The Agile Job Fair (by Maryam)

The Agile Job Fair

by: Maryam Rehman

In simple terms, Agile is a methodology. As a methodology of being able to deliver products and services quickly and continuously, Agile is swiftly becoming the framework overtaking Waterfall as its flexibility and shorter Sprints lead to customer advantage in the market. But how do we understand Agile without framing it in our current projects.

Working as an Engagement Specialist, I work with multiple clients who hold contracts with us, the suppliers, to take on the project of hiring employees. Our clients then outsource their HR to our teams once the employees have been on boarded. During their peak times of production, our clients may hold larger hiring events and require the services of my team to be able to bring in a larger, qualified, candidate pool. When a client reaches a peak time in their quarter or season for production and needs a larger candidate size to be bought in, they will request our services for 2 onsite job fairs, one after the other. I will work with my recruiting team to make sure we have a qualified, screened group of interviewees, being scheduled for these fairs.

What if I approached these job fairs as a Scrum Master? In this scenario, my recruiting team would serve as the developers, BAs and architects. Our Product Owner would be represented by our Neutral Vendor who manages our team as well as our competing suppliers and works with the customer to make sure each supplier is aware of the requirements of our candidates.

I would need to prepare with a product backlog. We can start by breaking it into 2 PBIs which would be Job Fair 1 and Job Fair 2. We can then break down Job Fair 1 into smaller user stories. We are going for simplicity as Agile Principle 10 reminds us is essential. Being that the client is requesting 2 job fairs, we can split each into its own separate Sprint with each Sprint being 1 week long (5 business days [Monday-Friday] with the 6^th day [Saturday] being the job fair). Let’s say our client is asking for 3 requirements. The contractors need to have electronic repair experience, the contractors must be looking for a part-time position and the contractors must already be prescreened by our recruiting team. A breakdown of the three user stories and story points:

(As a) supplier, (I need) skilled Electronic Repair Technicians, (so that) my customer will onboard them [Sequence Number: 3]

Access logins from my manager for hiring sites online
Skills need to be assessed from profile resumes
Call candidates to explain their skills further

(As a) supplier, (I need) part-time contractors, (so that) my customer can keep up with their production peak. [Sequence Number: 1]

Focus on student resumes online as it is summer

(As a) supplier, (I need) to pre-screen my candidates before the job fair, (so that) only qualified candidates are presented to the client. [Sequence Number: 8]

Schedule the candidates for interviews with us
Make sure their registration is complete
If qualified, schedule each candidate for an interview at the job fair.

According to the Fibonacci sequence I have assigned each story with a sequence number. During our Spring Planning, our team has estimated that our 2^nd user story would require half a day, our 1^st user story would require 1 day and our 3^rd story would require 3 days. We will leave the ½ a day on the 5^th day to present those we have scheduled for interviews to the client during the Sprint Review. Our list of candidates scheduled would be our potentially shippable increment. Each day prior to this would require a Daily Scrum to make sure each of my developers (recruiters) are on task or to see if they have encountered any blockers along the way. This way, I as the Scrum Master, would be able to offer support or to return to our Neutral Vendor (product owner) if any clarification from our customer is needed.

I would also like to present a ROAM for my 1^st user story. The Risk is that there are no skilled contactors on the site that we have chosen. It is Owned and Accepted by me. I have Mitigated it by having my manager back up our team with an email blast to reach to our candidates who are already in our server and not currently on a contract to remind them that we are currently holding a job fair with our client and to contact us to schedule them for interviews with our recruiting team.

Once the service of the job fair has been completed on the 6^th day, our team would conduct a Sprint Retrospective. This will give my scrum team the opportunity to inspect our process during the first sprint, and as Agile Principle 12 mentions, adjust and tune our behavior accordingly. As we put this information back into the product backlog, it will help in our Sprint Planning for our next sprint for Job Fair 2. We will now be able to build off of our PSI and come continuously with a stronger candidate pool to offer to our client for their second job fair!