Hope you are doing great. In the last few weeks, we have written about the transformative role that Recruiters can play.  In many ways, Recruiters are the front line workers to take the company on the path of innovation.  As many companies converge into Software, hiring for tech talent becomes a critical priority for many companies.  In the history books, there is a question called the Needham question.

“Researcher Joseph Needham’s Grand Question“, also known as “The Needham Question”, is this: why had China and India been overtaken by the West in science and technology, despite their earlier successes? … Needham thought the notion that the Chinese script had inhibited scientific thought was “grossly overrated”.

There is no defined answer for this question and there are different answers proposed.  If history books are to write a similar question 100 years from now about the state of Recruitment in 2020s, what will they write  One question could be this – Why did all the other Fortune 1000 companies let the big tech take all the talent (Google and Apple).  Certainly not lack of money or innovation opportunities.  One company recently fought back and the story is quite interesting

I have often written that Recruiters have to reimagine themselves as Digital Marketers and Super Forecasters.  When faced with extremely tight budget constraint, GE leveraged their employees to drive up Job Applicants.  It is estimated that GE got 3 million dollar worth of Social Media campaign effect

Many stories like this are emerging.  Moderna single handedly shifted the cutting edge pharma research from New Jersey to Boston.  How can a 10 year old company out compete 100+ years pharma giants.  What would have taken place to hire top researchers into the company, away from big companies.  All this require studying and careful pondering.

Perhaps we can derive some lateral thinking from John Sarno – back pain specialist.  Sarno originated the term tension myositis syndrome (TMS) to name a psychosomatic condition producing pain, particularly back pain. Although rejected by his mainstream peers, the theory of TMS and Sarno’s treatment of it have been hailed by many lay people as life-changing. A 2017 book on back pain treatments described Sarno as the “rock star of the back world”.

• First one would have to decide whether they are after Artists or Soldiers (Artists are highly innovative, patent filing resources while soldiers are used for scale – both resources are awesome and great but understanding the difference is critical).  The companies you target may be different depending upon the resources you hire.
• Get the digital transformation/Innovation story right – understand your company’s key innovation initiative thoroughly by talking to various tech and business leaders
• Identify the set of companies where you can look big – like an Apple or a Google.  Several IT services companies have soldiers type resources who will look at Enterprise career as useful step into the client world.  (the likes of Wipro, Infosys, Accenture etc). (a small section of their talent may have Artists type talent as well).  Many companies heavily outsourced their IT work in 2000 (even now) and as a result, they do not have enough home grown resources
• If you are hiring in a place like Bay Area – there is about 6000 startups and only say 100 of them have momentum.  There is a struggling engineer in the rest of 5900 companies who may be willing to listen to your innovation story
• Use creative branding models

• Companies like Airbnb realize the career page should be unique – not just a dump of Workday or Linkedin postings.  This is a huge marketing option – many companies are not realizing the criticality.  We will write more about this later.
• Understand employee sentiments in the companies you are targeting as they are key in connecting.