Week of January 20th, 2025
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Visual Process Maps by Jeremy Lyons
Let’s face it—we’re visual creatures. Having everything laid out makes it easier to work on and stay organized rather than remembering everything. That is where visual process maps can come in handy.
Visual process maps are graphical representations that illustrate the flow of work, steps, and activities involved in a process or workflow. They serve as planning and management tools that help organizations understand, analyze, and improve their processes.
What are examples or elements of a visual process map?
Think swimlanes and flow charts. Luke Eaton points out these can also be Gantt charts and more.
Can visual process maps help when it comes to First Principles Thinking (FTP)?
Absolutely! Here is how:
Components. Represent the basic elements as individual nodes or steps in your visual process map.
Assumption Challenging: Apply FPT to question each step in your process map. This helps identify and eliminate unnecessary assumptions or outdated practices that may be hindering efficiency.
Innovative Recombination: After breaking down the process, use the visual map to explore new ways of combining the fundamental elements. This can lead to innovative solutions or process improvements.
Clarity and Communication: Visual process maps provide a clear, easy-to-understand representation of the FPT approach, making communicating complex ideas to team members or stakeholders easier.
Gap Identification: By visually mapping out the first principles of a process, you can more easily identify gaps or missing elements that need to be addressed.
Optimization Focus: Use FPT to identify the core functions of each step in your process map. This allows you to optimize for function rather than form, potentially leading to more efficient or innovative solutions.
Iterative Improvement: Combine FPT with continuous improvement methodologies. Use the visual map to track changes and improvements over time as you apply FPT to refine the process.
But couldn’t this lead us to do root cause analysis while we make our visual process map and try to use first principles thinking?
That is a good call out. To prevent a visual process map from turning into a root cause analysis, focus on maintaining the map's primary purpose of illustrating the flow of a process rather than delving into problem-solving. Here are some key strategies:
Stick to process steps: Concentrate on documenting the sequence of activities in the current process, avoiding the temptation to analyze why problems occur.
Use standard symbols: Employ consistent shapes and connectors to represent different types of process steps, decisions, and flows.
Maintain chronological order: Ensure the map follows the actual sequence of events in the process, rather than branching out to explore causes of issues.
Limit detail level: The map should be at an appropriate level of detail to show the overall process flow without delving too deeply into specific problem areas.
Avoid casual language: Use neutral, descriptive language rather than phrases implying cause-and-effect relationships for each step.
Separate improvement ideas: If potential improvements or issues are identified during mapping, note them separately rather than incorporate them into the map.
Focus on "what," not "why." Describe what happens in each step without exploring why it happens that way.
Use swim lanes: If applicable, organize the process map into swim lanes to show different departments or roles involved, which helps maintain focus on process flow rather than problem analysis.
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)
Technically’s What’s an API? (article)
John Vlastelica’s Becoming a Talent Advisor: 25 Free Resources to Get Started in 2025 (article) (Editor’s Note: Not only are these tips that can work for Recruiters to the business, they can work from RecOps to the Recruiters as well).
Brian Ferguson’s Talent Trajectory – Rethinking Quality of Hire: Building for Growth, Not Just the Role (article)
Will Ducey’s Time to Calibration (article)
JobSync’s Conflicts of Interest in Talent Acquisition: Why They’re Rife, Why It’s a Problem
Johnny Campbell’s Deploy, Reshape, Invent: How AI is Changing Hiring Forever (blog)
Greenhouse’s GDPR, AI and recruiting: 6 steps for effective, compliant hiring (blog)
Eli Onboarding’s How to track engagement during onboarding (and stop reneges) (blog)
The Revol•TA Podcast’s The Future for Recruiters with Kevin Wheeler (podcast)
Recruit CRM’s Balancing AI and personal touch in recruitment with Brian Fink (video)
Talent Collective’s The Compliance Compass: Guiding Talent Acquisition Through EEO, OFCCP Compliance in 2025 with Genil Washington and Leah Daniels (video)
Product News (sorted alphabetically)
Ashby (AiO) - New Feature: Automatically Manage Slack Channels for Interview Coordination
Attesto (Candidate Evaluation) - Integration: Greenhouse and Slack
Brainner (Resume Screening) - Integration Partner: Greenhouse
Cronofy (Scheduling) - How to Use Cronofy’s API
Classet (Conversational AI) - New Features: Smart Resume Enhancements, Instant Interview Career Pages Upcoming Feature: Outbound Recruiting Campaigns
Poetry (Recruiter Enablement) - The Playbook Revolution: 39 Hiring Assets in Just 30 Seconds
SmartRecruiters (ATS) - Integration: Fairgo.ai joins the marketplace, Product Release: January 2025
Permanent Articles
Recruiting Operations: Dictionary & Resources
Events
Week of January 27th
Kula’s How to do Recruiting Right in 2025 (Yes, it involves AI) with Lou Adler
JobSync’s Roundtable: Everything but AI - What's in Store for Enterprise Hiring in 2025 with Gerry Crispin and Chris Hoyt
Ashby’s 2025 Hiring: Actionable Trends to Shape Your Strategy
Workday’s 3 Keys to Responsible and Effective AI for Talent Acquisition
ModernLoop’ Data-Driven Recruiting: How Lattice Scales Hiring with Analytics and Drives Efficiency
Covey’s How do you measure and improve the quality of a hire?
Week of February 3rd
Aylin Abdullah, Glenn Martin & Katrina Collier’s BRAINCAMP: The cognitive HIIT for People & Talent Leaders
Employ Connect’s Virtual Discussion: RecOps: Creating a Strategic Operations Function for Your TA Team with Jeremy Lyons
Recruiterflow’s Recruiting in 2025: How AI is Changing the Game with Blake Williams and Siadhal Magos
Oyster and Culture Amp’s Empowering Teams: Balancing Local Flexibility with Global Standards
Week of April 28th
Week of May 12th
Week of June 2nd
Talent Collective’s Talentsphere Summit. For an additional 10% off, use the code RECOPS.
Job Search
Adobe - Sr. Dir, Global Talent Acquisition Operations Leader
Transformco - Manager, Strategy Operations Talent and Performance
Love’s Travel Stops - Sr. Talent Acquisition, Systems and Project Management Specialist
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 😊