72 percent of CEOs in PwC’s latest survey say they are worried about the availability of key skills. In today’s working world inundated with millennials, undergoing rapid digitalization, with redefined ways of working, ensuring a healthy talent pipeline and recruiting top talent can be a significant challenge for HR leaders. Especially, in the IT space where the skills market has not been able to keep up with the pace of digital transformation and the fourth industrial revolution. According to the European Commission, around 37 percent of workers in Europe don’t have even basic digital skills.
Hiring talented workers to achieve strategic business objectives can no longer rely purely on traditional talent acquisition strategies which involve longer lead times, higher costs, and greater risk. There is a need for adopting a more flexible and dynamic approach to onboarding new talent.
Enter just-in-time hiring.
Inspired by the Japanese concept of just-in-time manufacturing, that involves parts being supplied only when a process requires them, just-in-time (JIT) hiring focuses on acquiring the apt number of temporary staff to take care of real-time staffing needs. And agencies play a critical role in actionizing a robust JIT hiring strategy. Serving as a reliable marketplace for hiring talent, recruitment agencies deliver improved efficiency, reduced risk, workplace agility and lower costs to HR departments.
Onboarding employees that exactly match your needs, when you want them, and in the numbers you need can greatly simplify the talent acquisition conundrum that faces many HR leaders today. JIT is unique in the way it alleviates significant challenges of traditional hiring processes – putting out advertisements to invite applications, rummaging through hundreds of resumes for shortlisting candidates for a single position, interviewing and selecting the right candidate, and keeping them warm while they serve their notice period and are finally onboarded. JIT agencies can source, contact, screen/interview candidates and submit the best profiles to hiring managers in a whopping 24-48 hours. The contrast is striking.
It’s not to say that traditional hiring practices are redundant and must be phased out. For long-term, strategic positions within the company, quality of talent and cultural fit would matter more than the time it takes to fill the position. But for taking advantage of “agile talent” with specialized skills for specific tasks and on-demand working arrangements, JIT hiring is a no-brainer.
Further, the proliferation of next-generation digital technologies has made JIT hiring even more successful. Some of them include:
- Artificial intelligence: Automate repetitive, high volume tasks such as going through hundreds of CVs to shortlist qualified candidates. Intelligent algorithms can do this automatically with a decent degree of accuracy by comparing resumes against a list of keywords provided by the hiring manager.
- Video/mobile chat: Conduct face-to-face interviews online, especially in this social distancing business environment to save time, effort, and costs, and provide a better experience to candidates.
- Applicant tracking systems: Find the right ATS that can manage all communication with the candidate across mobile and social platforms. Use the ATS to implement a standardized one-for-all selection process to remove bias and enable data-driven decision making.
We are confident that in the post-COVID-19 world where remote working would no longer be taboo, JIT hiring will play a pivotal role in solving the talent scarcity crisis facing companies looking to reinvigorate growth and enhance profitability.
Are you employing JIT hiring strategies to source talent? We would love to know how it’s working out for you.
