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Why a Nimble Early-adopter Sourcing Strategy Will Yield the Best Candidates

By Lou Adler, May 28, 2008

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin'.
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'.

- Bob Dylan

As most of you would agree, how companies market and advertise jobs to top people is changing at an accelerating pace; in most cases, more rapidly than companies can respond. Simply put, the winners in the ongoing war for talent will be those who can establish nimble and targeted programs designed to both anticipate and subsequently lead these changes.

Understanding where sourcing has come from and where it's going can help you get the needed jump-start as you begin developing your sourcing strategies for the recovery just about to start.

In the Olden Days of Sourcing – considered anything before 1995, or pre-Internet – print media and the telephone were the primary sourcing tools of choice. This was the era of the hidden job market, classified ads, company loyalty, and where networking was largely Rolodex-based. Big display ads dominated the Sunday Times and Thursday's Wall Street Journal. Job changes were fewer, but each decision meant more.

Read more articles by this author.

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Next came the Internet and the promise of finally winning the war for talent. Anything but happened. In fact, I'll contend that the Internet and the big job boards exacerbated the war by uncovering the hidden job market and promiscuously promoting job mobility. The Internet allowed employees to become instant job seekers for any minor decline, even temporary, in job satisfaction. In The Olden Days job setbacks were often resolved with broadened job responsibility and a pat on the back or just by hanging in there when the going got tough. Whatever, people didn't change jobs on a whim, because they couldn't. The increase in turnover coupled with solid business growth forced companies to build-up their in-house recruiting departments to meet their hiring goals. This made matters worse as more recruiters learned how to generate names and poach from each other.

Somehow marketing jobs as careers was lost during the transition to the Internet as companies decided that posting boring skills-based job descriptions on multiple boards would somehow attract top performers. This was the catalyst for the employer branding movement as companies quickly realized the best people didn't use the major boards to find jobs. While employer-branding is not a bad idea, it was largely a workaround to address the flawed req-driven model companies built their hiring processes around.

Now we're in the throes of Web 2.0 Sourcing, characterized by aggregators, search engine optimization and pay-per-click to position ads, increasing reliance on social and business networking and targeted advertising. This is clearly essential as the job boards have lost their punch to the one-stop shopping aggregators (like SimplyHired.com and Indeed.com) and job-specific niche boards. Also taking massive hold is the reemergence of proprietary resume databases powered by candidate relationship management tools like salesforce.com. Using drip marketing, companies can stay in touch with their prospects on a regular basis. Then, when the time is right, send them an RSS feed or text message when an opportunity develops.

Coming of age in the Web 2.0 era is increasing reliance on employee referrals. With tools like LinkedIn companies can now convert their employee referral programs into an on-going business process rather than ad hoc events.

However, among the technology boom, one big drag still remains. Despite all of these important new sourcing opportunities, companies still rely on the traditional skills and experience-based boring requisition as the copy of choice when the ad is finally read. But even this paragon of bygone days is about to change.

Now back to the future. While a few Web 3.0 trends are just emerging, don't be surprised if they're not in big time play before the year is out, so put these into your planning. The big trend here is increased segmentation and targeted advertising, also called narrowcasting. As part of this, microsites and talent hubs hosting jobs by classification will be more prevalent. These sites will be optimized to be found using search engines, and present groups of jobs together; and from here, funneling prospects to individual jobs. Mini-sites will do the same for individual, more strategic jobs. This will force the shift away from the req-driven mentality of the recent past to messaging that emphasizes career opportunities.

Behavioral marketing based on cookies will allow job messages to be positioned to reflect user habits. For example, a sales rep in Chicago for an equipment manufacturer might find a job-related message from a one-off competitor when searching for new sales ideas or even when searching for a new home in a different state.

The near Web 3.0 future will likely combine advances in behavioral economics and social networking to tap into candidates when they're most likely to consider changing jobs. This is comparable to the Technology Adoption Lifecycle. For example, top people who get the urge to consider a new job act in predictable ways. It typically starts by networking with confidantes, searching for jobs on Google, or looking at a niche board. A well-placed ad on a salary survey site might also catch their eye. Proactive networking is one way to connect with these early-stage job seekers. One example: LinkedIn now offers job postings with direct links to current employees in the job seeker's network. Flipping this, it makes sense to have your employees expand their current networks to reach out to previous associates. Tying this to their Facebook, MySpace and alumni networks is the next logical extension. Done properly, this extended network will allow your company's employees to have first dibs on the best people the moment they consider entering the job market. Technology will allow instant communication and within hours exploratory meetings can be arranged between candidates, recruiters and hiring managers.

A positive trend likely to accelerate the move to Web 3.0 sourcing is the pendulum-like swing by top people now looking at job changes as important career moves not just temporary angst-relieving events. Younger people have gotten a bad rap as job-hoppers with a “me-generation” attitude. From what I can tell, for most Ys and millennials careers and personal growth are as important ever, but the current belief is that Corporate America doesn't provide the right environment for achieving this. Instead, a do-it-yourself approach is required. Some interpreted this as a negative attitude about work, but my sense is that this is an effect, not the cause. Regardless, this change offers companies the opportunity to reestablish themselves as ideal places to launch or jumpstart a career. At a practical level this means more involvement by hiring managers, an emphasis on career oriented-advertising, and clearly defined growth opportunities for successful performers.

As you plan your sourcing programs for the next 6-12 months there are some other trends worthy of note. Compression is one. There used to be a lag of about 3-4 years between the time consumer marketing concepts were applied to the sourcing of candidates. This has now dropped to less than 1-2 years. Part of this “follow-the-consumer marketing leader” involves the increasing use of metrics to validate the effectiveness of any sourcing program.

However, if past trends are any guide, it's not the tools themselves that will make them effective, it's how the new tools will be used to make and maintain these important connections. So don't expect talent hubs, SEO, CRM, networks and aggregators to solve your sourcing problems. Instead you'll need to twitter, blog, chat, contact, call, and stay closely connected to your network of prospects and leads. How well you do this will determine the quality of the people you hire and how quickly you do it. Somehow this feels like the good old days.