Greg Savage spoke at very official, businessey event yesterday. He turned a room of pinstripe suits and pale blue ties into revolutionaries. They were left buzzing about radical shifts in the way we think about bringing people into our businesses and teams.Rather than hunting down candidates with skills to perform a specific role, we should be attracting people who share your mission. There are two key points we took away from his session:
Greg talked about it as shift in focus. We should stop fighting for candidate attention and start seeking to understand their intention.It's an interesting twist and totally in line with how we're seeing the people-market move.The future is going to be about candidates choosing which businesses they want to work for, not the other way around. And we're not talking about a future far away: this is happening right now. People are demanding a different relationship with companies and that means we need to look at a different way of attracting and engaging our potential workforce.
Talent pooling isn’t new, or particularly revolutionary, but it's a really brilliant way to create a database of people who are the right fit.Start by creating an easy way for people to tell you they're interested in working with you. This could be a Facebook page, but there are other, more sophisticated ways too (if we do say so ourselves). Build a talent pool with a Weirdly quiz, and your database of awesome candidates will also be automatically filtered by how aligned they are with your big mission. They’ll be ranked by how well they share and reflect your company culture.This is especially smart to do at this time of year. It means that when the new year rolls around, you've got a database of brilliant candidates all ready to go.This is the first step to building a talent community. Not all of those people will be looking for jobs now. Not all of them will be people you have roles for now. But now you know there's a bunch of people who love what you're doing, who fit your company culture, will help push you toward your mission and are dead-keen to jump on board when you ARE ready to hire.Even better, they know you're a company who cares about things like culture fit, and pulling people together to work toward a common goal.
Other than questions designed to uncover a culture fit and shared values, you need to get a gauge of how keen and available these people are.These don't have to be complicated. Better to play it simple with questions like:Are you interested in being in our talent pool? – make sure you explain what this means (eg. we'll contact you regularly to update you on jobs)What type of role are you interested in?What salary are you looking for?What is it about our company that interests you?What is your notice period?What is the most unique thing we should know about you?
When you have a talent pool, you'll be starting the year with some warm leads for new candidates. You know some vital information about them - what kinds of role people are looking for, what their notice period is, why they're a good fit with you AND they are happy for you to contact them.The candidate will already feel engaged with you and your brand, so will feel great about hearing from you. Isn't that much better than a cold-call from a headhunter? The future of employment sure thinks so.
If you want to give talent pooling a go and give yourself a head-start in the new year, book a demo today.
