Finding the right talent for your organization has become almost as difficult as saving private Ryan, luckily we know some TA Generals.

Coined by McKinsey’s Steven Hankin in 1997, the term ‘war for talent’ has become synonymous with the market conditions that have led to fierce competition between companies to attract and retain talented employees. This phenomenon will only increase at a time when too few workers are available to replace the baby boomers now departing the workforce in advanced economies.

A whopping 82 percent of companies don’t believe they recruit highly talented people. For companies that do, only seven percent think they can keep them.

For tech companies like Devoteam, a French IT service company, they are the ones storming the beaches in search of top talent to bring into their organizations. Spread out over 18 countries across Europe, they have developed specific strategies to gain ground in the cutthroat world of Talent Acquisition (TA) where 73 percent of candidates are passive and top candidates only stay available on the market for 10 days.

One of the people spearheading these endeavors is Matthieu Rivière the TA director for Devoteam. He has seen first-hand the fight to recruit talented individuals for his international teams and the importance of having the right firepower like candidate engagement and experience.

We caught up with Matthieu Rivière at  Hiring Success 19, where this TA general shared with us some of his experiences in the trenches of TA and how he thinks his company can win the War for Talent.

If you want to learn more about Hiring Success EU – Amsterdam, September 10-11, 2019, check out our agenda here!

What is it like on the frontlines of the War for Talent?

As a tech company, we understand that it is a war and that means competing for highly skilled technical people with all other types of companies. 

The struggle to attract people becomes even more difficult because we specialize in consulting, so most people would rather work in a startup or one of the well-known tech brands. Therefore our main challenges boil down to being able to engage with passive candidates, start conversations with them, and then create a preference in their minds to choose us as an employer. 

Then, on top of all that, our recruitment volume requires more than 2000 people a year and our average employee turnover is two to four years. In general, it is a very difficult environment to succeed in.

How does your team confront these challenges?

As a service company, providing the best customer experience is our main priority. This idea translates to recruitment in the form of candidate experience. And, at the end of the day, creating a top of the line candidate experience is good for us as well as it allows us to be more selective and acquire the best talent.

As far as the specifics of our recruiting function, each country is specialized in a particular type of candidate profile. Half of our IT specialists are in France so the team there will be made up solely of IT recruiters. In other locations, we have TA  teams focused on finding project managers or Java developers.

In general, everybody is involved – even the sales teams are committed to sourcing candidates and engaging them in the recruitment process – working closely with the recruitment team for sourcing and employer branding.

How do you expect to win the War for Talent?

The strategies to ‘win’ are becoming more and more based on marketing. We have to engage as many people as we can and convert them into candidates – much the same way you would convert a lead into a client. 

Candidate experience will continue to be paramount, and for that, we will continue to use a mix of digital and physical components. From our point of view, everyone who works here is an ambassador of our employee brand, and having everyone involved really makes a difference.

The tools we use and our Applicant Tracking System (ATS) are crucial to our success. Without the system capabilities such as candidate feedback on the hiring process, texting options, and easy integration to social media platforms like LinkedIn, I don’t know where we would be. 

We are lucky to have a tool with such a great user experience that anyone can pick up because, as I mentioned before, even the sales team may source some candidates or hire them for a job. This aspect and a truly flexible solution made it easy to implement the SmartRecruiters technology in each country despite the different offices or recruiting team structures. 

In the end, we are positioning ourselves to succeed with our candidate marketing techniques and having technology that’s adaptable to any situation.

See more from leaders like Matthieu in the next part of the blog series – 10 Things I learned at Hiring Success – where we find out what it is like maintaining a brick and mortar store against the waves of digitalization.

Put your referral program into overdrive with this step by step guide (plus templates for outreach)!

If you don’t use referrals, you’re missing out on a killer opportunity to pour some rocket fuel on your recruitment process.

Yes, inbound and outbound channels yield amazing hires.

But referral hires…

• Have the highest applicant-to-hire conversion rate at 40 percent.
• Run with the company longer, with 46 percent staying over one year and 45 percent over two years.
• Cut the time-to-hire to 29 days from 55.

