A recruiting function is a dynamic system. Jobs become vacant. Recruiting kicks off. Candidates are contacted. Applicants are assessed. People get jobs. At a high level, that’s how just about every recruiting function works. To support this flow of work, however, a highly complex ecosystem of people, processes, programs, and technology is required to keep the system working efficiently. The purpose of RecOps is to optimize this system in a strategic manner. By improving each part, you can transform the entire function.

To make this easier to digest, it’s helpful to visualize a recruiting function with fewer components, more like a simple workflow than a complex network of moving parts that combine to deliver a hire. To illustrate this system, the graphic below shows a typical recruiting function organized into just five components: strategy, operations, recruiting, data, and RecOps.

So as not to assume that we’re on the same page about what each component means, I’m going to spend some time in the remainder of this post providing an explanation of each one and how this model can help you leverage clarity and continuous transformation to improve all or part of your recruiting function.

Component One: Talent Acquisition Strategy

“If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.” This phrase is a catchy hook from the song “Any Road” by George Harrison of the Beatles fame. In life, a lack of direction can cause a delay in finding your true purpose. This can be relatively harmless over time. But in business, not knowing where you’re going can be costly or can even tank your company. A lack of direction causes confusion within your employee base and can allow competitors to surpass you.

When running a recruiting function, creating ultimate clarity is essential. It helps a leader prioritize work that aligns to a strategy and a vision for the future. But it’s not just about having clear goals. It includes having a clear mission, vision, and strategy too. These components help to establish purpose and direction for your team, while the goals serve to establish a focus for the improvements you want to make. Combined, it’s a recipe for transformation. In Chapter 15 of this book, I’ll cover these five components as a means for setting the stage for a successful RecOps practice. To clarify, these are the elements that are bundled together in the Strategy pillar:

1. Mission

2. Vision

3. Strategy

4. Goals

5. Prioritization

When you have these five clarifying elements in place, you will know both where you’re going and the road that will take you there.

Component Two: Recruiting Operations

In many companies, the discipline of recruiting operations has existed for years. You might see it called talent operations or even HR operations. Sometimes it sits in a shared service center. No matter what you call it or where it sits, the majority of these functions are defined by a set of administrative duties as characterized by some the following tasks:

· Processing drug and background checks

· Assisting new hires with onboarding

· Scheduling interviews

· Booking interview-related travel

· Tracking expenses

While these tasks are incredibly important to running a high-functioning recruiting process, they merely scratch the surface of all the activities that go on behind the scenes of a busy recruiting department. If we really want to define the full set of tasks and manage them more effectively, we need to expand the scope of what we consider to be operations. If we view it through an expanded lens, it would include things like:

· Process management

· Program management (referral, diversity, campus, etc.)

· Reporting and analytics

· Recruiting compliance (OFCCP, EEO, GDPR, immigration, etc.)

· Technology administration (software, laptops, iPads, etc.)

· Employment branding and recruitment marketing

· Budgeting and contracts

· Team training and development

When you include these additional activities in the scope of operations, you expand and clarify your awareness of the things that underpin your hiring process. How well you manage all these activities will determine the overall health and success of your function. The building and optimizing of these programs and activities is a central responsibility of a RecOps practice. But it’s more about optimization than it is about administration.

Taking this expanded viewpoint into consideration within a RecOps practice, operations can be defined like this:

Recruiting Operations is the complete set of activities, policies, processes, and programs that supports and enables your recruiting process.

Now that we’ve established what is meant by operations, I’ll move on to define what recruiting means as it relates to the model.

Component Three: Recruiting

If you picked up this book, I would assume that you have an idea of what recruiting is, but I’ll clarify what it means within the context of this model. At most companies, recruiting is a general term that refers to an entire recruiting function or the entire set of services that a recruiting function delivers. Some of those services would include many of the operational tasks I listed in the last section—things like interview scheduling, recruitment marketing, or managing an employee referral program. But in an organization that has a RecOps practice, the definition of recruiting is narrower. Within this model, we define it this way:

Recruiting is the set of core steps that takes place in the process of filling a job.

At most organizations, in their most complex form, these steps include the following:

· Requisition initiation

· Strategy or intake meeting

· Sourcing and advertising

· Applicant screening

· Presentation of shortlist

· Candidate interviews

· Hiring team debrief

· Offer and pre-boarding

In the RecOps model, recruiting is deliberately separated from operations. The reason for this is to reinforce that one enables the other. Better operations enable better recruiting. For example, no talent acquisition leader is going to win an award for how well they schedule an interview or configure their applicant tracking system. But these are the exact things that enable a great hiring experience for candidates and hiring managers. But how do you know which part of your hiring process is not providing a great experience? The answer is by analyzing the data produced by your recruiting process.

