Webinar Recap: Capacity Planning in Uncertain Times
We recently hosted the second webinar in our Future of Talent Acquisition webinar series – this time on the topic of capacity planning during uncertain times. Given the turbulence and volatility of today’s market, it seemed like an opportune time to discuss capacity planning with a handful of experts.
“Capacity planning requires an understanding of both your anticipated hiring needs and your talent acquisition team’s realistic capacity – and, while we’re at it, a crystal ball to predict the future. ”
Let’s face it – capacity planning is challenging, even during the best of times. As both an art and a science, it requires an understanding of your anticipated hiring needs and your talent acquisition team’s realistic capacity – and, while we’re at it, a crystal ball to predict the future.
The recap below will fill you in on many of the great insights we gathered from our panelists, but if you’d like to learn more, feel free to watch the full replay here!
In this webinar, we spoke with three TA leaders who have risen to the challenge of capacity planning in uncertain times. First, I’d like to take a moment to thank each of them for their insights and contributions:
Ambra Benjamin - Global Head of Technical Recruiting, Datadog
Sierra Kaslow - Head of Business Recruiting, Miro
Neil Davies - Global Head of Talent, Roku
Now – the good stuff!
1. Plan for flexibility by looking ahead.
“Recruiting has to grow ahead of company growth. ”
This probably goes without saying, but with the market constantly evolving, we need to look around metaphysical corners and prepare for variable hiring needs. So how do we plan for the unpredictable?
Anticipating organizational or industry-wide shifts – especially those that may directly impact your hiring needs – is critical. Do you have a product launch you will need to hire for in 6 months? Factor that in as early as possible.
The same can be said on a macro scale. Looking at the future of the market and planning accordingly will help you and your team be more agile, positioning you to adapt to any changes more quickly and effectively. As all of the panelists mentioned at the beginning of the conversation, it is important to partner closely with your finance team, recruiting leads, and other stakeholders in order to staff appropriately.
2. Leverage data to understand your hiring capacity.
There is no one-size-fits-all model for capacity planning, but diving into your existing team’s data is always part of the equation. Review quantifiable targets and compare them to actual production to better understand what your team can currently handle, and whether you may need additional support in some form.
“There is no one-size-fits-all model for capacity planning, but diving into your existing team’s data is always part of the equation. ”
Panelist Pro Tip: Remember to slice capacity by pipeline, as the numbers for different requisition categories may vary significantly. Put simply, some jobs may be easier to fill than others. Because of this, we cannot look at capacity planning from an “all up” view. Instead, to do this well, we need to dive into the data to understand nuances and factor them into our capacity planning strategy.
3. Optimize and account for trade-offs.
Speed, cost, and quality naturally make up three points of “The Trade-Off Triangle.” For example, higher volume often leads to lower quality – if you want to speed up and condense the interview process, screening quality may suffer.
To optimize these trade-offs in the context of capacity planning:
Identify your priorities. (Cost? High-quality candidates? Timeline?)
Quantify and measure each parameter in the trade off triangle.
Find the tipping points of each trade-off for your organization.
“It takes a village.”
One other thing to consider – which is often neglected – is the capacity of other resources involved in hiring besides the recruiting team itself. Don’t forget: it takes a village (to hire great people)! The time and capacity of hiring managers and interviewers, for example, also needs to be taken into account. As Neil mentioned, once his organization exceeds 400 employees, the quality starts to drop. There are no longer enough interviewers, hours of spare time for hiring managers, and other infrastructure pieces in place to successfully qualify the volume of candidates needed to hit this goal. This creates a bottleneck, which affects recruiting team targets.
Knowing your organization's tipping point allows capacity planners to plan more accurately and efficiently. If your company wants a certain number of hires beyond that magic tipping point number, the organization will need to build out some infrastructure to prepare for the accompanying stress on the hiring system.
“... the organization will need to build out some infrastructure to prepare for the accompanying stress on the hiring system.”
Taking the time to understand your organization's sweet spots – the intersection of speed, cost, and quality that makes the most sense – plays to your advantage during capacity planning. Always keep your organization’s hiring capacity in mind – not just for your recruiting teams, but for everyone who might be involved in the hiring process. Where are your tipping points? What are your priorities? How can you structure your capacity planning strategy to optimize and account for these trade-offs?
4. Consider additional TA support to supplement your internal team’s strategy.
External resourcing can be a critical tool in your capacity planning toolkit. With all the factors that go into capacity planning, recruiting teams still end up being front-loaded in Q1, needing immediate support in times of growth, and so on. Adding flexible recruiting resources can combat this resource gap, maintain flexibility, and keep your organizational hiring goals on track.
“External resourcing can be a critical tool in your capacity planning toolkit.”
When capacity planning for these resources, view them as a flexible but “full” resource – in other words, plan for them to hit the same goals as an internal FTE team member. Especially during these uncertain times, the flexibility that these external hiring solutions can provide is often the key to a TA team’s success.
Conclusion
This webinar shed light on several important factors one should consider when capacity planning and provided ways to identify and solve various bottlenecks. We learned so much from our panelists and can’t wait for the next one!