It’s here.  2012.  A new year, a new chance to change the world, something, anything.

Anyway…

In true top 5 order these have been the most popular blog posts of 2011 based on a combination of Jetpack and Google Analytics (who says I can’t be a geek)…

5. War for talent…

4. The Trouble with Talent acquisition…

3. Back to being who I was before…

2. Birthday interview…Martin Dangerfield

And one of my personal favourites…

1. Please do contact me if you want to discuss…

Thank you again for your readership… long may it continue… tell me directly what you want to see more of at martin.dangerfield@mckinleyresource.com or @MDangerfield on twitter…

Talk soon…

M.

Where all of these gaps come together is in the definition of the employment brand.  Brand is king in all aspects of life and increasingly the blurring of consumer and enterprise has made it even more important to know what is it is we are using to engage with candidates.  If we are always talking to them we need something to talk about.

Branding needs work. It is more than the logo, the well written job ad  - but it is those as well.  

I have spoken to senior executives and some recruiters than believe what the company is doing is enough to attract people, that their revenues are x or they are better than competitor y will make people come to them.  They hide behind a corporate brand that has been created to sell to people but not potential candidates that need something more compelling, something more personal. 

The Employment brand needs to have substance.  Employment brand needs to be real and genuine. If it isn’t then candidates will spot it a mile off.

Employment brand is about how an organisation wraps and packs what it stands for; its history, its future and its values.  It needs to be the connection point that candidates remember, that they take with them into the organisation and that they share with everyone they meet.  It is that voice of the organisation and because it is employment based needs to be authentic.   Not many people can define brand.  Not many organisations can define employment brand and it is up those recruitment leaders to drag their organisation to the table to talk about it. (love this)

Beans

If your company was a tin of beans in a supermarket what would it look like? How would you package it, which shelf would it be on, for that matter which supermarket would you be in.  Our companies spend millions defining a value proposition to sell to other companies and yet spend nothing defining a value proposition for those that are doing the selling.  But branding doesn’t stop there… The medium you choose to share that information has changed too.  Many recruitment leaders are scared about transparency, but to be authentic don’t we need to be transparent? Leadership should be doing that; leading the conversation with current and future hires, accepting that for all the good news and experiences there are some bad but those bad experiences have been acknowledged and learnt from.

Some of this engagement can be manipulated; get your corporate PR guys engaged and talking about the employment brand. Potential customers want to know what makes an organisation tick as well. What could tell them more than a clearer understanding of the types of people you employ or the values that you have?  Recruitment leaders should be out evangelising. Sure they may say some stuff that the corporate doesn’t like but they will also say a lot of good things that will enhance candidate and client knowledge.

So, so far I’ve not said anything that should scare anyone, I’ve not suggested too much?

But if that is the case then why is it so difficult?

Part of it is the corporate environment. Whilst the key to successful candidate attraction is to have vision of what you want, some leadership, some marketing, pr and sales skills, IT systems and tools, it also about allowing people to have transparent engagement with your company.  

Two way communication that will develop a relationship.  It is here that it starts to break. Corporates just aren’t thinking that way.

They want to talk but on their terms.

The result is they go into traditional ‘broadcast’ mode, telling people what to think, telling them how to feel, all in the belief that by controlling the message they control the process..

But technology (and the world) has moved on.  

Potential candidates are getting on to Google and seeing what they can find out about you and in many cases they don’t like what they find. It’s not that they don’t find positive messages but that there is no real and honest counter argument.  Corporate TA need to get out into communities on and off line.

It’s time for TA leaders need to be brave and let go a little.

In the new world not only does your TA leader need to understand how to actually recruit, they need develop their own skills in PR, marketing, relationship building and sales. 

If every candidate was treated like a potential customer how different things would be.

Is your TA leader ready?

That moment that someone realises they are not going to progress in their current role, or they want to be on the other side of the country, or they need more money or they are bored.

By talking to people little and often even when we don’t have a role we can spot these moments.  We become their trusted advisor because we know them and they trust us.  I have sent candidates to my opposite numbers in competitor organisations, not because it was right for me, but the right thing for the candidate. (from a candidates view this is a amazing) Trust takes investment and putting your money where your mouth is. 

Trust is a relationship and not a transaction.

In my first post in this series Talent Acquisition Leadership #1 I began talking about TA leadership. Why are recruitment leaders so focused on job posting, cv searching and (in some cases) agency engagement? 

We need to be out there talking to people – whether we want them today or not.  We need the tools to engage, to remember the conversations we had and to be able to get back in touch quickly.  This will not help the requisition closure report today but it will in the future.

It is that ‘here and now’ approach that is killing the effectiveness of many many TA functions.

If they did they wouldn’t be relying on a bunch of external recruitment agencies to find people that may or may not be right for them.  Instead they would be investing heavily in people and systems to create game changing talent acquisition teams that would engage, collaborate and above all bring the best people to that organisation.  Instead they are underfunded, short staffed and have little investment in IT systems and social media tools.

Even if they do have the investment or tools there are other stumbling blocks that organisations fail to grasp or accept.

First up, not everyone is looking for a job. 

This sounds obvious but next time your SVP of Sales asks why we haven’t found someone it is because:

• they weren’t where we were looking, or
• worse that the candidates they demand don’t actually exist. 

Whilst there is some debate about the exact number, somewhere between 10 and 15 percent of the relevant talent for a role are looking for a new one, leaving the remaining 85 percent or so as passive candidates.  

Think about this for a second.  

85 percent of the people you are looking for are not looking for you.  

