The war for Global talent has been heating up for a while now, but I think it is safe to say that it has reached its boiling point. Let us look at the instances of Global reach by companies for talent

• Google opening Engineering Centers in Mexico and Argentina (we have often highlighted that the GDP share of Argentina in Education has been impressive in the last five years).
• In a recent press conference, Julio Velázquez, CEO of Google Cloud in Mexico, commented that Mexico is “a hotbed” of talent.
• US Unicorn Carta opened an office in Singapore (Several cross border market opportunities are emerging, thereby more demand for talent)
• Netflix opens its office in Stockholm and will use this as a hub to tap into Copenhagen, Istanbul, and other regions in the area as their Satellite offices. These are touted as production offices, but our researcher’s interviews predict that Netflix will plan to hire various digital-related and software talent in these hubs and satellites
• Apple is planning to expand significantly in San Diego Engineering hub and as well North Carolina, Colorado, and Massachusetts
• Sweden’s Sharkmob has opened a game studio in London, and it’s starting to hire developers for it. (hub and satellite tech operations becoming very popular in Europe)
• Many companies are scaling in Suzhou – China (a tech hub we identified and helped Microsoft set up in our early days of consulting- demonstrated forecasting power)

All this means that the job of Talent Intelligence and Recruitment professionals are becoming challenging. (Big Tech companies are also targeting to hire good recruiters – so times are challenging for digitally transforming Enterprises – hold on to your Recruiters at any cost) With every challenge comes an opportunity.

One such pioneer who converted a challenge into an opportunity is Warby Parker. Warby Parker was founded in 2010 with a lofty objective: to offer designer eyewear at a revolutionary price while leading the way for socially conscious businesses. Every idea starts with a problem. Glasses are too expensive. One of the founders lost his glasses on a backpacking trip. The cost of replacing them was so high that he spent the first semester of grad school without them. Where were the options? It turns out there was a simple explanation. The eyewear industry was dominated by a single company that has been able to keep prices artificially high while reaping huge profits from consumers who have no other options. Warby Parker created an alternative. By circumventing traditional channels, designing glasses in-house, and engaging with customers directly, they are able to provide higher-quality, better-looking prescription eyewear at a fraction of the going price.

Recruitment is facing a Warby Parker moment of the eyeglasses industry. A few big tech players are dominating the scene. The challenge can be met with comprehensive talent intelligence and digitally savvy recruitment efforts.

Santander, for example, showcases curated videos right when you view a particular job. Sometimes, they show the videos of existing practitioners of the job and make it more personal.

Available talent should be sliced through the lens of employee sentiments.  This part of the exercise is not well understood. Here is an attempt (but I am sure you will have better ideas on this)

• How does the talent market in target geo perceive your industry?
• How does the market perceive your company?
• What % of the talent is occupied by the Big tech?
• What % of the talent recently changed jobs (easy to do this based on directional estimation)
• Are there confident local leaders who can help you gain insights about Engineer minds in the location?  (Example, Boston Area Engineers and Europen Engineers value more data Sources and individual data rights, and San Francisco Bay Area Engineers talk more scale of the systems touching millions of lives, for example).  A digital workshop to this effect will be super helpful (not focused on hiring but done by recruiters)
• Are there any existing perceptions about your company’s recruitment process?

This can be further built and analyzed, but hopefully, you get the point on how this can be structured and reviewed

A Mini Delphi Approach:  In his latest book, Noise – Nobel Prize Winner Daniel Kahneman suggests that Mini-Delphi rapidly accelerates the decision-making process and improves the forecast.  It is also called Estimate – Talk – Estimate.  In recruitment terms, When a candidate is assessed, this process requires participants to produce a silent estimate and then talk about why they provided such estimates.  Post this talk; they get an opportunity to revise the silent estimate one time and publish the final estimate (candidate score, for example).

A Warby Parker moment could be evaluating the candidate without the typical process through big data alone. If the background checks are good, roll out offers for three different roles and let the candidate pick one!.  That may be indeed out of the box and innovative, but no harm in trying that.  After all, human judgments have variability, and you minimize that to a certain extent by giving a choice to the applicant