Building A Talent Pipeline

BUILDING A TALENT PIPELINE

By Forbes J. Rutherford, Rutherford International Executive Search Group Inc., Toronto, Calgary, 855-256-5778

About the Author: Forbes Rutherford http://ca.linkedin.com/in/rutherfordintl leads an integrated group of talent acquisition companies that enable clients to attract talent at any stage along the recruiting value chain. Our process can achieve a 30% reduction on a client’s annual budgeted recruitment spend by simply aligning every aspect of your recruitment, interview and assessment process around the promotion of your corporate brand and applying science based hiring.

As well, our approach to on-boarding and re-engineering of training protocols for front-line functions has reduced time to proficiency by 50%. The retention of effective and motivated people can become a predictable and consistent process through re-engineering of your hiring and training protocol. See: http://tinyurl.com/rutherford-group

The following is an eleven part series which details the past, current and evolving conditions related to building a talent pipeline in your organization. The article is serialized over a five week period with brief entries published each Monday and Thursday.

With the ongoing retirement of the baby boomer cohort from the workforce and the rising influence of the technically savvy millennial, the executive suite is becoming increasingly aware of the impact the war for talent is having on the profit levers of their business. Demographers have been predicting for years the seismic shift the boomers’ departure would have on consumer and workforce patterns. Even when change is predictable, however, not all industries are able to effectively adapt. Some industries that have struggled with change despite the benefit of economic prognostication include water utilities, pulp and paper, automotive, commercial banking and beverage manufacturing.

Real estate industry remains highly fragmented and unpredictable

Real estate is quite different. The industry can work its way to the edge of chaos and yet has the entrepreneurial wherewithal to reshape itself. It is an industry that has matured over the past thirty years, and yet remains highly fragmented and unpredictable in the extreme. Urban social patterns compound demand cycles leading to both disbursed and concentrated communities that create hard to predict development patterns. Both commercial and urban residential real estate have few barriers to entry; with constantly evolving innovation in workplace design, energy efficiency and building science leading to new opportunities. The ability to identify effective and resilient expertise within this chaotic dance of competing firms is directly impacted by these conditions.

Chaotic dance of competing firms

The industry has proven itself to be susceptible to elasticity, having been strategically shaped by forward thinking CEOs with adaptive corporate stratagems that embrace short or continual planning cycles. It’s not unusual for adaptive real estate companies to rely upon an ecosystem of customers, suppliers and co-venture partners that identify with the CEO’s vision for new markets, client relationship standards, technology platforms and improved business practices. The challenges within this adaptation include preparing for succession and voluntary attrition within the industry’s ranks. To adapt successfully, companies must actively build talent pipelines to ensure the growth and viability of the business.

The challenges within this adaptation include preparing for succession

Part 1 – A Brief History

Twelve years ago companies shifted their recruiting from offline to online, following candidates as they moved their job search from newspapers to job boards. The migration produced a 55% decline in market share for newspapers carrying jobs – today newsprint accounts for only 5% of advertised vacancies.

Today newsprint accounts for only 5% of advertised vacancies

The utility and robustness of job board technology continue to evolve. According to Bersin and Associates in the United Kingdom, job boards have acquired a market share of 19% of new hires in the United States and 9% in the United Kingdom. Canada would fall in between these percentages at around 12%. This market penetration has been at the expense not only of print advertising but also recruitment agencies.

In response to this competitive challenge, broad sheets followed their clients by establishing proprietary job boards, linked to their syndicated newspapers through a single integrated job board. For major employers who recruit nationally, this integrated job board approach simplified things as advertisers didn’t have to place jobs in dozens of newspapers all over the country but could simply post a job to one or two national job boards.

Part 2 – Job Board Weaknesses

As a technology platform, job boards are most successful in attracting ‘active’ candidates – those who are looking for a job. However 9 out of 10 visitors to corporate career sites and job boards don’t apply to the posted jobs. Reasons for not submitting their resume are multiple. It’s likely they are gainfully employed and reluctant to have their name in play; while others are simply comparing their functional duties and accountabilities with competitive organizations. As well, thirty five percent of the working population do not actively seek ‘change,’ requiring the impetus of an intermediary.
 

35% of the working population do not actively seek ‘change’

With this low conversion rate of prospects into candidates, one might think that job boards are likely to die out, certainly progressive companies are reducing their budgets on job boards in favor of more comprehensive job marketing strategies designed to source both “active” and “passive” candidates. Job boards are not dying, their role remains a critical component of an integrated candidate pipeline.

REjobnet.com is representative of how a job board functions as the first stage of integrated candidate pipeline. Catering to commercial real estate, the site receives real estate postings from 53 countries. This volume of international real estate jobs should satisfy the intellectual curiosity of most passive job seekers while featuring opportunities for active job seekers.

Part 3 – Widening the Pipe – Search Engine Optimization

The Internet is a continuous disruptive force on our way of living and conduct of business. In the war for specialized talent, the marketplace does not rely solely on job boards as means to gather job and career information. The job board as a source for prospects is akin to a garden hose filling your outdoor pool, it will get the job done but not at the same rate as a hose attached to your local hydrant. 

