The Sourcing landscape is well defined
By Suzanna Chadwick, Conference Chair Sourcing Summit
Over the past couple of years as LinkedIn and Social in general has taken an irreversible grip on recruitment, I feel like the landscape is starting to flatten out a little, making it easier to see the wood from the trees! Too many metaphors? What I mean is that there are three clear focus areas that organisations are looking to define, dive deeper into and measure.
1) FIND – Sourcing
As we see a new profile aggregation tool every few weeks, recruiters and businesses are working their way through which key tools are worth using and which ones they need to bypass. The usual suspects when it comes to sourcing and finding who you’re looking for are LinkedIn, Facebook graph search, Twitter (follower wonk), Boolean searching and usually your own database. Other sites such as TalentBin, HiringSolved using social plug-ins like 360social.me or Rapportive and a realm of other sites are becoming everyday tools as well. Ensuring that your sourcers and recruiters understand where they need to focus their time and efforts will be the key to ongoing productivity as we get flooded with more and more sourcing platforms and options.
As Johnny Campbell said not that long ago at SHRM Conference in June this year, the issue no longer finding the candidate, it’s really about engaging them.
2) ENGAGE – Employer Branding and engagement
Even though employer brand has been around for some time now, there seems to be a huge push in the market as many organisations realise that their targeted talent want more when it comes to the ‘offering’ the organisation is providing. Candidates wants to see more when it comes to images and video; they want to know what current employees are saying, they want to understand what the social responsibility policy or focus of the organisations is and how they not only give to the employee but how they give back to the community. With an increase of 93% (2010-2011)in video mobile streaming more and more candidates are going on the hunt for information that companies provide about themselves. What is the employee value proposition – why would I work there? are their employees engaged? What will my career path be? Will I have work choices and flexibility?
If companies are not able to articulate answers to these question in a quick and ‘consumable’ way – meaning that I can click quickly and easily to hear, see or read great content, they will switch off pretty quickly.
3) BUILD – Talent pipelining & community build
Not only do I need to find the right talent and then engage them with all my GREAT content, but I need to ensure I don’t lose them and all my hard work along the way.
Building talent pools, pipelines and communities with strong CRM and engagement strategies are the way many organisations are winning when it comes to attracting their passive audience. Just because I’m not looking for a job now, doesn’t mean that I’m not interesting in what you’re doing as an organisation. If you serve me up content that is relevant to my work and help me connect with other great people then the benefits for me are tangible. By providing these benefits to me, I don’t mind seeing a job or two here and there or even being asked for referrals. Many businesses look at talent pools are just a way to hold names of people they’ve engaged with in the past, what many don’t understand is that your talent pool and communities can be one of your strongest assets when it comes to building engagement and your employer brand in the mind of candidates that may be looking down the track.
The key message is to understand each of these areas of your recruitment strategy. Know what you want to achieve, understand what your target audience (not EVERYMAN and his dog) wants and needs and then deliver that and you’ll reap the rewards!