There’s more…

• Industry giants like Google, Intel, and Accenture do referral recruitment.
• Thought leaders like Patrick Burke (Pebble), Tim Diss (Facebook), and Theresa Singh (Asana) also use it.

Now, do you want to access hiring excellence? Strap in. This is going to be a fun ride.

Put Lead Generation on Autopilot

Imagine a constant pipeline of qualified candidates… wouldn’t that be nice? The good news is you’re about to learn how to make this happen.

Spotlight Open Positions

Employees kind of know what internal roles are open and they kind of know who might be a good fit. The result is underwhelming. Passive lead generation does not a superb hiring program make. However, you can flip things around and start highlighting open positions at all-hands meetings and in a company newsletter. It’ll help employees connect the dots.

Go on LinkedIn

An average employee has 100 or so LinkedIn connections. Put another way, if you have 50 employees, you can reach 5000 potential hires without lifting a finger. Here’s how: Encourage employees to like your job posts and link their LinkedIn accounts with the company’s page (see how). It’ll help employees stay on top of things and help your openings gain traction.

Use an Internal Jobboard.

If you’re a massive company with offices sprinkled across the globe, internal jobboards can offer a lifeline and make passive referral hiring Hulk-level strong.

Skip the Referral Bonus and Focus on Culture

You may want to lightsaber cash incentives. Aleksandra Włodarczyk, HR Specialist /Recruiter at ResumeLab explains why: “If you promise employees $1K for a successful referral, they won’t care if their friends make a great fit. They’ll want the bonus.”

However, If employees feel they work in a hip company, they’ll naturally want to intro others.

Tap into Employee Networks

You’ve made it to the juicy part. Put your party pants on because you’re about to discover a magical path to next-level referral recruiting. Consider making this part of onboarding. Remember, if you don’t sit down with a new employee to fish out referrals, you’ll walk right past low-hanging fruit.

Need proof? PURE (American property insurance company) gets a whopping 40-60 percent of hires via early referral. You can too. Here’s how:

1) Create a spreadsheet.

2) Sit together and comb through an employee’s network on LinkedIn.

The key is to ask ultra-specific questions: We’re looking for a [Content Marketing Specialist] to [write high-quality guest posts for major outlets]. Do you know anyone like that in [Chicago]?

3) Extract the basic info.

Record the connection’s name and LinkedIn URL by dropping them into the spreadsheet.

4) Fish out email addresses.

To do this, you must first get the staffer to login to LinkedIn, click ‘See connections’, and do a first-degree network search.

5) Once you pinpoint a potential hire, fire up their profile and click ‘See contact info’.

Bingo!

In the end, you should end up with something like this:

Note: You can mine employees’ networks once/twice a year without limiting yourself to new hires. People amass new connections regularly so it’s best to stay plugged in.

Do Outreach Like a Pro

You’ve got a golden list of stellar talent. Next, you need to reach out and sway them to the dark side. Problem? It’s a sucky manual task (especially if you end up with a list of 50+ contacts), but it doesn’t have to be if you use outreach automation tech that lets you create templates, track opens, and schedule follow-ups.

That said, you can do things manually. All it takes is some elbow grease and time.

1) First outreach… time for some heavy-duty action.

When you open the first email, be sure it includes:

• A note that you’re reaching out because their friend thinks they’re a great fit.
• What your company does.
• A link to the job ad.
• Heavy personalization (no one likes generic messages).

Need an example?

Hi [Marianne],

My name is [Max], and I’m a [content team lead] here at [The Boring Company].

Your friend [Josh] is on my team, and he says you’re killing it when it comes to [writing delicious content that drips with value].

I like people who can [write] like that, so I wanted to reach out and say hi.

[The Boring Company is an infrastructure and tunnel construction company founded by Elon Musk.]

You can learn about our values and culture here: [Link]

Now, I’d love to have you on my team as a [Content Marketing Specialist] to [write about flamethrowers]. You can learn about the role here.

Is that something you’d be interested in?

Thanks,
[Max]

2) Follow-Up

If there’s no reply after three days then it’s time to circle back and give a nudge.

Example:

Hi [Marianne],

Just a quick follow-up in case you missed my last email.

Like I said, your friend [Josh] says you’re a rockstar when it comes to [writing].

