The new recruitment rules for an agile workforce

Agile organ­i­sa­tions are often defined as net­works of empow­ered teams able to respond swift­ly to changes in the mar­ket­place, and oper­ate with high lev­els of effi­cien­cy, col­lab­o­ra­tion and flex­i­bil­i­ty. It’s a work­ing style that appeals to those who can make deci­sions quick­ly, piv­ot con­stant­ly and main­tain a cus­tomer-cen­tric focus at all times. So where can hir­ing organ­i­sa­tions find these quick-think­ing, autonomous go-get­ters who are com­plete­ly at ease with agile prac­tices? 

The most obvi­ous place to look is in tal­ent pools where peo­ple are used to work­ing in this way. How­ev­er, in light of the great res­ig­na­tion – Microsoft research has revealed that 41% of glob­al work­ers are con­sid­er­ing throw­ing in the tow­el – com­pa­nies need to con­sid­er alter­na­tive can­di­date demo­graph­ics. This includes women return­ers and career chang­ers, as well as peo­ple from non-tra­di­tion­al back­grounds with non-lin­ear career paths that could indi­cate an agile mind­set used to learn­ing quick­ly and think­ing dif­fer­ent­ly.

Paul Chap­man, sales direc­tor at soft­ware firm Enda­va, says: “While hard skills can often be taught, fresh per­spec­tives can be a com­pelling addi­tion to your com­pa­ny. By pri­ori­tis­ing char­ac­ter and lived expe­ri­ences among employ­ees, agile com­pa­nies can attract peo­ple they pre­vi­ous­ly might not have, who can add real val­ue to the company’s abil­i­ty to deliv­er mean­ing­ful solu­tions.” 

To facil­i­tate this hir­ing approach, open mind­ed­ness from recruit­ment and lead­er­ship when build­ing teams is essen­tial. Hir­ing well is vital, but to retain those agile-enabled indi­vid­u­als, organ­i­sa­tion­al lead­er­ship needs to afford employ­ees a lev­el of auton­o­my. The best peo­ple need to be taught, guid­ed and led, but not man­aged. They also need space to learn con­tin­u­al­ly, be recog­nised for their apti­tudes and allowed to grow beyond their role. 

“Silo­ing staff into cer­tain func­tions and pre­de­ter­mined dis­ci­plines runs counter to allow­ing peo­ple to flour­ish in agile teams,” says Chap­man. “Com­bine this with a ‘tal­ent den­si­ty’ approach, where com­pa­nies hone in on few­er num­bers of high­er-qual­i­ty recruits with more appro­pri­ate attrib­ut­es, and you have a pow­er­ful cock­tail. When hir­ing effec­tive­ly, often less is more.”

Hallmarks of agility

Appro­pri­ate agile attrib­ut­es are also very spe­cif­ic. Ener­gy, curios­i­ty and speed are three that a hir­ing firm will want to see evi­dence of, says Simon Sev­eri­no, founder and CEO of growth con­sul­tan­cy Strat­e­gy Sprints. “When inter­view­ing inter­nal and exter­nal can­di­dates, agile busi­ness­es use ‘demo’ ses­sions – live demon­stra­tions of the skills need­ed for the role at hand,” he says. “A coder might be asked to write a few lines of code dur­ing the ses­sion, while a sales rep­re­sen­ta­tive might be asked to demon­strate how they start a sales con­ver­sa­tion.”

Ide­al can­di­dates are also primed towards exper­i­men­ta­tion, like sci­en­tists test­ing hypothe­ses. “In the busi­ness set­ting, a con­cept or draft becomes a project, with dead­lines and a bud­get,” Sev­eri­no says. “Instead of run­ning mar­ket research projects for three months, the agile approach cre­ates many quick small drafts and tests them in a low-risk envi­ron­ment in less than a week. The win­ners become the ele­ments of the cam­paign.”

Oth­ers argue that com­pa­nies can become focused on find­ing ready-made tal­ent when instead they should be try­ing to cre­ate it. Work­flow man­age­ment soft­ware com­pa­ny Monday.com has grown its agile teams by cre­at­ing an acad­e­my, Mon­day U, to help peo­ple gain the agile skills need­ed for a career in the tech indus­try.

Monday.com’s glob­al direc­tor of HR Hadas Mor-Feld­bau says: “By fos­ter­ing tal­ent with a growth mind­set, com­pa­nies can help iden­ti­fy a diverse group of peo­ple who can learn and adapt to an agile way of work­ing. How­ev­er, they also need to cre­ate a cul­ture that pro­motes trans­paren­cy, impact and own­er­ship and pro­vides agile teams with the knowl­edge and auton­o­my to make a mean­ing­ful impact, with the free­dom to admit and learn from mis­takes.” 

