Setting a RecOps Strategy

Key Takeaways

1. RecOps is inherently reactive — survival mode is real and will not disappear. The goal is not to eliminate it, but to build a strategy that creates sustainability alongside it.
2. Every team can have a RecOps strategy, regardless of size or seniority. Even a team of one should have their BAU on paper and be able to articulate its impact.
3. Build your strategy as a funnel from company goals → people team strategy → RecOps strategy. Always be able to articulate how your work connects to the top of that funnel.
4. The four-step strategy framework: start with company goals, build and review your backlog, create pillars with outcomes and metrics, then prioritize projects into big bets and quick wins.
5. Go on a listening tour — talk to recruiters, hiring managers, your manager, and cross-functional partners. Identify collaboration points and avoid duplicating work that other teams are already doing.
6. BAU is not invisible work — it belongs in your strategy. Layer strategic projects on top of it, and make sure stakeholders can see the full scope of what you own.
7. A strategy is a living document, not a point-in-time deliverable. Update it, deprioritize publicly, and let each cycle inform the next.

Transcript

Note: transcript is auto-generated and may contain minor inaccuracies.

Rachel Lanman

Um, I am so stoked for the walkout song. Never been an athlete in my whole life, and so this is a really great opportunity to walk out to something great. Uh, as Will mentioned, I'm Rachel. I currently lead the recruiting operations team at Intercom. Before that, head of operations at a startup. And so I'm really, really excited to talk through, uh, creating a recruiting strategy because it really does hit close to home for me.

I've been a recruiting coordinator, I've been a solo rec ops individual, I led a small team, and now I'm leading a team that's scaling really quickly. And so all of this is really important to me, and I hope that you can get something out of it, too. 

All right, getting started. Two big things for this session today. First is going to be finding time for those big bets, and next is setting a rec app strategy. For my ambitious ICs in the audience, what I'm hoping you get out of this is being able to grow in your career, take initiative, and build a strategy for the first time. For my managers in the audience, go ahead and steal my ideas, but I'm also humble enough to admit that I don't know everything, and so I'd love to speak to you after about what's worked for you.

All right. Finding time for those big bets. So we all know that RecOps is a very reactive organization. We're supporting the day-to-day needs of our recruiters, and we're trying to keep up with the industry, all these new systems, new automations, Ashby releasing a thousand new things in one day. And so how are we gonna find the time to pursue it?

And I know this slide definitely resonates with everyone in the audience. Everything feels urgent. Everything is urgent. A hiring manager has a business-critical role to post as soon as possible. You need to make a hire by a certain deadline for a start date, or you need to replace a tool as soon as possible.

And without a strategy, you become the one that's individually responsible for making these decisions, and it's just not sustainable. At Intercom, when I joined, I knew that the tech stack needed a bit of work, but our team was primarily recruiting coordinators with little to no bandwidth to support anything outside of coordination needs.

And so those big projects and initiatives, they fell through the cracks. And the reality of survival mode is that it is a fragmented system. At Intercom, we scaled really quickly. We doubled the size of our recruiting team, we changed our hiring goals mid-year, and now this year, we're hiring even more than that. And those successful processes that the team spent years building, they just didn't scale with us. And the reality of all this is that we do operate in survival mode a lot. I'm not here to tell you that you'll never operate in survival mode again. However, what I am here to tell you is that the key is to recognize the gaps and build something that is sustainable for your team.

So building that RecOp strategy. Your strategy is your North Star and your current focus point, and every single team can have a strategy regardless of what level you're at or how many people are on your team. So here are the four steps that I use to build one. 

First, you'll start with your company goals. Then you'll review your backlog of projects and bottlenecks and listen to what the team needs. After that, you'll create your strategy and your pillars to focus on, and then you'll prioritize the actions and projects to get there. 

So starting with company goals, I like to view this as a funnel from the top down. First, you'll start with the company goals, and let's feel realistic. The company goal is not gonna be hire this many people, right? Maybe it's achieve this revenue target or acquire this many new customers. But hiring is the vehicle that gets us there. So with the company goals, then the people team creates their strategy, and then the RecOps or the recruiting team creates their strategy. And it's really important through all that that you're articulating how your work contributes to each level of that funnel. 

At Intercom, I'm really, really lucky we have each of these layers of the funnel and a lot of flexibility to go outside of them. However, before that, I was at a company that only had company OKRs, and my strategy had to contribute to that. Very difficult to get budget and buy-in when we're talking about customer acquisitions. And so the important thing here is that you're always thinking about not only your team, but how your work betters the entire business. 

All right, and then your backlog. This may be not even written down. For me, it was on Asana. Before that, it was Post-it notes on my desktop. Every single thing that you wanna work on that you've thought about, get it all down and talk to the team about what else is impacting them. After that, you'll then go on a listening tour. But right here, what you need to do is write down everything, those small tasks, those month-- multi-month projects, and there's no prioritization yet. You're really just getting it down on paper. 

