3. What is Agile Team Member Hiring?
Hiring new team members in a way that…
Ø…involves the whole team (+more)
Ø…is more and more self-organized using Agile methods
Ø…improves continuously and reduces “waste” of candidates
Ø…focuses on a good candidate experience
You Agile practitioners are well qualified to set up and moderate this!
4. Agile Hiring Manifesto ;)
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working new team members over comprehensive documentation
Candidate involvement over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a (hiring) plan
6. Workshop Goals
1) See that it’s easy to apply Agile methods to hiring
2) Get an idea on the impact
3) Get some ideas on how to do it
7. Workshop Agenda
Intro (13:00)
• Why?
• Overview
Exercise (13:15)
• Co-create a hiring
process
• Bring your own job
description
Insights (13:45)
• Agile Team
Member Hiring
from the Trenches
Interactive Part
(14:05)
• Investigate specific
topics
• Discussion
15. Hiring mistakes are expensive
à ~50-150k€ for a typical developer position
Salary
paid
Recruiting
expenses
On-
boarding
effort
Time lost
Cost of
hiring
mistake
16. Summary: How to convince your boss
Shared effort à less bottlenecks à speed-up
Multiple heads à multiple perspectives à improved hiring quality
Peer exposure à better insights (goes both ways)
Team participation à buy-in à superior onboarding
Agile methods à continuous improvement à hiring gets better and better
17. Team involvement is possible at every
stage of the hiring funnel!
Marketing Selection
Search
Pre-screening
Negotiation
Pre-
paration
Onboarding &
Probation
Period
Plannning
Exercise
18. Exercise: Team Member Selection Process
Organize
ØGroup by job position
ØCo-create a specific hiring process for
that position (15 min.)
ØPresent (3 min.)
Specifics
ØStart: Pre-screening / Search
ØEnd: Hiring decision
ØBe specific w.r.t. the position
ØMake sure the whole team and other
relevant stakeholders are really involved
ØMake sure it works from the candidate’s
perspective as well
ØYou know a thing or two about Agile /
Lean – use it ;)
20. Agile teams are well-prepared to do
recruiting
What do you need for a good recruiting process?
Candidate’s perspective “Customer” focus
Daily alignment Daily
Overview and visualization Sprint Board
Continuous improvement Retrospectives / Inspect & Adapt
Scheduling Sprint-Planung
Understanding of job requirements E.g. from working agreements
Recruiting know-how that is what HR is for
Not just limited
to agile teams
22. Make hiring a team responsibility, but wait
patiently for voluntary action to emerge
23. Broad involvement in hiring has a learning
curve for people and organization.
Shu phase:
- Start with existing processes
- Strong moderation
- Master/Learner pairing
- Explicit training effort
Ha phase:
- Participants tinker with processes
- Relaxed moderation
Ri phase:
Never seen so far ;)
24. Use teams as focus groups for
recruiting channels and ads
26. If you do Active Search, peer recruiting
works surprisingly well
27. Let the whole team define how to measure
a successful hire after 3 months in
From this you can derive…
Ø Search profile
Ø Selection criteria
Ø Onboarding plan
28. Consistency:
Shared Interview Guidelines
Frontend Coding: B
HTML/CSS
What are CSS selectors?
How do you impllement a responsive design?
JavaScript general
When would you recommend a SPA? When not?
SPA architecture (if senior)
How do I use a component within a component?
Backend Coding: C
Development Process: D
Motivation: B
Communication & Empathy: C
Shared „script“
Knowledge areas with grades
Topics to cover in all interviews
Shared repository of questions (living document)
Caution!
Interview is a
bidirectional
CONVERSATION
30. Pick a good Kanban board tool to
manage the hiring process
31. A Kanban board is the natural way to
manage the hiring process
Wait Invite
Pre-screen
Wait Hire
Reject
Contact
Naomi NagataJim Holden
Marco Inaros
Amos BurtonAlex Kamal
Clarissa Mao
Bobbie Draper
Fred Johnson
39. When there is no clear team, you can
still gamify participation
40. Where HR can help
Organization
ØPoint of contact for candidates
ØCoordination
ØModeration
ØProvide salary bandwidths
ØTemplates, tools, …
Experience
ØA team fills 1 to 3 positions per year
ØHR is involved in all positions à
much more experience
ØInterviewer coaching
ØEnsure quality (avoid a bad
reputation on Kununu & Glassdoor)
ØMarket overview, marketing
channels, …
41. Summary: Most important tricks
Prepare the team: understanding and skills
Define explicit success criteria together
Enable fast scheduling through fixed appointments
Inspect and adapt
43. Deep Dive Groups
We form up to three groups to dive deeper into one topic. We share our insights
in the discussion afterwards. You have 10 minutes.
Possible topics are:
a) Real Insights: What can be done to provide the candidate with real insights?
b) Candidate Perspective: If you were a candidate, what would you really want
to talk about?
c) Trial Work: What is the best approach to trial work?