With that in mind, I’d LOVE you to join my team.

Details about the role. [Link]

Our values and culture. [Link]

Look forward to hearing back from you.

Thanks a million,

[Max]

3) When you get a YES, ask the referral to have a little phone chat to screen them.

Example:

Hi [Marianne],

Thanks for getting back – I’m super pumped.

Will you be available for a quick phone chat on [October 5th] at [2 PM]?

Thanks,
[Max]

4) On the off chance, it’s a no….

It sucks when you get a message like that, but you can turn things around and ask the referral to pass the details about the opening to their friends. This will help you push the info along and potentially find awesome talent.

Example:

[Marianne],

That’s a HUGE pity, really.

Is there any chance you could pass along the info about our opening for the position of a [Content Marketing Specialist] to your friends and colleagues?

About The Boring Company. [Link]

Details about the role. [Link]

Sending a mail pigeon with a thank-you note your way!

Thanks,

[Max]

So, what do you think? Do you do referral recruiting? How do you use employees’ networks to acquire top-value asset? Let us know @smartrecruiters.

Understand the practices keeping your department stuck in a reactive-hiring hamster wheel.

In the countryside of Geneva lives the largest scientific experiment humans have ever undertaken. Born from the rubble of WWII, The European Council for Nuclear Research, commonly known as CERN, operates on the principles of peace, transparency, and cross-cultural cooperation. The 27-kilometer facility is home to 10,000+ scientists of over 100 nationalities, all working to deepen humanity’s understanding of our world through particle physics.

Every second on CERN’s campus marks another 11,000 protons colliding at 99.999…percent the speed of light in the world’s largest particle accelerator. But it can’t happen without the people. And that’s what worried James Purvis, Head of HR at CERN when he entered recruitment at the lab 12 years ago – no one was applying.

He realized quickly that CERN would have to level up on candidate experience to start seeing an influx of candidates but there was another crucial element missing from their strategy – they needed to lay a talent pipeline in order to keep pace with the company’s roadmap – a plan stretching 35 years into the future.

After considering the company prospectus and turn-over/average-employee-tenure data, and comparing that information to labor trends, it became clear vocational workers in the form of maintenance technicians, not high-level scientists, would become the most difficult roles to source in the future. In response, CERN launched a comprehensive training program with an advertising campaign targeting recent high school graduates (see video below of James speaking at Hiring Success 18 – Berlin Edition).

This targeted campaign was extremely successful, and CERN now has a deep bench of technicians waiting to come into the ranks!

So what can you, as a recruiter, take from CERN’s journey to hiring success?

Yes, it’s true that this organization is exceptional, yet their methods for building their candidate pipeline are largely universal.

Looking to these scientific pioneers, recruiters can accelerate out of reactive recruiting and into proactive talent acquisition (TA.) To get you started, we’ve outlined some of the most common errors recruiters make when building and maintaining a candidate pipeline, as well as what to do instead.

1.

Not using your data…

Data analytics sounds like scary, esoteric stuff. So, think of it as getting to know your company. Talk to department heads about the reqs they foresee for the next quarter or next year. Look into the records to learn the yearly rollover rate and average employee tenure.

Armed with these simple data points, you can start predicting the personnel needs for the coming year and organizing a recruiting strategy.

2.

Making plans for tomorrow based on the reality of today…

You can’t use a fixed-model to forecast a TA strategy. That is to say, just because you don’t have a shortage of ‘sales associates’ today doesn’t mean you should ignore that pipeline. No candidate pool is guaranteed. Economic fluctuations, tech innovations, and legislative changes will inevitably affect whom you hire, how you hire them, and what you hire them for. Most of these economic/tech/job trends can be foreseen and planned for today. As we learned from CERN,  it’s a matter of paying attention.

3.

Forgetting about internal talent…

Once an employee is onboarded, it’s easy to forget about them as potential talent. However, internal candidates should always be part of your bench. Internal mobility is a great strategy for both retention and attracting new talent. Fifty-six percent of candidates choose to stay with their current employers because of growth opportunities, and “career growth” is one of the top three reasons why candidates accept offers.

Start simple. Create an internal career site that informs current employees about open opportunities. Then, take your strategy to the next level by using AI to identify relevantly skilled workers for you to contact.

