In my previous article, “The Naked Truth about Recruiting at Diversity Conferences,” I focused on how companies could achieve a return on their conference investment by implementing a detailed process. We now need to look at a more elusive problem and understand how it impairs the recruiting initiative. That problem is called Business Process Interoperability. (Stay with this folks, it’s brilliant…)

When you really think about it, recruiting is a fairly simple process that deals with moving information and events from one stage of the process to the next: getting a candidate’s resume into an Applicant Tracking System (ATS), submitting a candidate to a hiring manager, or closing the candidate after an interview. The problem with its successful execution is not always the completion of the obvious major steps of the process, but often the communication gaps that exist between these steps in the process.

Before I get into how this concept impacts the recruiting process, let’s consider the following definitions:

The IEEE defines “interoperability” as: “the ability of two or more systems or components to exchange information and to use the information that has been exchanged.”

This term has evolved from the technology industry and it clearly pertains to many of the problems that exist in the recruiting process. The interesting part about interoperability is that it focuses on the negative space of the process, the connector of two functions of the process. (Think of it as the black arrow on a flow chart.) For example, if you look at two pieces of software independently, they might operate flawlessly alone; but, if they need to work together to be effective and don’t, overall success can be greatly compromised.

Now let’s look at the word “process.” The definition given by my good buddy Noah Webster is: “a systematic series of actions directed to some end.”

A process within a business (such as the business of recruiting) is a way to put parameters around specific goals or targets. It sets out a list of activities that will need to be accomplished to reach one’s goal. When we put “business” in front of the word “process,” it takes on a slightly different meaning.

A business process is defined as: “a systematic series of business actions directed to some end within a business.”

Put them all together and you get the concept of “business process interoperability,” and the question of the day becomes clear: How well are the different functions of your business process working together and what is it costing you in compromised recruiting when it is not?

If you look at most business processes, there are many opportunities where communications can and do break down. (How many times in your career have you lost a candidate because something that should have happened did not happen?) In established business processes such as payroll or accounts payable, the steps are well defined and documented; everyone knows what role he or she plays. If they aren’t well defined, which is often the case in recruiting, a phenomenon know as “information silos” forms. There are places where information is captured but never communicated. This is the antithesis of a best practice and the last thing we need if we are to ultimately hire great candidates.

Now, let’s take this idea and apply it to the recruiting process.

First, let’s define a sample recruiting process:

• Talent-Demand Forecasting: Determining what type of talent is needed.
• Sourcing: The process of finding candidates.
• Screening: Determining the candidates’ qualifications, their interest in the opportunity, and their availability to proceed to the next step in the process.
• Interviewing: Further determining the candidates’ qualifications and interests. Compatibility testing for both the company and the individuals.
• Selection: Selecting a candidate for the specific position.
• Offer: Providing written documentation for the candidate to say “yes” or “no” to the opportunity.
• Hire: Providing the candidate with a paycheck for work or services.

Now, let’s look at the concept of interoperability as it relates to recruiting. The best example would be the communication between a sourcing team and a recruiting team. Independent of each other, they may be very effective and produce results for their phase of the process, but effectiveness is greatly reduced when information is not efficiently transferred from one function to the next. How many candidates actually make it into an ATS? How many candidates never get to the offer stage because of the lack of information from the manager? Who gets lost between the cracks? You can see how interoperability can hurt even the best recruiting processes, as well as the best recruiters.

How many times have you seen a successful recruiting team falter or even fail because of the sourcing team or its strategy? How many good sourcing teams don’t have a functional recruiting team or strategy? How many times have you heard a sourcing team say, “The recruiters aren’t processing the candidates”? And how many times have you heard a recruiting team say, “The sourcing team isn’t getting me enough candidates”? You can see how focusing on the “negative space” between each function of the process will determine success as much or more than the steps themselves. It is that black arrow on a flow chart that keeps the process flowing effectively. Attention to these important details helps recruiters deliver great hires.

Looking to improve business process interoperability in your recruiting organization? Consider the following:

• Delineate the recruiting process clearly. What are the different functions within your recruiting process?
• Define recruiting process functional goals. Set expectations. Work with the next function of the recruiting process to determine what success actually looks like. (What is going to happen if these things occur?)
• Emphasize negative-space communication. The supply chain, defined by communication between two recruiting process functions, must not be allowed to falter.
• Encourage information flow. Information must travel in both directions. Feedback is just as important as delivery for overall success.
• Assign accountability. The ultimate recruiting word. Who was supposed to do what?

Now it is time to focus on the interoperability of the recruiting process if you want to really improve results and become more effective. Before you try to fix the top of the funnel, make sure your ROI isn’t leaking through the holes in the process.

Companies spend hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to recruit talent at diversity recruiting conferences, but the results can be minimal. We need to address this problem if we are to be seen as business-problem solvers, and not just recruiters.

As many of you know, there are quite a multitude of diverse organizations that put on annual conferences, such as the National Black MBA Association, National Society of Hispanic MBAs, and the National Society of Black Engineers.

