Paul Leacock is a Director of Blacksmith and Talent Magnet, a new company in the Blacksmith family, dedicated to elevating the Talent Conversation and transforming New Zealand business culture and performance through great talent. This is Part Two of a two part post and is being published in full in the HRINZ Human Resource Magazine in December 2011.  You can read Part One HERE.

So why do we need to elevate the Talent Conversation?

The employment market is changing and the pace of that change will only accelerate over the next few years.  The smart organisations see the change coming, understand the impact it may have on their business sustainability and performance, and are designing and implementing strategies to minimize the potential negative impact and, importantly, leverage the new opportunities this presents them for competitive advantage in “the war for talent”.  If talented, skilled people are a source of competitive advantage for you business,  then finding, motivating and retaining them is only going to get more challenging if you don’t move from a transactional to transformational mindset.

From my observations and experiences, many New Zealand organisations view talent acquisition and management as a reactive, short-term, tactical problem to be solved rather than an integral part of a long term business strategy.  This is reflected in the Deloitte research ‘Talent Edge New Zealand – Getting the balance right’ with the top three most common sources of candidates being on-line advertising (primarily job boards), recruitment agencies and print media.  So nothing has really changed since I joined the recruitment industry 11 years ago and we’re stuck in a ‘recruitment advertising’ rather than ‘talent sourcing’ approach to resourcing our countries economic engine.

Given the drivers of the new “war for talent”, relying on fishing from the market of active jobseekers as your primarily sourcing avenue is going to become more and more risky and offer less certainty of getting the right person at the right time.  Numerous sources of research exist to suggest that for any given role, only about 10% of relevant/experienced potential talent is actively engaged in a job search at the moment in time you need them.  Organisations must elevate the Talent Conversation and start applying the same level of Board/Executive attention, strategic intent, resources and investment as they do to their customer acquisition and retention, consumer brand strategy, IT infrastructure, and financial management.

With job boards becoming increasingly crowded with ads that all look and sound the same, very little genuine sourcing or other innovation within the recruitment agency environment and print job ads dying a slow death – maintaining the status quo will not be a winning strategy in your “war for talent”.

What can you do to start elevating the Talent Conversation in your business?

• Get Smart – if you want to be taken seriously at the top table you need to know your stuff.  Become an expert on the national and global talent market.  Hunt out research, trends and case studies that demonstrate new thinking.  Be prepared to lead from the front and back yourself – innovator/early adopters MAKE the change rather than follow it so you may need to interpret evidence and create your own solution, rather than just copy what someone else has done.
• Understand Your Talent Needs – this is the starting point, you need to know what your future people needs look like so you can shape your plan to fill these needs and start to develop a profile and relationship with the people who matter most – both inside and outside your business
• Dollars & Sense – commercialize the conversation.  To get the attention of those that matter in changing organisational mindset about talent acquisition and management, especially recruitment and on-boarding, you have to ‘show them the money’.
• Target Your Employer Brand – invest in truly understanding your employment market reputation and internal brand so you can develop an integrated strategy and execution plan to align expectations with reality throughout the employment experience and clearly set yourself apart for the talent you want.
• Create Talent Tribes™ – hoping active candidates will apply for a job you have vacant and then trying to keep the ‘extras’ warm with job alerts for similar roles isn’t the way of the future.  Creating active engagement with a range of internal and external stakeholders to create Talent Tribes™ of people who will advocate for your brand and your business as a place to work and do business with.