4.

Skimping on learning and development (L&D)…

L&D programming directly influences functions like internal mobility. A recent LinkedIn study found that 27 percent of organizations in North America increased their L&D budgets in 2017. This kind of investment makes sense considering the predicted talent shortage, which will impact the technology and financial sectors the most, costing the global economy an estimated $1.31 trillion in lost economic output over the next 12 years.

5.

Reading resumes for job titles instead of skills…

Reviewing resumes from internal candidates is key to L&D/ internal mobility programs, but don’t get distracted by headlines. You must read the fine print to identify employees who have transferable skills and a good knowledge base to be upskilled into open roles.

Similarly, for outside hires, candidates shouldn’t be knocked out because they hail from a disparate industry or job title – it’s all about having the skills to execute the job.

6.

Falling out of touch…

It’s hard to prioritize future hires when you have reqs to fill today. However, if you spend the time building quality talent pools, it’s a shame to see that work go to waste by neglecting them. Nurturing these communities is a key aspect of recruitment marketing.

So, how do you find time for this? It’s not magic, it’s tech! Most TA teams use candidate relationship management systems (CRM) to automate and scale communication, including drip campaigns and branded landing pages.

It’s important to remember recruitment marketing programs are a two-way street. Don’t just push information to potential applicants, make sure they are updating their information and engaging with you as well.

7.

Not using freelancers…

Upwork estimates that 36 percent of the US workforce already freelance, and projects that number will reach 50 percent by 2027, so why not get ahead of the trend?

An active community of contract workers ensures that no project stalls out due to missing talent. These temporary hires can buttress a department while recruiters seek a full-time team member, or they can provide specialized skills that may be too expensive for your company to employ full time.

You’ve already heard the buzz around Berlin’s venture capital swarm. Now meet one of the fastest movers in the hive.

MoBerries is a Berlin-based HR AI technology company, founded in 2015. CEO Terence Hielscher developed the idea while working for one of both Europe and Southeast Asia’s predominant Venture Funds, having observed the value in establishing a shared talent pool for their portfolio network. After only six months, over 50 portfolio companies were actively sharing and referring candidates within the network. Together with his best friend from University, Mo Moubarak, and a trusted colleague from within the Venture Capital Fund that built StudiVZ, Andre Zayarni, MoBerries introduced itself to the German market.

Why is your product a necessary tool for any SmartRecruiters customer?

The fact that you are using SmartRecruiters means that your company is in a state of growth. MoBerries is today’s largest shared-talent platform and a new candidate sourcing channel for SR customers with over 10,000 weekly candidate referrals. The partner network consists of leading DAX and digital companies, as well as venture capital funds.

Briefly, on the back of a cocktail napkin, how does your product work?

MoBerries sources actively searching candidates to be placed in open positions in real time.

What does your product do that can’t be replicated?

The network effect. Every partner company contributes to an exclusive candidate pool, enabling partners to access quality applicants when they need them most. Over 10,000 referred and active candidates join the platform each week. Profiling candidates and companies alike helps drive matches based on a reinforced learning approach, derived from live interactions on the platform. The AI further uses neural network methodologies to source faster, by taking into account your feedback in order to identify the perfect company/candidate match.  This is especially helpful for non-traditional roles where not all candidates have the prerequisite skills clearly represented in their CV.

How does your product help make the hiring process as easy as possible?

Traditional recruitment consists of three steps: Posting a position to job boards, screening candidates, and hiring the most suitable one. MoBerries eliminates the first two steps for its partners, and our platform identifies where talent can best unlock their potential based on predictive models centered around their interactions within the job market. Essentially, we are a scalable sports agent leveraging a technology to get people where they need to go, as fast as possible.

At what stage of growth are you, and where is that relative to how big you want to be?

MoBerries is rapidly expanding, already working with leading DAX companies, VC funds, and the majority of digital companies in Germany, as well as other European countries. Next step for us: Expansion to the US. We are driven by the mission to be the world’s leading shared talent platform.

How does your product compliment the SmartRecruiters TAS – philosophically and technologically?

