Stop Treating Your Recruiting Pipeline Like An All-You-Can-Eat Buffet
Every time I walk into a restaurant kitchen during peak hours, I’m amazed by the orchestrated chaos. There’s a reason they limit how many orders can be cooking at once. Too many tickets on the line and quality suffers. The same principle applies to recruiting, yet we’ve been running our hiring processes like an all-you-can-eat buffet where everything is priority number one.
Here’s the thing: when everything is urgent, nothing is urgent. When every role is top priority, we’re actually saying no role is truly important. Traditional recruiting has been operating in this paradox for years, and it’s time we fixed it.
Enter sprint recruiting. Think of it as bringing the discipline of a fine dining kitchen to your hiring process. Instead of trying to cook everything at once, we work in two-week sprints with clear priorities. Just like a kitchen has a finite number of burners, we assign 200 priority points across all open roles. Want to mark something as urgent? Great - but you’ll need to decide what becomes less urgent in return.
The magic happens when you implement what I call the 5-5-5 rule. Picture three distinct prep stations in your kitchen: initial prep (recruiter screening), taste testing (manager review), and final plating (manager interviews). Each station can only handle five items at a time. It seems constraining at first, but constraints breed creativity and force real prioritization.
But here’s what makes this really work: the feedback loop. Just like a chef needs to know immediately if a dish isn’t meeting standards, we enforce 48-hour feedback windows. No more candidates sitting in limbo while hiring managers “think it over” for weeks.
The results? We’re seeing companies complete their “orders” (hires) faster, with higher quality, and much less waste (candidate drop-off). The key is starting small - pick a few “regular customers” (hiring managers) who get it, run a pilot, and let the results speak for themselves.
One last thing: if you’re a recruiter, spend time in the kitchen. By that I mean shadow the roles you’re hiring for. Spend 2-3 days understanding what the job actually entails. The best restaurants have chefs who intimately know their ingredients. The best recruiters deeply understand their roles and speak the language of their hiring managers.
Stop running your recruiting function like a chaotic buffet. Start running it like a well-oiled kitchen. Your candidates, hiring managers, and sanity will thank you.