These associations have been around for years and have been very effective in supporting their memberships’ needs to identify great employment opportunities. Further, many have regional and local chapters that have annual scholarships and awards banquets, guest lecture series, professional development seminars, networking activities, corporate receptions, and numerous student development and scholarship programs. (Can you begin to see how great recruiters can do so well here? I thought so.)

For those of you who have never attended these conferences, think of them as job fairs on steroids; thousands of candidates looking for their next opportunities and hundreds of companies trying to do everything to recruit these candidates.

These conferences offer a great venue for companies to showcase their name, organization, and brand; to sponsor everything from case competitions and cyber cafes to having your name on the bag that is given to the candidates for all the freebies.

Most important, these conferences allow your organization a real opportunity to hire diverse talent from these memberships if you know how to do it effectively and you are willing to put in the time to plan an effective strategy that has a mature and effective back-end recruiting process to guarantee that no candidates fall through the cracks.

If this sounds like a better way to get things done, let’s see how to get there in two simple steps!

Step One: Understand Process Maturity

Year after year, I see recruiting organizations attend these conferences with little to no success at acquiring diverse talent, so let’s define success right here. Success is making hires. If there is no success, why is that?

For example, did you come to the event unprepared or did candidates simply fall through the cracks in the process?

To get to an answer, let’s start with six simple questions:

1. Is there an organized plan for the interviews or do they just seem to occur somehow amid the chaos?
2. Is there any formal documentation or is there some code written on the back of the resume to determine the value of the candidate?
3. Is there a follow-up process in place or should candidates expect never to hear from anyone until next year? (Candidates who do not know what to expect usually expect nothing and move on.)
4. Is there an executive sponsor for these conferences who is actually held accountable for results or is it just talked about with no clear expectations as to what success will mean to the organization?
5. Are there champions internally who will speak on behalf of all of these conference candidates, and is that champion promoting these candidates to the various business lines to increase ROI on the conference?
6. Most important, what happened to the candidates who were interviewed two, three, or four years ago? Can they now be great hires for your organization, as they are now experienced and ready to handle more and greater levels of responsibility and challenges?

Is your organization now paying large agency fees to hire the very candidates that slipped between their fingers due to an immature hiring process? If so, this would be the ultimate waste of valuable resources and would never happen if a mature recruiting process were in place.

That’s why the recruiter who wants results needs to make the process changes that will yield a better ROI.

Now that you can see the value of a mature recruiting process, let’s look at Carnegie Mellon’s Capability Maturity Model so we can start to put a definition to it. (Where is your organization in this list?)

Simply stated, here are the five categories, according to Carnegie Mellon:

• Ad hoc

  * Undefined processes

  * Unpredictable results (Not good)

• Repeatable

  * Basic process definition

  * Limited consistency

  * Unable to measure results (A step up)

• Defined

  * Defined processes

  * Most groups consistent

  * Ability to measure results (Getting better)

• Managed

  * Well-defined processes

  * Organizational consistency

  * Managed results (Looking very good)

• Optimized

  * Process optimization

  * Quality enhancement (Very few can claim this level)

Unfortunately, the recruiting model that I consistently see at conferences is to send a bunch of people to stand in a booth or behind a table and hope the right candidates walk by. Once the conference is over, everyone drinks beer, eats those greasy little cheese balls, and takes the stacks of resumes that no one knows what to do with back to corporate so they can get put in a drawer until next year.

By the above definition, this ad-hoc process is not very good. Now, let’s look at how to optimize.

Step Two: Plan, Predict, and Track

If you want to get more ROI on diversity initiatives, I urge you to consider the following as a direct line to more effective diversity hiring:

1. Plan the event. Start the recruiting process two to three months in advance of the conference. Pre-set a number of interviews that have already been identified and screened; this gives the candidate and manager enough time to prepare for a great interview.
2. Assign roles and responsibilities. Be sure each individual involved with the conference has a clear role and responsibility. This will be beneficial at the conference, as well as afterward, when someone asks that famous question, “Why didn’t (fill in the blank) happen?” Having set roles and responsibilities in place will alleviate a lot of finger pointing.
3. Bring well-rounded employees. The selected representatives should be able to speak about the entire business, not just the vertical they fall within. as you meet all kinds of great candidates at these events.
4. Assign a champion. There should be a person (i.e., a champion) on the back end of the process who owns the overall relationship with the candidates. This includes contacting the candidates who weren’t selected so they can move forward with other interviews.
5. Make the recruiters accountable. The champion will not be able to do their job of communicating with the conference candidates unless the recruiters keep that person posted on the dispensation of all positions that involve those diversity candidates.
6. Have the champion develop metrics. As the recruiters report back to the champion on positions that close, the champion can develop metrics including number of candidates interviewed, number of offers made, and number of offers accepted. Armed with this information, you are now able to see the results, tweak practices, seek improvement, and start to predict future outcomes.

As you can imagine, there are many more things we can examine pertaining to recruiting process maturity. This is just one example of why moving away from the ad-hoc stage toward the higher levels of intelligent process will support better and more effective hiring at all levels of the organization.