Differentiating Candidates

Rank Positions by Criticality and Apply technology

Are all your open positions of the same value to your organization? Can they be automated or augmented with artificial intelligence?

Neither hiring managers nor recruiters think much about this, even though we know that certain positions contribute more to the success of our organization than others. Even though we intuitively know this, we tend to practice a policy called FIFO in manufacturing. FIFO stands for First In, First Out, and for a recruiter, this means that you work on the first requisition you receive, the next one after that, and so on. 

However, treating all positions as equally valuable is impossible to do effectively. Most positions fall into one of four categories: administrative/maintenance (Transactional), special services (Generalists), professional/technical (Experts), or strategic/critical (Innovators).  Obviously, there are times when this order changes, and we always have a few “hot” requisitions that we are working on because they are for a critical and important executive. Still, we mostly practice FIFO.

In other words, we usually don’t prioritize our workloads based on how critical a position is to the organization. Yet, doing so can have some real benefits. By taking ideas from manufacturing environments and the most advanced call centers and service organizations, you can increase the number of candidates you place and have more time to spend on the hard-to-find candidates.

You can make this process more effective and productive in many ways. First of all, you can target all marketing to the audience that you are seeking. Targeted marketing is the most effective way of reducing the number of unqualified candidates. Secondly, by using artificial intelligence to match candidates to positions and do initial screenings you can further eliminate any marginal candidates. These two factors should increase the amount of time you can spend finding and presenting a qualified candidate and improve your firm’s reputation for fair and fast recruiting.

Figure 1; Positions Ranked By Criticality

Step One