Google receives 300 million job related search requests per month.

To increase the flow of prospects, one needs to optimize their search engine access, along with improved tools for mining Big Data. Big Data is becoming increasing accessible and cost efficient, it's created mega-shifts in workplace design, influenced adaption to process, caused the reconfiguration of value chains and the segmentation of markets. Search engines such as Google and Bing in conjunction with job aggregating spiders scrape the internet for job information and postings.

For example, Google’s search engine receives 300 million job related search requests per month. With this level of activity, there is an inaudible yet omnipresent noise factor one must consider when posting a position to attract a specific expertise. As a result, crafting job ad text and strategically posting the ad to optimize the potential of search engines has become a central aspect of digital ad placement and interactive marketing.

Part 4 – Filtering Noise in a Distributive Universe

The decline of ad revenue from traditional print and broadcast networks dramatically demonstrates the remarkable ability of emerging technologies to disrupt and recast our sources of information and their influence on the social fabric. The advent of the 800 channel digital universe has fractured the viewing audience by redirecting the public to a diverse array of specialty broadcasters and a bevy of themed shows. This example of disruptive technology has reduced viewership even more so by providing alternative forms of on-line entertainment such as gaming and social networking. In response, media savvy entrepreneurs adapt by applying the principle of platform convergence to create an integrated interactive experience for their audience.

Job seekers may need to see or hear about the same job five times

This same fracturing of the viewing audience has taken place in the job market where job seekers may need to see or hear about the same job as many as five times before they are motivated to apply. In the war for talent, the importance of multiple touch points has led to a convergence of job information platforms. This convergence of technologies has created symbiotic information channels spanning search engines, job aggregators, newsletters, affinity job boards, social networks, recruiting firms, company web sites and targeted email.

Coordinating the management of these distributive channels (or touch points) through a singular workflow promotes the likelihood of converting a prospect into a candidate.

Optimizing these touch points is what we do at www.retalentselect.com. Contact me at forbes@rutherfordinternational.com for more information or visit http://tinyurl.com/rutherford-group

Part 5 – Targeting the Digitally Raised Prospect

Disruptive technologies have allowed us to adapt our workforce strategies. Workforce planning includes a highly distributive environment consisting of flexible work settings and trans-national project teams. In today’s workforce, an email to an associate is as likely to go around the world as across the room. In this distributive world of work where text, video conferencing or email has become the default means of communication, it’s not surprising how difficult it is to convert a passive and perhaps remotely located prospect into an active candidate. Today’s employee has grown up digital. 

All things digital has fundamentally changed social and work life behavior

Not only has today’s employee grown up digital, our embrace of all things digital has fundamentally changed social and work life behavior. However, as much as individuals are tied to their corporate networks, people are inherently social and require interaction at both a personal and professional development level.

Societies change but remain consistently true to their internal behavioral compass. Evidence of this consistent social wiring is found in the growth of social networking platforms which have reshaped society. These platforms are simply a technological response by a decidedly adaptive and distributive digital society that yearns to coalesce into smaller cohesive circles of interest and knowledge. Targeting these digitally savvy prospects must be on their terms.

Part 6 – Mapping the Shadow Network – Connecting to High Performance

Social network mapping is an instrumental tool in the identification and acquisition of high performing human capital. Understanding how business networks interact is critical to accessing key talent through direct contact or referral. For instance, behind the hierarchy of a corporation’s formal and public structure, every company has an internal shadow network of dominant employees. It’s not always apparent to senior management who these individuals are. Mapping these shadow nodes within a corporation, however, can uncover the real sources of influence and knowledge.

Every company is supported by an internal network

These human nodes of influence know who the high performers are within an organization and often within the industry. Most importantly, they are generally willing to share their knowledge as a means to fostering their influence.

The researcher’s ability to map this social or corporate network of connectors is a technical function. Charting the internal dynamics of a connector’s influence is a complicated exercise especially when the connector’s network spans an industry. Charting a network is often counter-intuitive and requires a skilled network navigator.

Charting a network is often counter-intuitive

The research department of RutherfordInternational Executive Search Group Inc. draws from the collective abilities of more than 120 researchers based across Canada, Europe, United Kingdom and India. Skilled in mining ‘Big Data’ and expert in both hard and soft contact recruitment, our methods chart the shadow network across multiple corporate platforms and industry sectors.

Properly applied and in concert with other segments of the recruiting pipeline, our clients are able to effectively reduce their acquisition costs while attracting and hiring quality candidates.

Part 7 – Breaking the Dependency on Agencies

To reduce the ‘average cost per hire’ for new employees, employers must find a way to minimize their reliance on transactional recruitment and personnel agencies when sourcing the candidate population.

For the last 30 years, apart from fear of starting a talent war, it has been considered ‘bad form’ to directly recruit from competitors. There was always enough talent to go around. This implied civility created an environment where favored agencies acted as external proxies providing clients with probable denial. However talent scarcity and a shifting corporate ethos has abridged the corporation’s concern to be seen raiding a competitor. “All is fair in love and war.

