WHY DRIVE A DIGITAL TALENT ATTRACTION AND ENGAGEMENT STRATEGY?
63% of recruiters claim that talent shortages is their biggest challenge and 72% of recruiting leaders believe that employer branding is vital yet only 15% are doing it effectively.
Data shows that at least 51% of employed people are looking for better career opportunities but only 8% who are actively looking, actually apply for a position advertised on company’s career pages. There is a clear disconnect and something has to change!
Whilst talent shortages are a reality in some instances, perhaps the issue isn’t a shortage, but rather an organisations ability to be able to attract talent consistently.
Studies have shown that companies that adopt a robust talent engagement strategy have the following results:
- 28% decrease in organizational turnover
- 50% decrease in cost-per-hire
- 2 x faster time to hire ratio.
- 38% increase in acceptance rates
- 70% increase in quality of hire
Further to this, a recent LinkedIn survey found that 70% of hiring firms believe that a hybrid workforce will become normalized, and a virtual or digital hiring process will also become increasingly standard due to the pandemic and there is no going back to the old ways. One of the biggest positive outcomes for hiring from the pandemic, is that it has forced organizations to streamline their processes, improve diversity hiring and hire better talent using digital platforms that reach the right talent.
Although the forecast for the future workplace will be less remote than originally thought, the way in which talent wants to be engaged will not be changing.
A definition of talent attraction and engagement is “the process of attracting the right people to your organisation and getting potential candidates to fully engage and connect with your company’s values, goals, and principles for future opportunities.”
Potential employees have changed the way they interact with potential employers, you need to ensure your talent acquisition tactics change too. Automation and digital engagement are going to be the key success drivers for any organization hiring strategy – whether you do it internally or outsource.
Don’t forget about your current employees
Knowing that only 36% of employees feel engaged at work should trigger some panic in your recruiting mind. This means that at any time, almost 70% of your employees are considering moving to another company, which will definitely impact any talent acquisition planning. The best way to improve on this is robust and engaging internal communications. With 85% of employees feeling most motivated when internal communications are effective and they feel included, there is no doubt that including them in your talent attraction and engagement is critical.
Why you want to go digital:
Applicants on average spend 3-4 hours submitting an application for a position, and although many leaders believe this ‘weeds out’ the great from the average, the opposite is actually true. The best talent has options, they do not need to spend hours completing a process which has an 89% drop off rate. So why continue to engage them that way?
Millennials have become the dominant demographic in workplace since 2015, and 80% of them are looking to company culture before accepting an offer. To find out about your culture, they are trolling social media of not only your company pages, but also the over 50% employees posting about their companies. Potential employees are three times more likely to believe a current employee over anyone else, about your company and what it is like to work there. And a scary statistic is that 72% of applicants who have a negative experience share it with the world – so you better get it right.
Employee comment on indeed.com regarding Old Mutual
Considering that it takes at least 8 brand touchpoints to affect a consumer, or in this case, an applicant’s decision, we structure our programs in such a way as to engage the talent you are looking for and keep them engaged long after they are an employee – ensuring they stay optimistic, inspired, connected and tenured.
With most organisations having an ATS, the data on your talent is literally at your fingertips and by interrogating this big data, you have the ability to reach specific talent directly using digital recruiting to enhance your process.
Right now, in your hands is a database full of untapped potential waiting to be mined. You have candidates who have already engaged and are keen to work for you, but their information is sitting in a hole on the web, and no one is connecting and engaging them. There are so many lost opportunities here. You need to sort, filter, and engage the candidates already on your system – creating talent pools of people that fit what you are looking for – and are already keen to work for you.
Don’t forget your HR System, a database of all your regrettable losses, right there. Imagine engaging a pool of talent you wish you managed to retain, building relationships, and creating an opportunity for you to re-engage them for new roles that come up. Chances of winning them over, are dramatically increased when you engage from a relationship point of view.
Being able to use your current data and structure, implementing a modified and realistic digital recruitment strategy will lead you to:
- Increased talent engagement.
- The talent you want comes to you.
- A blow-your-hair-back candidate experience.
- Decreased time-to-hire.
- Easier and more efficient work process with automation.
