Elite software engineers introduced agile methodologies for software development in the early 2000s. Since then they have been quite successful due to their success in dealing with change management, efficient use of time and resources and their flexibility. Since then agile principles have been adapted in many other fields, including talent management, via agile recruiting.

Agile recruiting emerged to find ways of making recruitment more efficient, less risky, and more responsive to business requirements.

Agile Recruiting

Agile recruiting was an instant hit with talent managers because it significantly improved the recruitment process in the IT industry, especially for hiring software developers. It quickly became clear how recruiting could benefit from the application of agile methodologies. It is not just good for recruiters but also favours job-seeking software developers by making the process smooth, faster and time saving.

The following are some of the ways agile recruiting makes software developers’ lives easier, especially in the job market!

1. Faster Recruitment Process

Faster recruitment is one of the obvious perks of agile recruiting. The traditional recruitment process is painfully slow, and its lack of speed affects almost everyone. Slow processes disappoint candidates, lower morale in projects and also make subsequent processes difficult for recruiters.
With agile recruiting, stakeholders have much more frequent touchpoints and shorter sprints, due to which recruiters get to engage more with the candidates on various points and get more insights about them which help in speedy recruitment.

2. High Level Of Flexibility

Instead of spending weeks on sourcing promising candidates and lining them up for interviews, recruiters can start with much smaller groups. They can focus on lining up two or three interviews aiming to first validate the job requirement, before investing more time and resources into finding the best candidates.
Such flexibility is not possible in traditional hiring methods, due to the lack of feedback during the process. The number of candidates selected for interviews can also change depending on factors like time limit for the position, or the number of candidates who applied for the position.

3. Better Coordination

Due to regular touchpoints, collaboration between recruiters and project managers as well as between recruiters and the shortlisted software developers is better. It not only keeps the recruitment process active but also helps shortlisted software developers understand the position better, familiarize themselves with the company and the business requirements of their project. Unlike traditional recruitment, agile recruiting keeps everyone motivated and keeps the momentum going.

4. Real-Time Feedback

The primary problem with traditional recruiting is that recruiters cannot get much feedback during the recruitment process. There have been often cases when after the whole process the selected candidates are not seen as a ‘good fit’ for the position, or do not match the expectations of the project manager.

Thanks to agile recruiting, the recruiting team has a chance to get feedback from project managers and stakeholders during regular checkpoints following sprint. Informal feedback like, “Yes, you are headed the right way, please keep sourcing similar candidates” or “No, candidates with such a portfolio are not as good a fit as we thought. Let’s refocus” proves to be more than enough.

In case the selected candidates do not offer what is needed, they can be informed earlier and another candidate can be approached as soon as possible, saving time for both recruiters and candidates. Agile recruiting also prevents candidates from developing a negative perception of the employer, which would have occurred in the instance of traditional ‘ghosting’.