American corporations have reduced their dependency on proxies

The use of agencies as proxies is most common in the United Kingdom and Canada where agencies still account for 35 percent of staff and middle-management new hires. Whereas American corporations have reduced their dependency on proxies to 8 percent, preferring to engage more consultative and strategically minded third-parties strictly for senior level and hard-to-fill positions.

Long part of the employer landscape, the third party recruiter’s failure to adapt to disruptive technology and provide a consultative value proposition versus being a corporate veil has broken their entrenched business model within the recruiting culture. See Recruitment – An Insiders View

Transactional firms are still too expensive

The vast majority of agencies who’ve remained transactional versus consultative have adapted by reducing their fees to compete with web-based options. The sad reality is, in their pursuit towards mediocrity – these transactional firms are still too expensive relative to aggressive job marketing tools currently available to employers.

Clients are simply looking for more effective methods to uncover passive candidates, including beefed-up internal recruiting departments in companies where hiring volumes justify increased burden. In time, web based technology will supplant those pure contingent agencies that haven’t been able to rise above their “introductory role” within the hiring transaction.

Part 8 – Passive Candidate Conversion – It’s a Matter of Touch

Candidate conversion is a difficult exercise, especially in the context of converting the passive candidate who is likely resistant to change or not giving the idea a moment of consideration. Success is often the result of the recruiter’s understanding of industry nuance, and frequently based on the number of times the recruiter can ‘touch’ a candidate in the overall job marketing campaign.

Only 8 percent indicated that they were actively hunting for a job

 
The decision to use an external or internal recruiter is ultimately a matter of deciding who is best at managing the talent pipeline including the engagement and conversion of high-quality candidates into a successful hire.

Evidence of this challenge was highlighted in a LinkedIn study of 4,500 respondents to their on-line job service. Of the 4,500 surveyed only 8 percent indicated that they were actively hunting for a job. The remaining 92 percent were categorized in a variety of ways which described their openness to employment opportunities.

They broke down as follows:

1. 28 percent were described as “Super Passives” or unlikely to respond to any type of solicitation
2. 40 percent were described as “Explorers” surfing through the cyber shadows exploring their options;
3. 15 percent were “Tiptoer's,” this group is selectively committed to opportunities that are upwardly mobile;
4. 6 percent are “Searchers,’ where they’re not actively seeking a new position but are open to the idea of changing jobs;
5. And 3 percent are “Networkers,” where they’re not actively seeking a new position as much as seeking to increase industry relationships.

The survey results would suggest that a full 83 percent of respondents were exceedingly passive and likely to only respond to a recruiting process that involved multiple touch points both through technology and human interaction before becoming active.

Part 9: Changing Roles of Internal and External Recruiters

Most external and a very few internal talent acquisition departments have the wherewithal to directly reach out and touch a list of targeted candidates. Currently the primary responsibility of an in-house talent acquisition department is to manage agency contracts, oversee process, track metrics, foster and promote employer branding and when necessary conduct tactical recruitment.

Reduction of your overall annual talent acquisition costs

Through an alignment of interests, aspects of this internal scope can be outsourced to an external service provider leading to a reduction of your overall annual talent acquisition costs by as much as 40 percent. The Rutherford Group of Companies methodology provides for this degree of granularity and can be layered into your internal recruiting team at a cost factor exceedingly less than your annual spend on employment agencies.

Part 10: Building and Managing a Real Estate Talent Community

Employers have operated their recruiting strategy on a pay-per-job model for years. This approach means that every time a new employee is required, the employer generally begins the recruiting effort from scratch by paying to advertise the job and/or engaging a third party recruiter. Through this process, candidate resumes are compiled, a short-list is established, a winner is eventually identified and all non-selected candidates are usually thanked for applying and then discarded.

As many as 9 out of 10 respondents to a career site don’t apply for the advertised job, so discarding the runner-up along with the top five or so respondents in a job search, given the cost of acquisition seems like a terrible misuse of capital and future access to talent. Currently, most employers don’t have the systems in place to manage these valuable and often high quality candidates beyond the current search. Information in data bases deteriorates by 30 percent per year so dropping the resumes into a searchable data base isn’t a sufficient solution.

Email your job descriptions to our talent supply chain every day

  
Through an alignment of interests, we offer a centralized talent community that allows us to capture more passive candidates, multiply industry referrals and automatically match and email your job descriptions to our talent supply chain every day. No more hoping that your recruiters are searching your applicant tracking system and doing manual outreach to registered candidates. Our talent community engine will automatically match and email every job to each subscribed candidate, inviting them to apply for future positions and encouraging them to tell friends who may match your jobs.


To be continued on April 7, 2014. To receive notification of the update, email me at forbes@rutherfordinternational.com with “Update” in the Subject or request a connection to my LinkedIn Profile

Forthcoming excerpts:

Part 11 - Employers Need a Partner - Alignment of Client/Supplier Interests - April 7th.