Collaborative Hiring

Talenteering means think proactively. Talenteering requires collaborating with hiring managers to anticipate what their talent needs will be 3, 6, even 12 months down the road. Why (you ask)? Because getting ahead of demand allows you to build a better supply, and building a better supply makes you the preferred supplier. With this approach you can help build a better business by hiring better people.

Think about it. As a corporate recruiter--soon to be a talenteer--you have insider information that no other talent source has. Early access to the very people who will be creating the demand. By being proactive you can understand  their future business goals, challenges, and mission. Working with the business units you can create a talent plan that becomes an integral part of their business plan. And by being proactive in seeking out the business managers before they bring you an emergency requisition ("we don't need no stinking requisitions" thanks Jeff Hunter) you are able to create a sourcing strategy that can go beyond reactive, active candidate only sourcing. You, as a talenteer, just became an integral part of their business plan, and more importantly an integral of the business.

This is the heart of the Talenteering Manifesto. Plan--find out what the business will really need, and find out ahead of demand. Mapping--develop a targeted strategy of where the ideal candidates can be found. This might be targeted companies, associations, web profiles, relationship networks (real and digital), and any other sources you can dream up. Since you are being proactive you have time to cast a wider net. Develop a compelling message--your company has to appeal to the best of the best as a great place to work. Reach out to them and let them know why you are a great place to work in a language that is relevant to them--engineers and marketers don't speak the same language! Engage them in a personalized candidate experience--again by being ahead of the game the experience can become a dialog. You can use multiple channels to reach them email, RSS, create a blog for specific types of candidates, microsites with news and information relevant to them not just corporate wonk talk. Basically stay in touch.

Now when the positions open--yes the ones you were able to anticipate by collaborating with the hiring managers early and often--you will have a good flow of interested and interesting candidates to present to the hiring manager. You have become the preferred supplier by becoming an integral part of the process. This is an insider advantage that you have over staffing firms and agencies, recruitment advertising agencies, and job boards. They can all be resources to your staffing plan, but you are in the drivers seat.

That's talenteering!

(BTW. There is a great post on recruiting.com that was a collaboration between Jason Davis and Jeff Hunter that hits the nail on the head here too. It is also a great read on a very closely related topic.)

Comments

[Dub Dubs]

I thought this was a great post. I'm not sure I truly believe "talenteering" actually exists as part of the recruiting practice, but I could be wrong. The general idea however, is a simple integration between the HR management and operational management divisions within an organization. In my experience (previously as an HR Director) it's the HR leadership's job to identify and project the position management requirements of the organization. Within position management, it's the compensation analyst's job to tightly define the job requirements (allowing some flexibility in the recruiting process for individual needs). And then hopefully you have an HRMS to tightly integrate all these functions so you're not pushing paper around. Basically in a nutshell, recruiting/staffing is a sub component of "talent management" which is cross functional within the HR department. I'm not sure that "talenteering" is a new idea, or if it's just a new expression of HR/operational integration.

I think it's highly admirable for a recruiting director to take part in these activities. In fact, if a recruiting director is not doing so, s/he needs to find a new job (IMO).

-Dub Dubs

[Alan Whitford]

Hi Doug

You and Hank might recall that I led a Hire.com Webinar on Enterprise Collaboration a while back. I later wrote an article about the topic and am taking this opportunity to provide and excerpt. If any of your readers would like the full article, they can contact me on alan@abtechpartnership.com.

Best regards

Alan

Defining Enterprise Collaboration For The Resourcing Department

Let us look at some steps Recruitment and HR can take to change this situation. Our real goal for HR is to become a Business Partner. Recruitment departments should move from the original roles of administration and transactional operations to a consultative and business partnership position.

Business Partners align the HR function to the business goals and strategies of the organisation by making a valuable and tangible contribution to the bottom line. If we can begin to see this change in business thinking, we can begin to have a different view of our worth in HR and Recruitment. At the same time, corporate leaders must think about human resources as a business process which is as equally capable of being systematised as any other business process.

The financial importance of human capital increases the pressure more than ever to develop human capital management technologies and practices that acquire and optimally deploy top performers. The resourcing department is now expected to move to center stage, taking on a strategic role in the company. What can individuals do to make this happen?

In order to reach the top of the pyramid as a business partner, we must start collaborating with the lines of business in a number of ways. For example, being able to talk in terms that your customers (the hiring managers) understand and use will gain you credibility. Make friends with senior managers in finance, operations, marketing and IT and know their goals and activities. Read what your CEO does (the Financial Times, Fortune and the Wall Street Journal). Learn about Key Performance Indicators for the company. Do you know what your revenue per employee or cost of production per employee is? Can you describe to a line manager how much money it costs him to not hire the best person from you?

How do we raise the profile of Resourcing as a Collaborative Partner at the sharp end of the wedge? We start delivering business related information and analyses about our market, the staff we have or might need in the future, the means of reaching those people - on and offline, internal and external. We are able to elucidate and deliver a great story about working for our company. And we must measure our activities, particularly the effectiveness of the money we spend.

With this type of knowledge and experience to hand, you can move Resourcing forward as a strategic imperative in your business, becoming a true Collaborative Hiring resource and partner.