Week of December 16th, 2024
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Pareto Optimality in RecOps by Jeremy Lyons
More than likely you have heard about the Pareto principle, though you might have heard of it by its more commonplace sobriquet of the 80/20 rule. The Pareto principle, named for economist Vilfredo Pareto, states that for many outcomes, roughly 80% of consequences come from 20% of causes. Some examples of this are 80% of sales coming from 20% of clients, 80% of issues are caused by 20% of the causes to quality issues, etc. However, while many people know about the Pareto principle, in RecOps we deal predominately with Pareto optimality and Pareto efficiency. So, let’s dive in.
What is Pareto Optimality?
Pareto optimality, is an economic state where resources cannot be reallocated to make one individual better off without making at least one individual worse off.
What is Pareto Efficiency?
In economics, a Pareto improvement formalizes the idea of an outcome being "better in every possible way". A change is called a Pareto improvement if it leaves everyone better-off (or at least as well-off as before). A solution is Pareto efficient or Pareto optimal if after all possible improvements, there are no longer any ways left to make one person better off without making some other person worse off.
But ok, you didn’t come here for an Econ lesson, you came here for RecOps knowledge.
In your RecOps role, you have likely been working to create Pareto efficient solutions from the minute you started by balancing tradeoffs so everything feels equal. If you came up as an RC (or still are), you likely did this without even knowing when it came to scheduling. For example, you worked on load balancing or placing your interviewers in their preferred times so that candidates had got their interviewers at their best. Vice versa, you took into account candidates’ preferences for interview times or locations and, if you couldn’t accommodate them, you did what you could to make sure they weren’t too inconvenience.
Why is understanding Pareto optimality important in RecOps?
Because it is about efficiency and proper resource allocation. For example, if you are about to implement a new tool or process, but only a certain number of users will receive it, the non-receiving group will be disadvantaged. This likely means that you will want to think of ways to ensure that the disadvantaged group is given an advantage in the next round of improvements or that you make other changes so that they are less inconvenienced (e.g., a comp increase, etc.).
What are some other situations in RecOps that articulate Pareto optimality?
Recruiting Metrics and KPIs—Example: Allocating focus between time to hire and quality of hire. A Pareto-optimal approach ensures that reducing the time to hire does not significantly degrade the quality of hire, balancing these metrics for maximum efficiency and effectiveness.
Resource Allocation - Example: ensuring that hiring for key revenue-generating roles does not detract from compliance or diversity initiatives.In resource-constrained environments (e.g., limited budgets, small recruiting teams), achieving Pareto optimality might mean assigning resources to the most critical roles or stages of the recruiting pipeline.
Internal Mobility Programs—Designing an internal mobility program that supports career development without significantly disrupting team operations could achieve Pareto optimality. Employees would move to roles that enhance their skills and satisfaction without negatively affecting team performance.
Technology Integration - When building a talent acquisition tech stack, Pareto optimality can guide the integration of tools such as applicant tracking systems (ATS) and sourcing tools. The aim would be to achieve seamless operations without overloading systems or creating redundancies.
Stakeholder Management - Recruiting involves collaboration between hiring managers, candidates, and HR teams. A Pareto-optimal strategy ensures that meeting hiring managers' needs (e.g., fast shortlists) does not harm candidate experience or overload recruiters.
RecOps - The GPT
RecOps - Available in the OpenAI store and free to use.
