Needle-Hunting: The No. 1 Mistake Most Recruiters Make When Trying To Build A Talent Pipeline
J.T. O'Donnell
Founder & CEO, Work It DAILY | Board of Directors, McCoy | Career & Professional Development | Job Search | HR & Recruiting | Employer Branding | Recruitment Marketing | Talent Management | Executive Coaching
I've been writing a lot lately about the death of "post & pray" recruiting. At RecruitHUB, we call it 'reactive recruiting.' Why? Because it doesn't work in today's tight labor market. In fact, it will never come back in style because of the enormous shift in power that has gone to candidates. Thanks to Glassdoor and the age of online transparency, talent is better informed. They do their homework before they're willing to talk to you. If they can't find enough good stuff about your company online, they'll ignore your request to connect.
A better strategy for recruiting today is what we call, "proactive recruiting." It's when recruiters focus on a specific pool of talent and actively market their company to them. As they build up relationships with this pool of talent, they create what is referred to as a talent pipeline - giving them access to the right candidates at the right time. It's a very successful tactic, when done correctly. Unfortunately, many recruiters can't leverage the power of proactive recruiting because they make the most critical mistake of all: failing to candidate personas as a means to guide them.
Candidate Personas Dramatically Improve Recruiting Efficiency
Candidate personas are used to help determine the skills and attributes your talent pool needs to increase the chances they'll be a fit at your company. It involves studying the employees your managers would most like to clone, analyzing their similarities, and then looking for the patterns. You then use the personas to zero in on candidates that meet the criteria identified. Think of it this way...
Would you rather look for a needle in a 100 foot high haystack, or a needle in a teacup with 5 straws of hay?
Come Learn How To Create Candidate Personas For Your Company
My RecruitHUB partner, Ed Nathanson and I recently hosted a live chat to walk through how we build candidate personas with recruiters. In under 30 minutes, we explain:
- How candidate personas alleviate recruiting headaches.
- Simple steps any recruiter can take to identify the right candidate persona.
- Real-life examples of how candidate personas are leveraged by companies to attract the best talent.
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Attended Metropolitan College of New York
7 年Changes Edison's New Jersey Menlo Park...
Cross Channel Account Manager at Commify UK Ltd
7 年Its either a big brush or a hell of a lot of Tar to have us all painted in the same light. Not every builder or trades person does a great job, they have even made TV shows to prove it, but recruiters really do get a lot a crap on here from people who have no idea what's involved in our industry. If you want to give it a go let me know. I'll hire you for 3 months and pay you for your time. Now because some think this job is so easy to do, my only clause in payment is that you actually place a candidate. Let the applications flow. What experience do you need, working in Business to Business Account Management, coming from a Sales Background, with Field sales experience and Telesales experience, cold calling, with a good background in IT Skills, knowledge of what ever industry your hiring for. its easy come try it
Wild Card - draw me for a winning hand | Creative Problem Solver in Many Roles | Manual Software QA | Project Management | Business Analysis | Auditing | Accounting |
7 年"enormous shift in power that has gone to candidates" We still have a "Musical Chairs Game" job market, regardless of the hype. Seriously, I just read an post about a hiring manager who ONLY had 87 qualified applicants for a job, complaining loudly how that's not enough. In addition, nobody in his company qualified for the job so no promotions from within.
Primary Care Workforce Specialist | NHS Hertfordshire & West Essex ICB | MSc Healthcare Management | Freelance Consultant | Senior Manager
7 年Have you ever worked in front line recruitment? I don't mean to come across rude, however LinkedIn does seem to be full of people who don't work in our industry, somehow still thinking they can tell us how to do our jobs ??