What is Just-In-Time Recruiting?
Now that you have a good understanding of what Lean is all about (providing value to customers and reducing waste), let’s focus on the concept of Just-In-Time.
Just-In-Time (JIT) production is a pull-based production strategy that is also called the Toyota Production System.
A critical Lean concept, Just-In-Time strives to enable companies to react to specific demands with agility and speed with the goal of producing the exact product (or performing the exact service) that a customer wants, when they want it, in the amount they want.
Applying this concept to talent identification and acquisition, Just-In-Time recruiting is a pull-based strategy of providing hiring managers/clients with candidates that exactly match their needs, when they want them, in the amount they want.
Just-In-Time strategy is designed specifically to reduce the wastes of overproduction, inventory, defects, over-processing, and waiting. Instead of proactively building and maintaining work-in-process (WIP) candidate pipelines without an actual hiring need (a push-based strategy), JIT recruiting has a primary focus of tapping into “raw material” candidate inventory (resumes, LinkedIn profiles, your network, etc.) and contacting, qualifying, and delivering candidates only in direct response to a hiring need.
In Just-In-Time recruiting, recruiters only contact, screen and submit candidates in response to a client’s (internal or external) “order” – these processed candidates are pulled through the recruiting lifecycle based on actual demand.
When properly executed, a recruiter can source, contact, screen/interview candidates and submit the best to a hiring authority for consideration within 24-48 hours of being given the “green light” for a specific position – all without having a traditional pipeline of candidates that have been “kept warm.