Retain­ing agile tal­ent is vital, and incen­tives need to reflect what moti­vates these par­tic­u­lar indi­vid­u­als. Mon­ey isn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly the answer, as many employ­ees today would choose perks over a pay rise. In an agile set­ting they want more of what makes them valu­able to the organ­i­sa­tion: auton­o­my, flex­i­bil­i­ty, free­dom to be cre­ative, and sup­port rather than over­sight. 

Upskilling to agile

With the cur­rent dearth of tal­ent, organ­i­sa­tions also need to con­sid­er ways of upskilling their exist­ing tal­ent to become agile, with lead­ers and man­agers able to span cross-func­tion­al silos, teams, remits and respon­si­bil­i­ties to oper­ate faster and more effi­cient­ly. The chal­lenge is that this new man­ag­er arche­type isn’t eas­i­ly devel­oped with con­ven­tion­al man­age­ment or lead­er­ship train­ing.

Ben Gra­ham, co-founder and man­ag­ing part­ner of glob­al exec­u­tive search firm Tri­tonEx­ec, says: “Expo­sure to being dif­fer­ent char­ac­ters is key. Com­pa­nies get­ting this right have typ­i­cal­ly exposed staff at every avenue of the busi­ness. For exam­ple, we’ve seen some tran­si­tion from sales to con­sult­ing to dig­i­tal, giv­ing them a much wider under­stand­ing of the busi­ness func­tions and its over­all goals.  Also      build­ing on exist­ing strengths by role-chang­ing has often brought out the best in agile teams, where for exam­ple we’ve seen solu­tion archi­tects tran­si­tion into sales, and sales tran­si­tion­ing into con­sult­ing.”

Cre­at­ing agile teams is as much of an atti­tude as it is a prac­tice. Lead­ers who are suc­cess­ful­ly inspir­ing agile teams are typ­i­cal­ly excel­lent com­mu­ni­ca­tors, not bark­ing out orders and instruc­tions, but lead­ing by pos­i­tive and believ­able exam­ple, warts and all. This is char­ac­terised by lead­ers who share their life and busi­ness jour­neys on social media, are trans­par­ent and remove bar­ri­ers.  

“Show­ing the bal­ance of their lives, whether marathons, char­i­ty endeav­ours, fam­i­ly life, pol­i­tics and busi­ness mile­stones, shows a breadth of ver­sa­til­i­ty that should act as a brand of cul­ture for all staff with­in the busi­ness,” says Gra­ham. “They should feel inspired to be as diverse and robust as their lead­ers who share ele­ments of their ‘whole­heart­ed’ life jour­neys.”

Supporting the transition

Upskilling man­agers to agile work­ing requires sup­port that is ongo­ing and inte­grat­ed, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the new land­scape of hybrid and remote work­ing, where teams are col­lab­o­rat­ing large­ly through vir­tu­al chan­nels. Organ­i­sa­tions must estab­lish an infra­struc­ture that allows agile ways of work­ing to flour­ish. With­out it, new recruits become a flight risk, and upskilled lead­ers and man­agers can all too eas­i­ly revert back to famil­iar, more tra­di­tion­al ways of work­ing.

For the indi­vid­ual, the tran­si­tion from con­ven­tion­al man­age­ment styles to agile work­ing prac­tices can be a huge chal­lenge. Agile is about the capac­i­ty to quick­ly catch the weak sig­nals of change so that teams have enough time to tweak process­es and prod­ucts accord­ing­ly. “Man­agers need to adapt quick­ly to real-time reports and track­ing met­rics that move the busi­ness in the right direc­tion and at the right pace,” says Sev­eri­no. “Instead of 40 to 50 met­rics, they will col­lect and dis­cuss between three and nine met­rics, and the cadence will be week­ly, with live dash­boards instead of long quar­ter­ly reports.” 

To help ease the tran­si­tion he advo­cates the adop­tion of three key habits: a dai­ly habit of review­ing how your time was allo­cat­ed today and what you can improve tomor­row; a week­ly habit of review­ing core week­ly mar­ket­ing, sales and oper­a­tions num­bers; and a month­ly habit of com­pet­i­tive analy­sis and veloc­i­ty review of whether the busi­ness is mov­ing in the right direc­tion at the right pace. “These three habits have helped to keep my busi­ness and my team resilient and agile,” Sev­eri­no says.