Agile team recruiting can help meet the demands of the increasingly dynamic world of work. This increases the speed of response to promising applications and ensures the team's commitment right from the start. A recruiting process by the team should enable optimal staffing in the project team and thus reduce fluctuation and other problems caused by incorrect staffing. After all, it is precisely the cultural fit that is crucial for the successful integration of new organizational members. In addition, team recruiting contributes in the long term to the fact that an agile inner attitude and attitude is carried into the company as a matter of course and anchored there, thus creating more and more self-organized high-performance teams.
Expand your recruiting department with added value
When employees search, select, and onboard their new colleagues on their own, this is known as team recruiting. Team recruiting – like employee referrals – is a form of social recruiting because it involves colleagues in the recruitment process. Team recruiting differs from the employee referral programs that have been more common in companies so far in that employees are much more involved in the entire process. Often, even high decision-making powers are conferred. A fast recruitment process allows you to save time and resources. By pre-trained team members, the right questions are asked in the process that are individually adapted to the position. In this way, it quickly becomes apparent whether an applicant is a good fit for the peers from a methodological and social perspective. Getting to know each other is mutual: the applicant also gets the opportunity to get to know his or her potential future colleagues.
Tips for Introducing the Team Recruiting Method
An important first step is coordination talks. Both at the level of the management and those of the respective departments, coordination and approval are necessary. After all, before the "right" people can be brought on board from the outside, everyone must first be on board internally. Another point in order to actually be able to save time and resources during the recruitment process is to make agreements or rules and training in advance: Before the method is introduced, the process is therefore documented in detail and the interview focuses per person are determined. Colleagues who have had little or no experience in recruiting are trained in advance by HR colleagues. Discussion guidelines and an evaluation matrix are also created for certain areas, so that later coordination can be based on clear criteria.
Example team recruiting process:
For example, the team consists of colleagues from the project team, a manager or supervisor of the respective specialist domain and an HR consultant. The process is based on the following steps:
- Telephone interview by the supervisor of the department (usually 30-60 min.)
- Face-to-face interviews:
- Expert interview with a member of the project team with the same professional background as well as a supervisor in the department
- Multilingual and bilateral social fit interview with about three colleagues from the project team
- Final interview with the supervisor as well as the HR consultant with the opportunity for the applicant to ask questions
- Decision by the entire recruiting team
- HR takes care of the further coordination with the applicant, such as the transmission of the offer, employment contract or rejection
The time between receipt of applications and interviews should be as short as possible in order to respond quickly to the increasing demand for well-trained specialists and the associated competition. That's why the so-called decision meeting takes place immediately after the interview, where each member of the recruiting team votes with a clear "yes" or "no". Everyone in the recruiting team has an equal voice. Reasons and arguments for or against a candidate will only be discussed after the vote. This is to ensure that everyone represents their own opinion and point of view and that there is no priming effect.
After the exchange of arguments, a new, final vote takes place. The applicant will only receive an employment contract if everyone has voted "yes". A dissenting vote in the recruiting team leads to another interview with the applicant in order to clarify any questions and to gain a second impression. However, previous experience with this recruiting process shows that applicants who receive at least two votes against in the initial vote are rarely hired, even after the new exchange.
Team recruiting in the fight against the shortage of skilled workers
Leobersdorfer Maschinenfabrik, based in the market town of the same name in Lower Austria, specialises in the manufacture of customer-specific high-performance compressors. She pursues an exciting method on the way to the future of work. The company relies on team recruiting in the literal sense of the word, because trainees also have an equal say here. The rule is: integral in the team right from the start. In order to counteract the shortage of skilled workers in the production area, the company has fundamentally restructured the recruitment process of its trainees since 2010: The responsibility for the next generation of apprentices, as well as the development of a new application procedure, has been transferred to the trainees themselves. In this way, they were able to develop a written test for the applicants on a conceptual level, as well as to develop an objective point system for the evaluation.
On the applicant days, the apprentices can not only put this into practice, but also play a key role in the guided tours of the company, the evaluation of the test they have developed, and the final one-on-one interviews with potential new colleagues. Apprentices, apprentice supervisors and HR managers are equally entitled to vote in the assessment. Leobersdorfer Maschinenfabrik even goes one step further with its trainee recruiting, which naturally raises the question: Do young professionals have the necessary experience to take on this responsibility? The success rate of the Austrian company answers this question very clearly: The 85 percent concurrence rate of trainee, trainer and HR assessments speaks for itself.
Another point that plays a major role in the search for good applicants, especially for medium-sized and even lesser-known employers, is the external image. If such a concept, which is still rather unusual, is initially ridiculed and not taken seriously at first, it can become a strong competitive differentiator in the medium and long term.
Success for the Recruiting Center
The unique recruitment method has attracted attention throughout Upper Austria and increased the awareness of the traditional company enormously. Further advantages of taking on apprentices by apprentices are provided by the trainees themselves: they know the tasks to be mastered and thus also the necessary requirements best. In addition, an application process at eye level reduces the nervousness of the candidates and the potential trainees get a good first impression of the working atmosphere. The results so far speak for themselves: the number of applications has increased fivefold, the school performance of trainees has improved significantly and there has been a significant increase in excellent apprenticeship qualifications since then. These successes show that the trust placed in us and the early assumption of responsibility pay off for Leobersdorfer Maschinenfabrik in many ways. In addition to the direct recruitment process, the trainees are also actively integrated into the company's marketing: they are the company's figurehead in social media activities and at trade fair stands.
Recruiting goals for the team & joint evaluation
For the recruiting team, the first thing to do is to look at the general quantitative recruiting metrics. In addition, the quality of the team recruiting and the candidates' satisfaction with the process (candidate experience) are crucial. Therefore, it is best to conduct regular surveys at different points in the process. Possible questions could be:
- How did you feel about the atmosphere in the interview/the atmosphere in the first contact with the team?
- Was the exchange with the team helpful for your information/decision/training?
- Why did you abandon the application process?
- To what extent would you change the recruiting process?
In addition, ask the team about their experiences in the five process steps described:
- What suggestions for improvement does the team have?
- What additional information or training needs do team members express?
- How time-consuming is team recruiting for them?
- How satisfied are they with their decision and their new colleague?
Juliane Bürkle
With us and our talent management solution, you can provide the people in your organization with the framework and freedom they need to boldly move forward and bring new ideas to the table. And thus lead your company successfully into the future.
