Trying to recruit top talent with a single technique is like trying to win a football game entirely by passing or trying to win the popular reality show, The Voice, by singing the same song over and over again. It’s possible to succeed, but the odds are definitely not in your favor. The only way to win the “War for the Best Talent” is to wage a multifaceted campaign that is both targeted and consistent.
Two rules dictate the current talent acquisition ecosystem:
• The “Golden Rule of Recruiting” states that what you do to recruit the best talent will also recruit mediocre talent, but the converse is not true. In other words, aim high to recruit high.
• The “Silver Rule of Recruiting” states that the best way to recruit top talent is to use a lot of different ways. In essence, there is no silver bullet in contemporary recruiting, but there is an expanding array of techniques that can be tapped to create an effective strategy.
A recruiting campaign should not be tailored to some conscious or unconscious view of the “generic candidate,” but rather to the specific attributes and behaviors of “A” and “B” level performers. While there are a number of such factors, perhaps the most important is that these individuals cannot be categorized as job seekers—even passive ones. They don’t think of themselves as job seekers, nor do they act that way. They are best described as “career activists.”
Career activists never, ever look for a job, but they are almost always on the lookout for a career advancement opportunity. They don’t care about the requirements and responsibilities of an employer’s open position, but they are very interested in WIIFT—what’s in it for them—should they take a particular job.
They are also almost always employed, so they have choices. They can listen to the regular entreaties of recruiters or to the love song of their current employer or both. Unlike active job seekers, they aren’t desperate for an offer because they have plenty.
And finally, career activists are not herding animals. They are independent and free-thinking when deciding where they will hang out online, what they will read in the real world, and with whom they will interact in both venues.
Constructing a campaign for top talent.
There are four steps to constructing an effective campaign for “A” and “B” level performers.
1. Avoid the ready, fire, and aim mistakes.
Design every tactic that’s used, every interaction that occurs, and every communication that’s sent to candidates to reflect the attributes, interests, and goals of career activists. From the simple choice of words—avoid the term “job seeker” on your corporate career site, for example—to the way a job posting is written, aim first, and always at your target demographic.
2. Determine what you stand for.
Use a consistent message in every job posting, email, print ad, career fair handout, and phone call for, to, and with candidates. The lens for that consistency is your employment brand. That statement should identify the key aspects of what it’s like to work in your organization. Why? Because research by the Recruiting Roundtable has found that it is the key trigger for piquing the interest of top talent.
3. Be more than a one-trick pony.
Build a multifaceted sourcing and recruiting campaign that is tailored to the behaviors of top talent online and off. Use a focus group of current high-performing employees in your target demographics to identify which techniques (e.g., recruitment advertising, networking, career fairs) to use and where to use them (e.g., which job boards, association career centers). Then, deploy the campaign so that you are continuously probing the full range and depth of the “A” and “B” populations your employer wants to hire.
4. Don’t count on blind luck.
Measure the outcome of each tactic and venue that’s used to determine its effectiveness. Metrics are idiosyncratic to each organization, but typically involve touches (i.e., the traffic that’s generated among top talent), conversions (i.e., the number of applications that occur), and or the number of applications accepted for a job interview (i.e., the quality of the candidates attracted). Those evaluations should then be rolled up into an assessment of the overall campaign based on the number of new hires it produced, and that insight in turn should be used to revise and refine the campaign as necessary.
The “War for the Best Talent” can’t be won with a single recruiting technique or a single Website. It requires, instead, a multifaceted campaign that is continuously measured to ensure it is targeted at the top talent and consistently delivers a message which resonates with them