Component Four: Recruiting Data

During the core steps of the recruiting process outlined in the system, data is collected. That data can come in many forms. It could be analytical data, such as the cost per applicant that comes from an advertising channel. Or it could be anecdotal, like the perception from a hiring manager that your hiring process is too slow. Either way, it’s data that tells a recruiting leader how their function is performing. It’s the fuel that a RecOps practice needs to identify problems and ignite change. So, to describe data as it pertains to the RecOps model, we can define it like this:

Data is the feedback produced during the recruiting process that is used to monitor performance and identify opportunities for improvement.

In Chapter 5, I’ll go deep on how a RecOps practitioner can enable better analytics that will help you establish a system of data collection. For now, it’s only important to understand that data is an essential component in the RecOps model because it’s what tells you what is not working and how to measure transformation.

Component Five: RecOps

At its core, RecOps is a practice designed to help recruiting leaders transform their function in a continuous manner. That’s the simple definition. But let’s explore some of the things that recruiting leaders typically like to improve when driving transformation. Here are a few examples:

· Job offer acceptance rate

· Cost per applicant

· Interview-selection accuracy

· Career-site conversion rate

· Quality-of-hire metric

· Number of employee referrals

· Hiring manager satisfaction rate

· Percentage of diversity hires

This list could go on and on. And it should. Because just about every area of recruiting has room for improvement. But while the bulleted list provides us with ideas of things to optimize, it’s equally important for the model to clarify how these optimizations will get done. How they get done is through the practice of RecOps. This component represents a collection of proven tools, tactics, and methodologies that a practitioner can pull from, like levers, depending on the situation at hand. As you’ll learn later in the book, there are three key levers—data analysis, technology, and experience design—that make up the foundation of a RecOps practice. For now, however, it’s just important to restate the definition of RecOps as it relates to the model:

RecOps is a continuous improvement practice that leverages a variety of tools and tactics to transform all or part of a recruiting function.

Despite RecOps having proven tools, tactics, and methods, it’s important to understand there are no hard-and-fast rules for how you fix whatever is broken in your recruiting function. The practice of RecOps is flexible and allows you to use the best tool for the job. For example, one of the hottest transformational tools that I see a lot of consultants emphasizing today is the use of candidate and hiring manager “journey mapping.” This is a great idea for figuring out where you might have friction in your hiring process. But it’s not the only way. You could also do a “process mapping” exercise and get similar results. Or you could do “empathy mapping” if you want to understand what your candidate and hiring managers are thinking, doing, and feeling at different parts of your process. Creating a “service blueprint” is also an effective tool to map the relationships between people, processes, and technology. The point is, in RecOps, the practitioner is free to leverage whatever they deem to be the best tool for the job or, in some cases, whatever tool they’re most comfortable with.

The following are some proven and powerful methods (and skills) to have in your RecOps toolbox:

· Design thinking

· Lean Six Sigma

· Growth hacking

· Software adoption process

· Project management (Agile, Waterfall, Kanban, etc.)

· Program development

· Data analysis

· Instructional design

· Strategic planning

It’s not necessary to invent a new technique to do RecOps. You can stand on the shoulders of the continuous improvement giants who came before and make massive enhancements to your function.

The RecOps Continuous Improvement Loop

In the RecOps model, you may have noticed there are dotted lines that originate from the RecOps pillar. These lines appear as arrows that cycle improvement efforts back into the strategy, operations, and recruiting pillars. While this isn’t a physical component of the RecOps model, it should not be ignored. These lines serve to illustrate that transformation should be continuous. Isolated process improvement projects should not stop when the project is completed. The improvements should be fed back into the system and remeasured in a continuous loop to ensure that a performance improvement has taken place. This is a how a RecOps practice ensures that a recruiting function leans forward and never stagnates. In Part 5 of this book, called “Putting RecOps into Practice,” I’ll share how you can use a deliberate communication strategy, a series of specific meetings, and a project tracking tool to transform your function by creating a continuous loop of enhancements.

To summarize, in this post I introduced a model to illustrate a simple way to look at how RecOps can impact a recruiting function in a continuous manner. A crystal-clear strategy along with strong operations will drive a high-performing recruiting process. And by paying attention to the feedback or data produced by the recruiting phase, you will identify how your function is performing and what needs to be improved. The practice of RecOps is how you make those improvements.