Articles / Industry News
Articles/Graphics/Podcasts/Posts On Our Radar (sorted by type - Bolded denotes individuals)
Katrina Kibben’s Gendered Language in Job Posts: What the Latest Research Reveals (article)
Martyn Redstone’s The Candidate-Commerce Framework: Transforming Recruitment by Treating Candidates as Customers (article)
CandorIQ’s Talent Pressures Heat Up in Life Science and Bio Tech Companies (article)
Cronofy’s Rethinking Recruitment: You Don’t Need More Coordinators to Improve Time-to-Hire (article)
EDPB opinion on AI models: GDPR principles support responsible AI (shared from Martyn Redstone’s newsletter) (article)
Forbes’ 16 Essential Generative AI Tools Transforming HR In 2025 (article)
Recruit CRM’s 20+ productive tools for recruiters to dominate hiring (article)
SmartRecruiters’s How AI-Driven Adaptive User Interfaces are Transforming Recruitment (blog)
ERE and Gem’s How Recruiting Teams Today Manage the Surge of Inbound Job Applications (report)
GoodTime’s Interview scheduling benchmarks (report)
Matchr’s Recruitment Trends 2025 – Insights from 29 Talent Leaders 📌 (report)
JobSync’s Trends to Watch for in 2025 (video)
Product News (sorted alphabetically)
Ashby (AiO) - New feature: Send Alert and Scheduled Dashboard Notification Emails to Groups, AI-Assisted Application Review Update: Filter By Answered Questions, Scheduling in Ashby now supports auto-selecting Zoom hosts for your interviews, Global Application Questions and Auto-Reject rules (Enterprise plans only)
Assemble (Compensation Management) - Acquired by Deel
Brainner (Resume Screening) - Brainner Pilot Program: How to Quickly Test, Implement, and Secure Approval for AI-Driven Resume Screening
Brighthire (Interview Intelligence) - Features: 2024 Recap
Cronofy (Scheduling) - Feature: Leveraging Cronofy's UI Elements for Scheduling
Gem (AiO) - Integration: Sterling, Product Updates
Juicebox/PeopleGPT (Sourcing) - New Features: Connect Multiple Mailboxes, Unlimited Projects on Growth Plan, Enhanced AI Personalization
Lever (ATS) - New Integrations
Manatal (AiO) - Integration: TestTrick
SeekOut (Sourcing) - SeekOut Grow click through demo
Permanent Articles
Recruiting Operations: Dictionary & Resources
Events
2025
Week of January 6th
Ashby’s Ashby 2024 in Review: A look at major releases from the past year and what’s coming next
SelectSoftware Reviews’ Future-Proofing Your Workforce: HR Skills and Training Initiatives to Focus on for 2025 with Andy Storch and Terri Varnell
HIGHER’s 2025 Talent Acquisition Hiring Predictions with Ariana Moon, Benjamin Sesser, and Chris Abbass
Week of January 27th
Week of May 12th
Ashby’s Ashby One - This in-person conference is for the conference for ambitious Talent & RecOps Teams.
Week of June 2nd
Talent Collective’s Talentsphere Summit. Tickets are now at the pre-sale price but will change after the 1st of the year. For an additional 10% off, use the code RECOPS.
Job Search
Amazon - Sr. Program Manager, Talent Research & Development (TRAD)
Playstation Interactive - Talent Acquisition Operations Program Manager
StackAdapt - Program Manager, Talent and Performance Management
Here is the list of previously listed jobs, which may or may not be available.
Additional Resource
ATS/Tool-Specific Job Boards
iCIMS's HR professionals job board aggregates all the HR jobs across their customers
Metaview’s job board highlights companies in their portfolio that use their product
Workable’s job board aggregates all jobs for companies that use Workable
SmartRecruiters’ job board aggregates all jobs for companies that use SR
Denys Dinkevych's remote job board, which aggregates jobs from all the major ATS
Drew Callin’s list of VC and PE job boards for their portfolios (pay attention to the comments too here since there are more)
TrueUp’s Has a fantastic job board filled with information others don’t like the last time the company did a layoff, application experience based on the ATS, and more.
Boolean Strings for Specific ATS Job Search
We’ve consolidated our list of boolean search strings for RecOps professionals to make them more accessible for everyone. Check out the list here. Kaitlyn Elting also built a generator for you if you are worried about your attention to detail.
Thank you to Steve Levy for contributing so many beautiful and Gabi Preston-Phypers for QA help. Follow both of them for excellent boolean and sourcing content.
#YourNextHire / People Looking In the RecOps Community
Are you a RecOps professional looking for work? If you have 5 minutes, take the opportunity to complete this quick questionnaire. Not only will you be featured in an upcoming Roundup, it will also help us mention your name when people ask for referrals.
Here is a Google Sheet View for a list of people who were previously featured and are still looking.
🎉 Reminders and Disclaimers 🎉
If you’d like to contribute a job, an article (one you found or wrote), or you are a company and have a product update you want featured, contact Jeremy Lyons.
Please use this form if you or someone you know would like to be featured in our #YourNextHire section. The only condition is you are a RecOps professional.
Disclaimer #1: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and they do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer, or company. Assumptions made in the analysis do not reflect the position of any entity other than the author. As critically thinking professionals, these views are always subject to change, revision, and rethinking at any time. They are not to be held in perpetuity.
Disclaimer #2: We are sponsor-free. No company below has paid us to advertise their products or share their open jobs. If that changes, we will deliberately call out where we stand to benefit. Additionally, sharing these opportunities and information should not be read as support for these companies or their practices. Regarding jobs, we share these opportunities with the community and only post roles from the company's website. We encourage possible candidates to research each one, as their inclusion does not mean we support the companies or their values.
Until next week, Regulators 😊