The ability to respond quickly to an increasingly changing environment is nowadays an important business imperative for organizations. Hierarchical models are reaching their limits. With a shift towards agility coupled to new employee expectations for a meaningful occupational environment, self-managing models have developed worldwide over the last decade and are getting more managerial and scholarly attention. One of these new organizational models is Holacracy, where authority is decentralized, that dynamically updates and where changes sensed in the environment are rapidly processed. Switzerland is one of the countries with the highest relative (number 1) and absolute (number 4) number of organizations using Holacracy.
In holacratic organisations where each individual has a high responsibility in fulfilling the company purpose and strategy, the recruitment process is expected to reflect more directly the company purpose and strategy than in hierarchical organisations. Through a qualitative analysis of the holacratic organizations in Switzerland, using the analysis of their digital resources and semi-structured interviews, it was possible to assess their recruiting strategy, practices and targeted candidate profiles. Among the main findings, we saw their recruiting strategies are closely related to their main strategies, and both are continuously adjusted according to tensions sensed in the environment. Another element is that most interviewed companies (small and medium) rely a lot on their network for recruiting. Lastly, we learned that individuals’ qualities like self-organization, eagerness to learn, standing up for yourself, communicating well with your peers, the ability to question oneself, and sometimes having past experience in self-management models, are among the characteristics likely to help a candidate enter and thrive in a Holacracy.