SmartRecruiters and MoBerries share the same values, which are reflected in our talent acquisition (TA) strategies. Both of us see the market as an ecosystem within which we need to adapt. We are in the business of people, and people, as well as the greater marketplace, are in a constant state of change. To be able to keep up, sourcing tools & applicant tracking systems (ATS) alike need to be flexible and able to evolve to meet new market norms.  

Offering a smart and effective solution is not merely about finding candidates a dream job, but how technology can help them build their dream career. To ensure integrity, both solutions work in parallel towards a transparent, honest and feedback driven marketplace.

What led you to partner with SmartRecruiters?

HR is becoming more and more consolidated, and the best providers find ways to come together to form a recruiting stack. A company should be about how to integrate these various services seamlessly and provide the most robust HR experience. As a sourcing channel, we integrated because SmartRecruiters is all about the managing of talent and efforts of a company partner whereas we are about the analysis and optimization of talent sourcing. Not to sound cliche, but it really is all about people.

How long did it take to become integrated into the SR marketplace, and what were the obstacles or adjustments in that process?

From all the integrations we’ve run, this was one of the easiest. It took approximately 60 days.

What were some benefits of partnering with SR?

The main benefit is the consolidation of two tools for the end customers. By integrating our systems we provide a more seamless experience to hiring managers.

How long would it take for the average existing SR user to implement and take full advantage of your product?

The integration only takes seconds. You will have to be a member of MoBerries in order to take advantage of this integration and connect both accounts. For anyone interested in trying MoBerries we encourage you to reach out to us and your SR account manager. Once contacted you simply click a button under your MoBerries integration tab within your dashboard and you are ready to get started.

What do you see as the future of Talent Acquisition and how do you fit into it?

As the recruitment market starts to move at a more rapid pace, the onset of AI-based technologies are intended to work alongside humans in order to enable HR managers to focus their attention on the element of better marketing their firm and lasering in on the best fitting talent.

HR managers are becoming more like sports agents, understanding the importance of constantly reinventing the way they market their team, culture & vision. A technology stack allows them to focus on what they do best, and that is selling the brand to perspectives.

We want our B2B partners to hire faster by focusing their efforts on selling to the most suitable talent. We continue to build our technology stack around creating value for all parties, which in the end allows us to offer a smart and efficient online platform.

Social recruiting is step one of gathering talent. This means building your online brand through Facebook Fan Pages, Tweets, and your company’s LinkedIn profile. Think of your recruitment and candidate engagement strategy as more of a talent ocean.

The sea of qualified candidates is vast, but there are communities and colonies that exist within that talent ocean. These communities are where you can establish relationships and build a reputation. Just like the ocean, finding these small communities is hard and employment branding and relationship building becomes all the more important. People trust people just like engaged and productive employees work for managers who they know, like, and trust. Recruiting talent and building relationships within the ocean is the very same way.

A Talent Ocean v. A Talent Pool

Talent oceans are built on the foundations of establishing value, building relationships and having conversations. And that means understanding and knowing what your candidates want just as much as what your company and hiring managers do. Collaborative Hiring.

This value-based relationship should not be confused with talent warehousing. In this model, companies create vast storage containers, servers, and file cabinets filled with candidate data. They are graveyards. This data is warehoused and offers no engagement, conversation, or opportunity for the information gathered to be customized, altered, or updated by the job seeker actively looking for work. These warehouses (ahem, graveyards) store this data, advertise their mass candidate warehouses to eager employers looking to fill positions only to learn that 80% of the data is old and outdated.

Building a passionate and involved community within the sea of talent is not easy.  Many hours are spent giving back, having conversations, and proving your worth. The most effective and fastest way in which to build a talent ocean is through your already established relationships. Encouraging your current employee base, previous job applicants, your customers, and their pockets of community to join in your conversations is the best way to get your talent ocean off the ground. Using Twitter and engaging in Twitter chats geared toward the job seeker like #jobhuntchat and #hirefriday chat are another effective and fast method to build momentum and a brand with very little cost.

Bottom line is that building a talent ocean is not easy, but it’s an evolutionary phase of the social recruiting and online employment branding process. By starting now, your organization can begin to build and foster those lasting relationships online that will serve as a fantastic referral and job candidate resource for years to come.

Photo Credit Planet for Life