Going digital means your life as a talent magnet/recruiter for your business gets easier. You are able to automate processes and instead of spending hours screening candidates that don’t fit what you need, the talent will be coming to you. Your productivity increases and so does your quality – you will be able to get the right talent in, quicker and with a better experience, increasing not only your job satisfaction but also providing you with the opportunity to deliver to your internal stakeholders in a way that blows their minds.
Why Talent Brand?
COVID-19 has turbocharged the speed of change, and this has left many employers trying to catch up. There is a need to change the way in which you work and the way you find the people who will work for you.
The skills you will need to hire for are changing. With 92% of leaders surveyed by the Wall Street Journal, saying that soft skills are more important than technical skills in the new workplace, you need to change the way you hire – as the traditional method does not account for that requirement until you are in interview or assessment stage. This is a loss of time and money; no company can afford.
Let’s not forget that the workplace of tomorrow requires a different skills set now. Defining what those are, and how to incorporate them into your business is crucial for long term success. This means you need to look at talent differently.
Here at Talent Brand, we view people as a source of energy. Working alongside companies that are invested in their people journey, we connect them to talent in a meaningful and deliberate way, creating inspirational digital hiring and engagement strategies to transform the candidates, employees and employer experience.
In our drive to impact organisational culture and energising talent, we are much more than just an outsourced service provider, rather, we become your partner, driving your goals and matching your purpose. We believe in family values and knowing how the workplace impacts families Talent Brand strives to be a positive influence connecting talent with career opportunities and companies that match their ethos and values, making it possible for them to live their best life, while contributing to the business’ success.. All the while, we help companies to engage their current workforce in a profound and liberating way, bringing them into the future of work with passion and ease.
Our business started with a passion for people and finding a better way to ensure that companies and candidates find each other. We have mastered this process and drive a full-service project into our clients. Understanding the role and the success factors for that role, we are able to find the right person with the right knowledge and experiences, to not only fill the position, but to also be engaged and energised in the role. Our vacancy to hire projects run like clockwork ensuring the best candidate experience and keeping our clients happy and informed.
Our team is driven, passionate and a little wacky, each bringing a new perspective and contributing in a way that changes the world around them.
TALENT ATTRACTION AND TALENT ENGAGEMENT PROGRAMS
There are several components to a Talent Attraction Program (TAP) and a Talent Engagement Program (TEP) and these are detailed below.
Talent Attraction Program (TAP)
CURRENT TALENT LANDSCAPE
Understanding your current talent landscape, building out your necessary pipelines from a scarce, critical or succession planning point of view, is the first critical step. Here, we sit with your HR team and various business heads, to unpack your recruiting landscape, challenges and needs. Defining this lets us know what our immediate, medium- and long-term focus will be, and lets us set the programs up accordingly.
EMPLOYER BRANDING
This is the next step in the process. Here we focus on your company’s reputation as a place to work – looking at your employer brand – not your consumer one. Doing research and social media audits, we derive what people, including former or current employees, have to say about working with you. Engagement for your employer brand takes place over many touchpoints from application process through to being employed. And each step of the way, candidates are sharing their experiences.
This, always on, element identifies the type of candidate you are looking, not from only a skills requirement perspective, but also from an ethos and behaviour point of view. Skills retention is another HR mandate this element attends to, through also engaging employees you have to ensure culture and behaviour match your company ethos and value system.
A deep dive into your current culture and brand perception enables Talent Brand to develop an employer persona which will then form the basis for DTS communication tone, style and platform selection.
We outline where we would find these candidates, and what steps we will be taking to attract them. We create messaging for internal communications to engage and encourage your current employees in a way that drives productivity and retention.
CAREERS PAGE
This may seem like a simple step, and an obvious one, however, many companies actually do not have sufficient career pages to move candidates from potential applicants, through to applied applicants. Having an up-to-date, robust and user-friendly careers page is critical. Aligned with the latest expectations from search engines, this mobile-friendly experience should be simple, easy, and engagement aligned to the company brand.
Guided by not only the Company persona, industry trend and talent expectations, Talent Brand will conduct an audit of this page to understand where its optimizations can be executed.
