Hope you all are enjoyed the holiday season. We have focused on new-age talent intelligence practices that will be useful for TA in 2021. The war for the right Talent is expected to be at its peak in 2021. As a result, we believe that Talent Acquisition should continue to refine what is currently working well and look at additional strategic action items holistically.

• A set of Talent Acquisition (TA) Practices to consider in 2021

To understand this a bit more, we have to go back in history.  On December 1, 1913, Henry Ford installed the first moving assembly line for an entire automobile’s mass production. His Innovation reduced the time it took to build a car from more than 12 hours to one hour and 33 minutes.  Ford had been trying to increase his factories’ productivity for years. The workers who built his Model N cars arranged the parts in a row on the floor, put the under-construction auto on the skids, and dragged it down the line as they worked. Later, the streamlining process grew more sophisticated. Ford broke the Model T’s assembly into 84 discrete steps, for example, and trained each of his workers to do just one. He also hired motion-study expert Frederick Taylor to make those jobs even more efficient.

To get better at Passive Hiring, we cannot just rely on some AI.  You really have to break this into a pure intelligence game

• Create a targeted list of top 50 talent peers (peers may not just mean in your industry)
• At any given time, develop a detailed top 1000 targets across the peers.  Develop a list of Resources to target (not necessarily active in LinkedIn posts but a very detailed list of Engineers, Data scientists).  For example, this has to be specific to the name; for example, Ryan Zhou at Uber for Data Science.  (this candidate has great data science background as an example).  Draup can help you build this list if you need the help.
• Have a very strong social media presence where TA is posting about the various digital intentions and projects.  Post writings from your company resources/executives/project success
• Conduct engagement plans such as hackathons and invite the top 1000 targets (Hackathon can be for nontechnical jobs also)
• Refine this list, add/update this list

In Industrial Engineering, having the right inventory at any time is often the key to execution.  If we can bring Ford like discipline in breaking down passive hiring, we will do significantly better in 2021

Many Enterprises do not have very clear and refined processes for Acqui Hiring. Only tech companies have been successful in this.  Enterprises need to have a dedicated team (even if it is small) for hiring from Startups.  Draup can provide the list of startups based on the geo and areas you operate.  Reaching out to startups and understanding the culture behind that is a big art,  But the sooner we have it in place, the more efficient our process will be.  There are also some macro issues of integrating startup talent in enterprises that have to be addressed as well.

Many of you may have heard about Loreal Reveal Game.  It is a simple game where applicants can form groups and compete for various product launches.  The game needs more refinement, but it is a good starting point.  The greatness of this approach is it realizes TA is a huge function of brand building.  This is a function where rewards take a while to come in.  But many TA organizations are reduced to tracking a few metrics that are only tactical.  There are several efforts like this companies are undertaking.  Before the pandemic, Marriott developed a my hotel app where people can experience what it means to be a hotel manager (all of us have this curiosity). One of my passions is to work in a grocery store to learn the inventory flow).  Maybe I will apply part-time post-pandemic. By tapping into these innate curiosities, you can build a great platform for hiring

We are beginning to understand that Candidates, Consumers, Social Media page fans, Employees all converge into this union of Talent.  In as much as common sense this sounds, many companies truly do not understand what this means.  This means there is a CRM view of interactions that need to be managed and measured.  A good talent story internally will be circulated in social media, and that positively impacts incoming applicants.  A poor employee experience will also impact TA.  Having a dedicated team to sort these stories and provide deeper insights around the company’s work culture and successful opportunities.  Our interviews on this front gave some interesting insights.  Few years back, a backend Engineer from Google who was in his soul searching times and wanting to make a bigger impact- gets sick and visits one of the two large pharmacies in the US.  The Engineer had recently switched the pharmacy locations and was asked to wait while they run the checks.  As the Engineer waited, he asked some basic questions about how systems are integrated (or not integrated).  The Engineer was shocked at the level of disconnects in the systems. (keep in mind thus far the Engineer is used to working in the world’s most premier company).    The Engineer joins the pharmacy and plays a key part of the IT transformation of the pharmacy.  So the top Talent wants challenges, not some rosy picture of how great things are.  When we articulate the challenges as is and communicate the passion for improving, Talent is normally energized

TA should work with all relevant functions and understand the following:

• Flexible Future Job Role Taxonomies
• Understand the Internal Talent available for evolving jobs

There is nothing more effective than leveraging internal Talent.  This is often viewed as an activity outside the TA’s typical activity.  But this really needs to change.  If TA’s definition is truly acquiring top Talent, it should not matter whether it is internal or external Talent.  The very famous reinvent of McDonalds digital marketing was entirely driven by internal Talent redefined and repurposed towards this goal.  There are several case studies like this emerging. Todays, Innovation is more like a Race than a Fight.  To understand this, the following historical tidbit can be very useful

1973: The first version of Cell Phone developed by Motorola and a call was made by Motorola’s Martin Cooper to his Rival Joel Engel at AT&T “Joel I am calling you from Sixth Avenue from a real cellular phone.”

Fast Forward

2006: On March 21, 2006, Jack Dorsey shared the first tweet ever – a simple: “just setting up my Twitter.” The Twitter CEO’s tweet was then copied verbatim by other early adopters of the social media platform.

Jack Dorsey’s tweet symbolizes the two different Eras of Innovation.  TA should understand this and work with multiple stakeholders (internal and external) and innovate in 2021