Reinvent Your Talent Acquisition Strategy [Video]

When you sell a job to a potential candidate, “you’re selling a promise...rather than a product,” says Brad Cook (@brcook2006), VP Global Talent Acquisition for Informatica. In his presentation, “Driving Innovation in a Borderless Recruiting World” at ERE’s Recruiting Innovation Summit (#RIS12), Cook addressed issues that are key to transforming your talent acquisition strategy. Know your limitations: You need to know your own organization and what it’s capable of doing. For example, don't say your company has a fun, wild culture if it doesn’t. You’ll have boundaries in which you’re going to be operating. Ask yourself what things can you leverage within the constraints of your organization that can positively get your brand out there for candidates. Isolate your competitive advantage: There are many factors that could be your strategic differentiator, such as employer of choice branding, operational excellence, candidate experience, candidate relationship management, technology enablement, and crowd sourcing market intelligence. Measure your success: What variables can you isolate to show success? You need to show ROI if you want to get more money from the CFO. Map out the candidate experience: Understand every touch point and how you can improve it. How do you start marketing to candidates? How do you push relevant and timely information to a targeted audience? How do you find a talent source and funnel it? How do you pre-screen candidates? If you have a Customer Relationship Management (CRM), you can bolt all this together. SEO everything: Every item you put online needs to be SEO’ed, such as titles of jobs and descriptions. You need your candidates to be able to find you. Job descriptions are the front world of your company. Make the text people have to read compelling. Give them an idea of the day in the life of working at the company. Employer brand is critical: It’s a must-have, not a nice to have. It’s what gets you noticed and lets you stand out from the crowd. Your brand needs to be clear, compelling, and measurable. It’s a promise that your potential employees and all your other stakeholders will care about.