Talent Partners

Social Engineering

Here is a hint for all you Talent Leaders in the technology field who feel your executive management team just don’t quite get the Talent problem we all face today.

Get the Wall Street Journal editorial page 4.19.06 and read the op-ed by Robert J. Stevens Chairman, President and CEO of Lockheed Martin entitled 'Social Engineering'. Read it 5 times, commit the numbers and assessments to heart and share the article with your executive staff as quickly as possible.

Now what? That’s a good question. Lockheed as well as a number of other technical firms have assessed the numbers of technical talent needed over the next few years as 'boomers' retire. The bottom line is that there are not enough educated in the US to satisfy the need and it appears we are doing little about it. Lockheed alone plans to hire over 140,000 graduates in the next 10 years and we currently graduate 62,000 science and technical students a year in the US. Considering all the other companies with the same problem as Lockheed the numbers don't work.

Do we outsource more of our technical work requirements? What does our economy become if we do? Are we going to remain satisfied with our low rating when our high school and college students are compared to others around the world? Our high school students rank near the bottom.

NEAR THE BOTTOM! How did we let this happen? Recently high school students in the Netherlands were tested and compared to students in the US who took the same test. The students were all interviewed and the students in the Netherlands tested so much higher they laughed. They stated, the US will decline because if we can't compete at that level we won't at the professional level in the future. Are they right?

Well, the past is past. We end the book 'Talent Force' with a Chinese proverb, 'the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago - the next best time is now'. We can not wait and need to take action now. Mr. Stevens has some very interesting ideas- beginning with paying our teachers a competitive and desirous wage. We would add accountability to that as the lack of it - (thank the NEA) has lead to our current spot at the bottom of the heap. It is time for change and time for action.

Maybe leaders like Mr. Stevens will motivate some of to wake up and do something!

Let's hope - time's a wasting...

Q Definitions - 1

Talent used to be in their office working receiving the occasional call from a recruiter or friend about a job. They might take a look - they might not. They were happy, working and not in the market. It was up to the recruiter to compel the prospect to become interested and hopefully the recruiter caught them at that right serendipitous moment with the right opportunity to get interest.

These were passive candidates. Times are changing. Prospective candidates are no longer 'working, dumb and happy'...they're knowledgeable, aware, have data at their fingertips, are members of public or private networks...they have a better handle on what's going on than the 'passive' candidates we defined for the Internet in the late 90's.

Quiet.

Most prospects today are quiet...not compelled to search a job board or participate in a network - they watch, they listen and at times explore. But they don't and won't make any moves until they see good reason. They remain quiet.

The untapped source of talent.

John Sumser has a great series of articles at Interbiznet and today's is spot on. A quarter of the talent force or prospective candidates use job boards. Use boards and reach 25% - great. But what about the other 75% or the quiet source of talent?

We can source this talent through a number of means from traditional to 'relationship and nurturing' activities managed over the Internet. Use what is best for your organization - but do something.

Try:

·      Having 10 of the best people managers in your Company give you 10 people who they will contact in the next 90 days and share something good/great about your company and invite them to be sure and let them know first if the ever consider a job change.

Invest - these activities will take real dollars...not trivial. Treat talent acquisition as an investment not a cost. Talent is likely your most important asset. Treat them as such.

Try:

·      Quantifying the value of one great person who works within your competition and then convince everyone who will listen that your people, like the competitions are just as valuable, if not more so. Then go and get the new person too!

Marketing - create a marketing program for talent sourcing and acquisition. Messages...Positioning...Delivery...Measure Effectiveness...Change as Necessary! Has your marketing department ever launched product or service without these efforts? Why would we not do same in the most competitive environment for Q Talent of the past 40 years?

Try:

·      Go buy your Chief Marketing Officer dinner and ask her/him to give you someone as an extracurricular project to evaluate and then recreate the Talent brand so it holds up just as well as your consumer brand.  If you can’t do it yourself, you have to be Tom Sawyer and get others to help paint your fence for you.

Get Executive Support or Die - find the highest level executive in the company (preferably the CEO) who cares and understands the value of talent and get them to support you in all your efforts. Do this and win...don't and the company fails.

Try:

·      Get your CEO to send a message about Talent like she/he has never done. Convince him/her to send every hiring manager/recruiter a copy of Talent Force (our shameless plug) or some other book that tells it like is about the importance of Talent.  Then ask her/him to inspect what they expect by putting one key Talent acquisition measure in their dashboard for their Board.  That will send a strong message.  Go influence – it’s what you have to do!

The talent is out there...they are quietly watching and listening

If they are quiet – why aren’t you being loud?

Passive Passé

In the mid 90s the internet began a recruitment revolution. Our reach became great and immediate. Sourcing candidates began a new and fantastic phase. The attempts at monetizing the recruitment supply chain through this new technology became monstrous faster classified ads and for the most part remain that way today.

A few concentrated on automating parts of the recruitment process and found ways to source and capture relationships with ‘Passive Candidates’ a tried and proven part of the old recruitment supply chain. Passive candidates were properly defined as those prospects currently working, happy and with no resume. The technology concentrated on privacy, ease of use and choice.

When I founded Hire.com, we were on the leading edge of the move to support the attraction of Passive candidates. We learned a great deal back then, at the beginning, and like all other areas of life, we must learn, adapt, and change our thinking to stay ahead of the curve. Below is a part of that evolution of/my - our thinking.

Today, every Applicant Tracking System (ATS) states they capture passive candidates and many job boards position their ‘passive’ candidate capabilities. They don’t. In fact, asking for a full name in order to ‘enter’, join or see jobs is antithetical to a permission based web experience and then a promise that ‘we’ll keep you private’ may be true but doesn’t engender enough faith from the masses to believe you. Passive has become marketing spin and it is time to accept that prospects are not as passive as they have been in the past. More people are interested in work. As we position in the book Talent Force – people are becoming aware of jobs/work all the time everywhere. There is so much information available. Alerts, RSS, blogs, etc., they make it easier for one to know a great deal of data about new opportunities and ‘Personalization’ technologies on the horizon will make a person’s knowledge base and experience much stronger. People will not rely on a job board or someone else’s technology to keep them informed.

Dick Tracy – for real… Loved that comic book watch and the fact Tracy could communicate with anyone, anywhere, anytime. Here we are. Prospective candidates can communicate with any company, recruiter or network to learn, verify and judge work just like Dick. And that availability is increasing not decreasing.

Long message and thanks for reading this far. The point: passive is passé… Next week we’ll define the new talent to engage and what we believe to be the better term going forward…stay tuned.