In catching up on some recruiting blogs and articles over the weekend, I ran across what I think is one of the best assessments of the current state of talent acquisition (recruiting) and employers' attitudes about hiring employees. This article was written by Matthew Jeffery with the help of co-Author Amy McKee, Director of Global Talent Acquisiton at Autodesk. This is an excerpt of a much more detailed article pubished in the June issue of the Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership.
There is complaceny and misunderstanding in offices of hiring managers at companies both large and small. Is it possible that complacency and misunderstanding can actually restrict a company's ability to grow and prosper? Think about it . . . the answer is obviously yes.
"There has never been a better time to be a recruiter.
What we do can quite literally make or break a company. If we can’t attract and retain the best staff, then our company will lose ground rapidly, financials will suffer, and it will die a slow painful death.
Recruitment is undergoing a change. Not just a small scale evolution but a fundamental seismic shift. A change that will see the recruiting landscape change forever. A change that will see many traditional recruiters falling behind and being replaced by new, differently skilled recruiters, ready for the challenges of Recruitment 3.0.
Indeed, it is not only recruiters who will be found obsolete in Recruitment 3.0 but many of the current recruitment leaders in top companies today, criminally not preparing their Fortune 500 Companies for the new realities of a changing recruitment landscape. Recruitment leaders’ version 1.0 are real, out there in abundance, so obsessed in process and introverted to the point of not seeing outside the window of their office, damaging the prospects of the very company they seek to serve.
Why the need for change?
The current global recruitment landscape is changing. The global war for the best talent is real, (note the use of “best”); talent is geographically mobile and happy to move for the best job; talent is more demanding, not only in pay but career progression and training and development; the experienced talent pool is shrinking in volume; convergence of talent, as recruiters fighting in a smaller talent pool attract candidates across different sectors; the graduate pool is scarily becoming “less skilled” as graduates come out of universities with watered-down degrees, ill-preparing them for working life; talent is less loyal and happy to switch companies every two years on average; competitors are getting smarter in mapping out talent pools and attracting your staff away; and recruitment agencies are failing to be creative in attracting unique talent to their databases, hence perpetuating “recruitment chess” of the same talent across companies.
Those are a lot of dynamics at play.
So are many of the Fortune 500 recruitment leaders applying Recruitment 1.0 solutions to the new world? Let’s first look at the core philosophical differences between traditional recruiting and Recruitment 3.0.
The Core Philosophy of Recruitment 3.0: Not everyone is looking
This is the fundamental underlying core essence of Recruitment 3.0. Not everyone is looking for a job. Different market research exists but the benchmark seems to suggest that, for any given role, only 10% of relevant/experienced talent is actively looking for a role at any given moment in time.
That means that 90% of candidates relevant for your role/s are not engaged in job searches. The best candidates typically among them.
Hence in a candidate short market, with a host of competition for particular skill-sets, the global war for the best talent is being fought out among 10% of active job seekers.
So ask yourself this: Why is my recruitment leader focused on using recruitment agencies, posting on job boards, and CV searching, when they are not reaching out to the 90% non-active segment, which could include the best candidates?"
This is part one of a two part post. I hope you'll finish reading this tomorrow.