Then you'll do that listening tour. You'll talk to the rec ops team, the recruiters, the hiring managers, your manager, and you'll think through what are the bottlenecks, what are the process improvements that we really need. But then outside of that, you wanna also con- consider talking to cross-functional organizations.

So maybe the workplace team is improving can-- uh, sorry, uh, employee experience, and you wanna improve... sorry, improve candidate experience. And so they have swag in the office, you wanna collaborate and, uh, provide swag to the on-site interviews. Or maybe the people programs team is launching a new manager training, and you want to incorporate some training for opening your first headcount, filling it, and building your team for the first time. It's important to identify both the collaboration points and avoid duplication of work. 

In addition to this, it's also really important to learn from other leaders that are doing this as well. My first strategy, probably my worst one that I ever created. But my most recent strategy was built on the groundwork of our senior workplace leader, who taught me about how she strategized at Intercom, what has worked, how she's found capacity within her team, how she's updated stakeholders and got buy-in. And so it's really important that you learn and iterate at every step of this process. 

All right, so then you're building your strategy. You're starting with that, uh, groundwork of the goals, that foundation. Then you're gonna think through team capacity. How many hours are in the day? How many people do you have on your team? Is this a quarterly strategy? Is this a half-year strategy? And then most importantly, how much time is available outside of your BAU every single day? And then you'll build your pillars. At Intercom, our pillars were based off of a really important goal on the people strategy to improve speed and quality. And so we focused on AI efficiencies, candidate experience, and enabling hiring managers with data. And it's really important here that you all remember that your BAU, business as usual, is still incorporated in this strategy. That scheduling, that coordination, those small improvements that you're making every day, it's in the strategy and should not be invisible. Instead, what you're doing is layering strategic projects on top of it in order to improve those metrics. 

When I was a solo rec ops person, BAU was my strategy. All I needed to do was just get it on paper and showcase to all the stakeholders the improvements and impact that I was making. All right. 

So for them, for each pillar, you'll think through four things. Could be five in your organization, but this is kinda the groundwork that works for us. You'll think through the outcome, which is your meta North Star goal. So what results do we want? Then the success, what behaviors and actions are, is your team actually doing every day in order to get there? The metrics, that measurable signal, your baseline, what you want to improve to, and then the projects. So what are you specifically gonna do in order to improve those metrics? 

I want to specifically focus on the best-in-class coordination pillar that we have because of that BAU side of things, right? Like, we still do need to incorporate this into our strategy. I won't read everything that's here, but really what's the most important thing to consider is that consistent scheduling, overlap with time zones, recruiting coordinator capacity, it's all in my strategy. This is a part of what we do every single day. What we're doing then is getting those projects on the line to actually improve those metrics that we have. So everything is traceable back to the pillar, the outcome, and ultimately that company goal. 

All right, and then lastly, we will prioritize our projects. We really want to ground your team in a consistent framework. It does not have to be rocket science, but what it does need to do is cut through that feeling of everything being urgent. You want to make room both for the big bets and the quick wins. So maybe a quick win is building enablement for a tool that you already have in place. Maybe your recruiters aren't using it a ton, and so it's a little bit of effort, but it does make a big impact. Whereas a big bet example is maybe utilizing an AI interviewer for the first time when you've never done it before. You have multi-month implementation strategies. You have to get buy-in and budget in order to pursue it, and then build out everything up from scratch. That's your one, right? And so to all of my overachieving teams of one, be good to yourself. Focus on one big bet at a time. Don't be like past me or even current me. My manager is somewhere over there probably thinking, "You're a hypocrite. You're doing three things right now." Be good to yourself. Don't do that.

All right, wrapping up here. I do often leave all my documents in Drive. You get your feedback, people align, and then it's done. Don't do that with a strategy. A strategy is not a point-in-time document. It's living and breathing. Deprioritize live, provide updates to your stakeholders, let the past strategies inform your future strategies, hold your team accountable, and make sure that you're really showing the value and impact that you have.

Your strategy is the documentation, but it's also that groundwork for showcasing all of the work that your team is doing or that you individually are doing. And again, my first strategy is nothing like the strategies that I build today, and so every cycle of this process teaches you something new each time.

So a strategy is not just for leaders, managers, or head-ofs. Anyone can create a strategy for anything in their life. So again, my ICs in the audience, go out, build your own strategy, pull me aside later, tell me through-- talk me through what things you're really hoping to focus on but maybe you can't find the time to do. My managers in the room, tell me what's worked for you in the past and how you're gonna find time for some of these big bets with the current industry. And then everyone, especially my Queen fans in the audience, let's chat about why they're the best artists in the business. Thanks, y'all.