Worse than that they are not looking at all.  Sure you will pick up the odd applicant who sees a job ad but fundamentally you have missed them.  Whilst it is not an absolute purely by playing the numbers you will realise that it is more likely that the best talent is in this pool of non-job seekers.

Tomorrow – Talent Acquisition Leadership #3… the ‘Compelling Event’

I also want to say a big thank you to Rich Baker @theintrapreneur for helping me tweak the wording - follow him now!

Dear Recruitment Consultant,

Every time I say the next line, external recruitment consultants and agencies get annoyed.  I love the emails though…

What talent acquisition professionals do can make or break a company.

That is me not you.  

Yes you can source and we will happily pay for that service but be under no illusion, you do not make the decisions, you do not embed yourself in a culture, understand what the business goals really are from within an organisation.

I do.

And whilst we are at it, finding a unique candidate on linkedin is not sourcing. Getting to someone before we did might require some skill but given our corporate recruiter access to linkedin more and more of it is luck.

The role of talent acquisition is:-

• to attract and retain the best people
• encourage internal mobility and
• deliver an end to end service no matter what the role, timescales or geography.

When we get it wrong we will potentially lose market share, have stagnation in career development and (if I was being a doom-monger) a business will grind slowly to a halt.  

When you get it wrong you lose a fee.

But hold a minute, if we are so good at what we do, what is going wrong? I hate to admit it but despite all the resources the corporate recruiters potentially have at their disposal (the keyword there is potentially) it isn’t going to plan.

The recruitment landscape is in a state of flux.  We are all changing the model, embracing social media as a route to candidates whilst in some cases losing sight of good old fashioned ‘talk to people’ recruitment.  

Some corporations are expanding and developing their in-house capabilities but in the main they are playing it safe; recruiting the old guard of in-house recruiters with a focus on admin and applicant tracking system performance management scared by the transparency the new tools bring.  

Some of the current breed of  in-house recruiters will have to adapt or move on as the future doesn’t necessarily work for them anymore.

But who is recruiting these safe, conventional recruiters.

Me?

Maybe, or at least some of the time; to maintain the status quo.  

But who’s status quo am I maintaining?

It is not the recruiters that need to change. Sure we should all be hiring a different breed with a different approach and mindset, but in the main it is the current recruitment leaders that have the biggest changes to make.

I have met a lot of corporate TA leaders in my time, some with a global, sometimes regional perspective and whilst some of them ‘get it’ a lot really don’t. I am continually amazed at the ‘narrow vision approach’ they have.  They are all about career protection which in turn prevents them from making tough, bold decisions.  They focus on the detail of the applicant tracking system rather than the information it can provide.  In the corporate jungle they run scared because their leadership has managed to sideline them to the poor cousin of HR who in turn is the poor cousin of almost every other corporate function restricting their influence and business clout.

It might be a huge generalisation but in the main they do what they always do until forced by the business with a big stick to do something different.  

They are being reactive.

Being forced to do something by a business is not leadership.  

If people really are an organisations greatest asset then how come the people that lead the function are sidelined in the decision making process?

Tomorrow – Talent Acquisition Leadership #2… is your business leader lying to you?

This is the nearest I get to do gooding… support a good cause.  Updates, photos and donations at www.mobro.co/mdangerfield.

http://www.recruiter.co.uk/this-breed-of-talent-leads/1011356.article

Corporates have talked about the war for talent concept for years… discussing how to attract and retain the best people, the shortage of motivated skilled inviduals… In my talent acquisition terms it is real. My team has hundreds of roles to fill combined with an increasingly narrow pool of talent to talk to. The weapons of war have changed with smart guerillas leading the way with cool social media tools, branding campaigns and viral attacks that grab headlines and candidate attention. I have some of those weapons at my disposal but they are there to win the small skirmishes, in the main I have the big guns of a global brand and an army of recruiters. My recruiters are the front line in the war, throwing themselves every day into battle whether they won or lost the day before.

Like many, my talent acquisition team that is a combination of HR, recruitment and ex-sales people, the broad church that TA has become in many organizations, working internally and externally to source the best people they can find or afford. I am proud and protective of my team and lead from the front carrying live roles myself as well as the inevitable fire fighting, defensive regroups and the aftermath of friendly fire. My team is more important to me than they realise and to coin an American phrase I have got their backs.

Make no mistake, I will be the first to set foot on the field, and I will be the last to step off, and I will leave no one behind.

Considering ourselves the unsung heroes we lead the attack against our competitors long before a salesperson has left his house, sowing the seeds of fear and doubt that maybe their organization, their career or their manager isn’t as good as they deserve. That joining us will improve the prospects by filling in the gaps or identifying the compelling event in their lives that a new career will support.

We strip them of information, feeding back the useful stuff back to our own sales people, helping to arm them in their own battles and yet we offer compassion, leaving our targets better informed, or with the prospect to a better job… and whilst we are at the forefront of knowledge management.. it is never enough.. we have to work smarter, longer and faster to keep up with our business, pipelining targets long before we need them…

So the discussion point for today… how are you fighting your own war and do you need some reinforcements?

I’ve asked before and got a single post (thanks chris) but haven’t published it yet… But can I invite you to guest blog here at martindangerfield.com? No hard rules, the audience is biased towards recruitment but that is a broad topic offering you the chance to write some good content.

In return for your post I will be eternally grateful… Give you full acknowledgement of where the post came from and plug is as much as I feel I can get away with without annoying people…

I’d like w/c 12th september to be a week of guest blogs (5 contributors, summary post on saturday)… So what do you say?

M.