Learning Launch

Challenge

I am part of a strategy and innovation pod driving transformations that impact our business. The  project was for recruitment process reengineering by focussing on the candidate application,  selection and interview process and finding automation opportunities. Certain businesses within the  organization were struggling to fill open positions on time and this was impacting our ability to meet  contracted service levels with our clients. As a starting point we understood that we needed to  improve experience during the hiring process for key stakeholders in the process i.e. the candidates  and recruiters during the interview process. The project scope included revisiting the recruitment  process and understanding the journey for the candidate and the recruiter.

Our main focus was to build empathy with the candidate and recruiter to understand their  challenges and in order to fulfil their needs. We also focused on the emotional experience of the  candidate as an individual and prioritized it over all other stakeholders.

Selection

We had attempted several changes related to hiring process and automation in HGS businesses  successfully and implemented some of the best practices in the problematic businesses. We decided  to try the learning launch tool to test some of the best practices and help understand what works for  the struggling businesses. The idea was to validate our best practices to see if it improved  stakeholder experience and eventually helped fill open positions on time.

Application

We demonstrated to the business leaders the solutions (process and system) that were  implemented successfully. We then discussed through workshops to tweak the process and system  to the struggling businesses. Based on what was agreed, we created a system that was though very  close to the model that was implemented successfully but also customized to meet specific needs.  The new system was implemented in a ‘Controlled Live Launch’ where applicants from one source  (Career portal) experienced the new system. All other ‘Sources’ like employee referral, job portals  were left to continue in their existing system.

All applicants from the Career Portal and recruiters handling those applications experienced our new  process. We ran the ‘Controlled Live’ environment from Nov 2010 to Jan 2011. Feedback from both  stakeholders were continuously gathered and summarized. Minor tweaks/changes were introduced  based on feedback received based on priority accorded to what impacted the candidate experience.  This approach not only reduced the implementation cycle time, but also allowed us to test and learn  most successful approach in new system roll out.

Insight

Several critical changes like reduction of data entry during application, content of emails sent to  candidates, simplification and flexibility in the interview scheduling process had a significant and  positive impact on the candidate experience and reduction in manual activities (which was causing  delays) for the recruiter. We compared feedback from before and after and also across other  channels, there was a unanimous preference and higher NPS (net promoter score) for the new  process. Insights on what candidates don’t want to spend time doing and using recruiter’s hours  towards more interaction related activities and lesser time spent on coordination and administrative  tasks.

Learning launch will work where there is a diverse user group to identify the key goals or objectives  and challenges faced by the users before implementing a system to solve it.

