolves, government agencies typically move through a process of identification, proposals, testing and selection to determine the best fit for their organization. There are the usual RFIs, RFPs, solution bake offs and pilot testing, with the goal to bring in the solution that will best help the organization meet its needs and goals.

Keep your processes that work

One important consideration in the evaluation of talent acquisition solutions is the degree to which your chosen solution will require your organization to change the way it goes about the recruitment and staffing tasks and processes. A benefit of a new system can be a fresh, new way of looking at the processes that the HR department and hiring managers utilize to find the best possible talent. Often, people and departments become ingrained in a certain set of tasks that may not be optimal – but the task remain, because change takes some amount of effort. So with a new system comes a new opportunity to evaluate and change what doesn’t make sense.

At the same time, there are often, and hopefully, many processes that do make sense and do work. The problems encountered may be due to a lack of bandwidth, for example. But the processes don’t need to change, such as a particular manager’s sign off or an executive approval. Any new talent acquisition system an organization considers should not force an abandonment of your processes that are working today. There will be enough for everyone in the agency to deal with, without having to abandon perfectly legitimate and effective rules and processes.

Define your workflow

To accomplish this and make sure you don’t go down a path that ultimately moves you away from beneficial processes, take these steps that will have the added benefit of ensuring what you are doing now is the most efficient method to acquire talent for your organization.

• Review questions: Typically there is a set or series of questions that need to be asked of various member of your staff as a position moves from the request for a position to an acceptance and offer for a candidate. Make sure the questions asked are the right ones and the right people are being asked.

• Review workflow: This is often a laborious chore, but it is critical to understanding what is necessary and where there might be superfluous steps. It’s a great opportunity to not only uncover unnecessary or redundant steps, but also validate what you are doing that is most efficient.

• Identify rules: Identify your swim lanes to ensure that the correct people and departments are a part of the appropriate lane in the hiring process. Tagging people or departments that have particular roles in the hiring process, from writing job descriptions to position approval to offer will help make the move to a new talent acquisition system go much more smoothly than otherwise.

Make that move

By taking the steps identified above, you’ve taken the approach that you understand what the rules, processes and workflows are that are necessary and work for your situation. You should not have to compromise.

You can then be in a situation where you evaluate the alternatives for a talent acquisition system for the best solution that takes into account your environment. Once you’vedetermined the solution that best meets your requirements, you need to perform a final review to ensure that the new system will allow you to keep your existing processes.

Define your processes and forget the system – until it’s time.