Consumer marketing ideas have outpaced traditional sourcing approaches faster than anyone could have imagined. Job boards are dead; talent hubs are alive. Skill-based posts will soon follow the dodo bird into extinction and will be replaced by ads focused on the future, not the past. They will be crafted keeping in mind the latest search engine marketing concepts. If you want your fair share of tomorrow’s talent, you better start changing the way you source it today.

These are what I consider to be the fundamental ground rules for getting top talent, circa 2010. Implementing them now will give you a reasonable advantage.

1. Aim for early risers, not leftovers. If many of the best people you find tell you that they just accepted another job, or are close to doing so, you have a surplus sourcing strategy. Of course, he didn’t plan it this way, but most companies don’t think about making sure their opportunities are discovered by the best people the moment they enter the job market. The best people, usually fully employed but somewhat concerned about their future growth, tend to pursue new careers in a particular way. It starts with networking with close associates, or perhaps by calling a recruiter or two. If nothing happens, they’ll expand their networking efforts, start googling jobs, do research on the industry and company, and maybe start looking at niche sites. One of the last things they will have to do is look at a company’s employment site and apply for a job. An early sourcing strategy is to find out what the biggest people in your area of ​​need are doing when they first enter the job market, and then make sure your messages are highly visible to them. Please turn to the original copy of this article at the bottom of this page and click on the short video podcast to give you a taste of this early strategy. After watching the podcast, please contact us if you’d like to better understand this or participate in one of our upcoming sourcing summits.
2. Give candidates the opportunity to “just look,” instead of forcing them to buy. When they first enter the job market, the best people are only looking for opportunities, not ready to buy or apply for a job. Unfortunately, most companies have set up their hiring processes with a “must buy now” mentality. A few examples will help clarify this critical concept. For one thing, it’s hard to find real jobs on most career sites unless you sign up or submit a resume. Companies also make it difficult for candidates to speak to recruiters or hiring managers in an exploratory manner before formally applying. Worse yet, most job descriptions are demotivating, written more to keep unqualified people from applying, rather than offering the best people the opportunity to view your company simply as a place to explore career opportunities. Go to the resources section of adlerconcepts.com for some articles to help you implement this concept.
3. Implement proactive networks for early risers. Stop asking your employees or prospects who they know, and stop waiting for them to recommend someone. Instead, ask them who they would give a great recommendation to. Now have all your employees use LinkedIn to connect with these people. Have your recruiters call each one personally, offer them a chance to stay connected, get some kind of short profile, and then stay in touch with these people every month or so. Now make sure these highly regarded people call you first whenever they feel itchy or just want to explore some opportunities. Go to the training section of adlerconcepts.com to learn how to train your recruiters to do this starting tomorrow.
4. Stop using job descriptions that define and appeal to average people. When you think about it, job descriptions that list skills, experience, qualifications, and academics really do represent average people, certainly not the best. Worse still, since they are boring and exclusionary, only average people would consider applying. For proof, just think about why so few top people apply for their jobs. If you want to write job ads that attract better people, consider the two types of great people that traditional job descriptions ignore. The first group represents those who greatly enjoy doing the work involved and have many of the skills listed. The second group are those who see the work involved as a learning experience or a stepping stone to something else, but do not have all the qualifications listed. Few job descriptions are written to attract these two groups of high performers. To address this in your next search assignment, ask your hiring manager what the best people like best about the work involved. Then ask why an important person with all of the aforementioned experience would want this job. Follow this up by asking what other types of experiences a superior person would likely have if this job was seen as a growth opportunity. This should give you enough information to write a more compelling ad that emphasizes the actual job and opportunities involved, rather than a list of qualifications. To help your hiring managers in this area, send them to one of our trainings or give them a copy of Lou Adler’s Hire With Your Head book and Lou Adler’s One Question Basic Interview Audio CD.
5. Eliminate job applications and archaic architecture as a core process, and start using talent hubs. The only reason we posted job applications is because this was the business model that made the most sense for job boards. Using outdated technology like dropdown menus to find these boring jobs exacerbates the problem. A talent hub combines all similar jobs (eg all ASIC designers, accountants, tax consultants, etc.) on one microsite. By offering a broader target, a site like this will attract more of the right people using basic search engine marketing techniques. Once on the site, viewers may be offered multiple opportunities to stay connected with the company or apply for a specific job. We are working with Shaker Recruitment Advertising to create these types of talent hubs. Join us for a free webinar to learn more about this important new emerging sourcing tool.
6. Become a partner, not a supplier. Recruiters must become equal partners in the recruiting process. Few line managers would view their sales team as unskilled, unimportant, or subservient, yet that’s how most recruiters are viewed by their clients. Recruiters need to step up and become true partners. This means they must clearly understand real job needs, be able to quickly find and hire the best in their field, be better interviewers than their clients, and be able to effectively negotiate and close offers based on career opportunities, not of compensation. Being a partner means that 100% of your candidates are looked after without question, your advice and counsel is sought when opening an assignment, your judgment of the candidate’s competence is highly respected, and you are required to attend your staff meetings. client, especially when it comes to hiring, performance reviews or workforce planning issues are discussed. Recruiters who are partners do 50-100% more placements per month, so becoming a partner is a big deal. If you want to become a better recruiter, start by becoming a partner.
7. Accelerate: Be an early adopter. Don’t wait for these ideas to be tested; By then it will be too late. From a marketing and competitive advantage standpoint, diminishing returns set in once 25-30% of a group start using any new advertising idea. Those who get the most benefit are those who try something after the initial bugs have been fixed, but before the idea is widely adopted. All the ideas here are based on common sense consumer marketing and advertising ideas, and proven Web 2.0 concepts. The only difference is that they are not yet universally applied to recruitment advertising. Early adopters will have a significant competitive advantage over those who wait. To maintain this edge, you’ll need to become an early adopter of new recruiting advertising ideas.
8. Slow down: Ditch the transactional sales model and implement consultative selling. While you want to test new marketing and advertising ideas before everyone else, you’ll want to slow down the actual recruiting process to a pace consistent with how top performers make important career decisions. Too many recruiters rush to close. This is a diversion for the most important people who are looking at their job as a major career change. You may find our article on SPIN Selling and Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs helpful. It combines the idea of ​​using solution selling, career consulting, and job satisfaction as a means to enable top performers to fully evaluate their job opportunities. While you want to push your leads at a reasonable rate, there are ways to do it that are seen as advice rather than pressure.

While technology is changing the sourcing and recruiting game, ultimate success requires further relationship building with clients and candidates. This will require new recruiting and sourcing strategies, better ways to use the latest technology, and more qualified recruiters. However, without bold recruiting and HR leaders, little progress will be made, and the same laments we hear today will only be louder tomorrow.