Blog: Find More Top Talent with Less Resources

We all know the struggle of finding the perfect candidate for a job opening.

It can feel like searching for a needle in a haystack. 

Hiring managers and recruiters have a tough job on their hands. as they have to find someone who meets most of their criteria, has the right skills and experience, and is a good cultural fit for the company.

It's no easy feat.

And we can all relate to the frustration of going through countless resumes or CV’s and applications, only to come up empty-handed. 

But there are ways to do more with less and optimize your talent-sourcing efforts and make the process more efficient. 

Let's explore these tactics together.

So you can find that perfect needle in the haystack of talent.

With less. 

We'll explore three key areas that can help you do more with less when it comes to talent sourcing.

• Keep Talent Density as your North Star, 

• Mend Talent Attrition first then think about Talent Attraction, 

• Optimize the Impact of Your Talent Sourcing Efforts through TSOps.

Sounds about right?

Let’s jump in.

Talent Density: Finding the Lil’ Machines that Can

One of the biggest challenges in talent sourcing is finding the right talent that raises the bar. 

This is where talent density comes in. 

Usually, Talent density refers to the concentration of high-quality talent in a specific area or industry. 

Think of Silicon Valley. 

It’s the same within a company only the benefits are tightly coupled with the company sporting the teams that are highly dense in true talent. 

The higher the talent density in a team. The easier it is to find the next highly talented candidate by referrals, or simply by the magnetic effect some of these talents have within their communities. 

They will hit the ground running. Not just preparing to lace up. So, less hand-holding is needed. 

Motivation will go up, as they will make fewer mistakes for others, like hiring managers to solve. 

You can finally go quality first. Except for the case when you’re org is in hyper-growth mode. But even then. if you care more for quality than quantity and speed, your talent density will naturally raise. 

Of course, this means raising the bar across the talent acquisition processes as well. 

You have to eliminate or fix bottlenecks, minimize unnecessary friction in the candidate experience, get hiring managers better tooling to select, better quality data and headcount planning. Also pushing out the lead times (time-to-hire etc.).

Ok, so we’ve made it through the talent density jungle. ✅

Let’s see what the prequel has for us. 

Talent Attrition: Don’t let Your Talent Bucket Stay Leaky

Talent attrition is the rate at which employees leave a company. 

High attrition rates can have a significant impact on talent acquisition and talent sourcing, as it means that there's a constant need to fill positions. But even more important, future talent attrition rates are notoriously hard to estimate. Hence most TA teams won’t even try to. Or if they do, they’ll add the past rates to a guesstimated ratio and call it Estimated Future Attrition.  

Another blow from talent attrition is that it will throw your carefully trimmed headcount plans off balance. 

And what happens with unexpected changes in your headcount or in your team? 

Everyone loses their cool and starts to hold everybody else accountable for not being able to produce 4 candidates for yesterday to backfill the position. 

Also, the effect of talent attrition is quite opposite on employer branding or company culture than the effect of talent density. 

To reduce talent attrition, it's important to create a positive company culture that values and supports employees. 

Yes, easier said than done. Especially if you had issues with culture or events that affect the whole company’s culture. 

Think of layoffs, re-organizing or mergers, acquisitions. 

The worst you can do is to over-rely on external resources.  Agencies, one-off consulting sprints, or looking at companies that are not yours. 

The best is to put in the work and some tooling and ask your colleagues and employees directly. I can vouch for anonymous polling, as it is less prone to give biases.  Also, pulse surveys are great, if your team is big enough to give meaningful views.

Bonus: you can use the insights for employer branding and outreach messaging too beyond the obvious use of fixing problems to lessen attrition. 

Optimizing Talent Sourcing Operations (TSOps) and Teams: Working Smarter, Not Harder

Optimizing talent-sourcing operations and teams is all about working smarter, not harder. 

You can achieve this by:

• Implementing automation and 

• Get better quality data then

• Use analytics to streamline the whole process and improve the quality of your talent pipeline.

Automation can help reduce manual tasks such as resume screening and scheduling interviews.

While data analytics can help you work on key metrics around candidate experience. Top-of-the-funnel metrics like active-sourced candidate ratio to help elevate your talent density.

In addition, optimizing talent-sourcing teams is about providing continuous training and development opportunities to keep your team members up-to-date with the latest trends and best practices in talent-sourcing. 

This will help you keep your talent acquisition team sharper and more ready for the next upswing. Or build networks in specific and relevant talent pools. Organize a talent sourcing scavenger hunt or host a talent sourcing hackathon, internal training, external webinars to help employer branding.

In conclusion, doing more with less in talent sourcing requires a combination of creativity, strategy, and innovation. By focusing on talent density, reducing talent attrition, and optimizing talent-sourcing operations and teams. you can find the needle in the haystack and build a strong and successful talent pipeline for your company. 

So, get quirky and start sourcing that talent!

About

Dez Papp is recognised as a leading talent sourcing specialist. He supports organisations in looking at how they can shorten recruiting lead times, using data, thought through and well-constructed attraction funnels whilst constantly reviewing, segmenting and pre-qualifying candidates.

Working with global clients, Dez has found those elusive needles and purple squirrels.

Dez has been supporting immersive, which equips high-growth companies, large and small, with the people, tools and experience needed to recruit at scale on a global basis. The fully-embedded in-house recruitment solution combines talent expertise with data-driven processes to scale teams better and faster.

Find out more at https://www.immersivehiring.com.