Stop Hiring. Start Designing: The Double Diamond Playbook for Talent Acquisition

In this episode, Edan Haddock unpacks Design Thinking through the Double Diamond model and why Talent Acquisition needs to stop jumping straight to hiring… and start designing better outcomes.

Most TA teams are solving the wrong problem, just very efficiently. A role gets opened, a brief gets taken, and the machine kicks off without ever really understanding what’s broken underneath.

This episode flips that.

Edan walks through how to apply the Double Diamond in real hiring scenarios - from uncovering the actual problem, to redefining what success looks like, to exploring solutions that go beyond just “hire someone.”

Because sometimes the right answer isn’t a hire at all.

If you want to move from reactive recruiter to someone who actually influences business outcomes then this one’s for you.

Expect practical questions, real examples, and a completely different way to approach every req that lands on your desk.

Join the Edan Haddock - Total Talent community (formerly Rubberband)

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:51

Welcome back to Eden Haddock Total Talent. I am your host, Eden Haddock, Head of Talent and People Experience at Movember. Okay. Today I want to talk about something that should have been part of talent acquisition years ago. I'm really going to focus on talent acquisition specifically today. And this is something that has never really made it in. Design thinking. And yeah, I know some of you have just switched off mentally. Here we go, another framework, another buzzword. But please stay with me. Because this one, this one might quietly be the difference between filling roles and actually solving business problems. The truth is most talent acquisition teams, we don't actually solve problems. We respond to them. A hiring manager comes to us and says, I need a senior product manager. And we go, got it, let's write the job ad. We don't always ask why. We don't ask what's broken. We don't ask what outcome are we trying to change? And we don't ask what does success actually look like. We just start hiring. And then six months later, the hire isn't quite right. The problem still exists. Another requisition opens. And we do it all again. That's not talent acquisition. That's transactional fulfillment. So today we're changing that. Today I'm going to walk through design thinking using a model called the Double Diamond. And more importantly, how you sitting in talent acquisition right now can use it this week. Not in theory, not in a workshop, but in real hiring. So today I'm not zooming out. I'm getting on the tools and really practical. Design thinking isn't about design. It's about how you approach problems. And more specifically, it's about not rushing to solutions. Because what most organizations do is this: a problem appears, and we jump to solution. Too fast, way too fast. Design thinking flips that. Three, then and only then, design a solution. In talent acquisition terms, it means instead of asking, who do we hire? You start actually asking, what are we trying to fix? Let me give you a raw example. Hiring manager says we need a recruiter. Cool. But why? Is hiring slow? Is quality poor? Is candidate experience broken? Is the process chaotic? Because those are four completely different problems. But they all get the same lazy solution. Hire another recruiter. That's what we're here to break. The double diamond model. This is where it gets practical. The double diamond is simple, so visualize two diamonds split in half. So four phases. In diamond one, split in half, that's the problem space. And within the problem space, in those two halves, you have discover and define. In diamond two, split it in half. It is the solution space, diamond two, and in those two halves, you have develop, deliver. And you work through the diamonds in that order. The first half of the first diamond, discover, second half, define. Diamond two, develop, then deliver. Or in plain language, number one, go wide on the problem. Number two, narrow it down. Number three, go wide on solutions. Number four, narrow to the best one. Most talent acquisition teams, we skip straight to diamond two, the solution space. And sometimes we skip all the way to the final half of the second diamond, which is deliver. We go, let's just hire someone. No discovery, no definition, no exploration. Which is why we end up solving the wrong problem, but really efficiently. So we'll break it down properly and work through the diamonds. Discover in Diamond One the first half. This is where most talent acquisition professionals level up massively. This phase is about understanding what's actually going on. Not what people say is going on. Because hiring managers, they don't always know the problem, they know the symptom. Your job here is to shut up, get curious, and ask better questions. What you're trying to uncover is what's broken, what's slow, what's frustrating, what's the business impact? Some practical questions to use immediately. Instead of what role do you need? Try what's happening in the team right now? What's not working? If we did nothing, what happens in three months? What does success look like for this hire? What problem disappears if we get this right? This is where you move from recruiter to problem investigator. Let's use a real talent acquisition example. The hiring manager says we need a software engineer. The discovery reveals the team is blocked on one system. Knowledge is siloed, delivery timelines are slipping. So actual problem is not we need an engineer. It's we have a bottleneck in system knowledge. That opens completely different options. Hire differently, upskill internally, reorganize work. And that's before we even talk about solutions. Then we move into the second half of the first diamond, and that's define. We now take everything from the discover phase and we sharpen it. This is actually where most people struggle because it forces clarity. Your goal here is to write a clear problem statement. Not we need a senior designer, but we need to reduce design turnaround time from ten days to three days to support product velocity. Do you feel the difference? One is vague and the other is actionable. Your telene acquisition superpower here is turning messy conversations into clear, measurable problems. The formula really is we need to insert desired change because currently insert current state so that business insert business impact. This then changes everything. Because now you're not hiring for a title, you're solving for an outcome. We'll now move into the second diamond. And the first half of the second diamond is develop. Now we go wide again. Solutions, plural solutions. And you know what? This is where talent acquisition gets fun again. Because hiring isn't just one option. Some possible solutions may be hire externally, promote internally, redesign role scope, automate parts of the work, redistribute responsibilities, use contractors or short-term solutions. But for most teams, we we don't explore, we default. So your role here is to push the thinking, to challenge the default. Say things like, what if we didn't hire? What's the fastest way to solve this? Lowest risk option. Could we test something first? Here, you become a solution designer, not a recruiter. We'll move into the final half of the second diamond, which is deliver. Now, and only now we choose a path. Maybe it is hiring, but now it's intentional. And this changes how you hire too. Because now your job ad is sharper, your interviews are more focused, and your assessment is aligned to the actual problem. You're not hiring a great candidate, you're hiring the right solution to a defined problem. Let's make this real scenario one. We need a recruiter. If we run the double diamond, discover the hiring is slow due to approvals. Define we reduce time to hire bottlenecks in approvals. Develop, we fix process, not headcount. And deliver no hire is needed. Scenario two we need a senior leader. Discover the team lacks direction. Define we need strategic clarity, not hierarchy. Develop interim advisor, restructure. Deliver a different hire or none. So this is how TA, talent acquisition, becomes strategic without saying the word strategic. So why does this change your career? Here's the reality. Most recruiters will never do this. They'll stay in intake meetings, job ads, pipelines. And you, if you apply this, you move into problem solving, business impact, and strategic influence. You stop being the recruiter, and you become the person who actually fixes things. So next time someone comes to you and says we need to hire, pause. Don't open the job description. Don't post the role. Don't start sourcing. Start with what's actually going on here? Because hiring isn't the job. Designing the right outcome, that's the job. And honestly, once you see it, you won't go back. Thank you so much for tuning in. I hope you learned something today. There is a lot of resources out there on the double diamond principle and design thinking. Please have another read of it and see if you can practically pop this into your flows and use this mindset. I do, and I find it incredibly valuable. I appreciate everyone who's been listening. And once again, if you can please follow the show, I will be sharing content every week. Have a great weekend. And thanks again.