Bringing Tech to “Tech” Recruitment
“Recruitment is no rocket science”, a mantra that echoes inside the room of every recruitment firm, big or small. It became a proverbial chorus among recruiters for one obvious reason — there is truth in it, plain and simple. A recruiter’s job is to decipher their hiring manager’s biddings, embark on a hunting spree in the expansive jungle that is LinkedIn. We nurture, assure, reassure and at last, usher our target to a new onboarding process. For the longest time (and perhaps until the end of time) this is a cyclical journey in which each of my species has to undergo. When compared to scraping the vast sea of the internet using Golang or implementing micro-services to build a highly scalable application, recruitment is no rocket science.
My name is Calvin, I am a tech recruiter here at Zeals. Lately, one particular “why” inhabits my head. Why are we being called this way? What is it about our job that embodies tech? Is it our ability to memorize all the relevant programming languages? Or is it our inherent knack to explain the need for a DevOps to any person as if they were five? To many, yes. I will be the first to say, not everybody has the tolerance or curiosity to memorize thingamajigs let alone comprehend a bunch of whatchamacallits. This was the conclusion I assume many of my brethren have landed on. I too associated myself not too long ago with the aforementioned conclusion. My time at Zeals however has proven that status-quo was meant to be dared. Perhaps, there are ways we recruiters can incorporate hard skills, not for the sake of justifying the “tech” in our job title but to actually improve our scriptural routine.
Atlassian’s JIRA and its trusty companion, Confluence are the name of the game. The famous (or infamous) agile-oriented project-product management tool that many developers, designers, POs, and PMs live by, but alas recruiters are not among them. One may wonder why this is not a thing for us. It is not a thing for a simple reason; JIRA is simply not simple. It is unconventional and above everything else, it is not made for our kind in mind. I am not here to inspire, encourage, or shed light on an atypical process that would revolutionize recruitment. I am just here to entertain my own “why” and needed a channel to blurt out my higgledy-piggledy thoughts.
Sprint
Remember earlier when I outlined the job of a recruiter? there is an actual jargon for it — Full Life Cycle Recruitment. Turns out it emulates Software Development Life Cycle rather closely. As a team, we realize we can break down each step into tasks, consequently turning those tasks into tickets that fit into the JIRA mold. Sprinkle those with a few long- and short-term missions, voila we got ourselves a workable sprint board.
Obviously, a stretch in some areas, but running a sprint allows us to be more attuned to the developers’ work process. Understanding their day-to-day augment our inventories with more ammunitions to build better rapport with our target audience. But above all else, having a board with well-defined tasks enables better overall visibility and encourage systematic approach to our routine.
Documentation
Recruitment is easy to pick up, but hard to master. Some, (a few actually) may even consider it as an art form. We all follow the basic foundation but eventually develop unique flair true to our own. From where I came from — the land of 360 recruitment — a recruiter’s individual quirk and best practices are what ultimately set us apart. However often time, this information remained untold. Even when a senior recruiter attempts to verbalize his or her own success, ‘lost in translation’ and shortage of empathy became common struggles. I have seen far too many hopeful straight-out-of-college recruiters disheartened for not being able to emulate their managers’ success. In recruitment, the subjectivity of one’s experience seldom translate to immediate triumph for another. So, our team reached an impasse — how can we nurture the next generation of tech recruiters in a subject that is highly unquantifiable?
We took a page off the dev’s rule book — proper documentation. Through Confluence we created a wiki-page of all-things recruitment at Zeals, from the basics, existing operation, best practices, scout mail templates, and empty pages for more. That was the key, our wiki page is not a bible. It needs to evolve alongside us. New scenarios will be added, outdated approaches will be removed. New members can come in, absorb everything that has been written, but can easily contribute their own findings. Confluence serves as a time capsule of our experience recruiting at Zeals. While at the end we still may not quantify the unquantifiable, we can pass down a series of perspectives, ideas, and ultimately options for new members to elect independently.
Tickets
It was a typical Friday evening, I was ready to log off and tackle a nearby brewery for a pint or two then one of our PM posted this on our Slack channel;
He created a help center. A place where developers can raise tickets (request) internally to fellow developers. “Wouldn’t it be nice to have something similar to this for recruitment?” I pondered. Monday morning, I began scraping the vast wasteland of Yahoo Answers, traversing the Atlassian sea of forum posts, and navigating through what seemingly unending series of YouTube videos to find the answer to the question “how?” So, there I was, slowly untangling, nervously tinkering but gradually decrypting the behemoth that is JIRA. Until I finally arrive at this;
An interface that allows the hiring manager to request a talent without the hassle of scheduling an extensive sync-up with recruiters. Needless to say, I was thrilled. Partly because I successfully piloted JIRA, but also, because I have done something technical as a tech recruiter. We have since expanded the platform to other HR functions — allowing us to wrestle HR related subject matter akin to a help desk.
If it Ain’t Broke
This is where my thought exercise ends. I do apologize if it is not groundbreaking nor produces anything fruitful. But it allows me to retort my earlier question. I see myself as a tech recruiter because I find gratification in deciphering the enigmatic workflow of a developer or understanding requirements beyond simple must-haves and good-to-haves. Zeals gave me the tools and opportunity to explore what is possible in tech recruitment. Obviously, I am not speaking for all my comrades out there. You do not need to bust out big cash to start a contract with Atlassian or subscribe to a 6-months JIRA course to successfully hit your hiring target. Recruitment is already stressful as it is and at the end of the day, “if it ain't broke don’t fix it”.