Potential candidates should be able to get information on what it is like to work at your company, meet some potential colleagues and see all opportunities available. The process to apply should be straightforward and uncomplicated. Automation and gamification should be included at every stage possible.
Current employees are encouraged to be a part of the content for this page, telling their stories and driving similar profiles to the page. There can also be a scarce or critical skills focus to the pages, depending on your needs, to help in building a pool of talent you most require.
SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGNS
Working with marketing, we define and create the correct messaging platform to attract the specific targeted talent, creating interest and drive engagement to your various platforms. As most messaging has a consumer focus, this messaging speaks directly to the persona of the potential employees you are looking to hire. We would also focus on where the candidates for your current critical or scarce skills are, engaging them into a talent pool ready to hire.
Insights and reporting generated from these initiatives allow for us to adjust communication messaging, platform usage and frequency to really refine communication to secure the correct (or corrective) action is taken.
Here we also engage your current employees, encouraging them to share and participate in conversation with you and others, driving proper personal engagement into the market.
EMAIL MARKETING CAMPAIGNS
In this world, where data is at our fingertips, people are more open to information, but time is everything, audiences want this [relevant] information to be provided as quickly and as effectively as possible.
Although running campaigns to engage the talent you currently have on your database is an effortless way to keep potential talent engaged, doing so should be strategized, tailored and reliable. Talent Brand will assist in ensuring that all communication introduces the opportunity to increase your referral ratio, even from candidates who do not fit your employer persona. After all, people know other people.
Most companies have a database of candidates who have applied for positions advertised or have been referred. Why not run a clean-up campaign, gathering information and sorting through your current data to see if any of the talent matches what you are looking for? We can do this for you or assist your team to set it up.
EVENTS (VIRTUAL)
Various events can be held to attract talent to your brand, as well as showcasing your employer persona. Keeping current and potential employees involved in your company activities and news is a must. Here your employees get a chance to showcase what they do, who they are and why they stay.
These events can be:
- Speed interviewing (speed dating – also virtual if needed)
- Virtual office tours
- Virtual interviews with various current employees
- Meet the leadership.
- Meet the recruiting team.
- Meet the ‘critical/scarce role’.
- SME talks (think TED talks but internal)
- Speed coffees
ENGAGEMENT VIDEOS
This is where we get creative with engagement on a new level. Creating fun and exciting videos sharing some information about your business, in a different way. These videos can be defining what career opportunities are available, the application process, who you are and what you do, what you stand for, ways you are changing the world or your industry, and role specific videos such as “A Day in the life of a [role]”.
These get shared on various platforms increasing your engagement and driving people towards your business.
We can also create videos for your current employees for training, policies and procedures as well as legislative changes e.g. (POPIA) and onboarding to orientate new employees into your culture and way of doing things.
Talent Engagement Programs (TEP)
- Vacancy-to-hire Projects
We advertise to and engage the market to gather applications for the role you are looking to fill immediately. We follow a stringent process to ensure only the best talent, right for the role and for your business, get presented at shortlist for your selection. We guide and drive the process including the feedback loop, keeping all applicants engaged to ensure a wonderful candidate experience. - Talent Community Building
Creating a pool of potential talent for your business is a proactive step to ensuring you know what talent is in the market and which talent fits what you are looking for. Using our understanding of your business, we use a relationship-centric process to find the passive talent who would be suitable for your current and future recruiting needs. We can focus on your critical or scarce skills or have a succession planning focus. Engaging the talent and building relationships with them ensure we can decrease the time to hire when the roles you have pipelines for, become available. This solution in combination with our digital talent attraction campaigns significantly impact the availability of talent for when roles become available. - Talent Research & Mapping
Understanding what the current market looks like, is critical when making decisions about whether to buy or build. Our team, using desktop research, can give you an understanding of the external market from various viewpoints and benchmark this talent- Demographics such as gender, race, and location
- Qualifications
- Current companies
- Years’ experience
We can tailor-make the report to show what you are looking for, and add items such as salary, however this does increase the time to complete the report.
By completing the above programs, you can have a robust and complete understanding of your market, who you are looking for and a way to engage them in a meaningful way. The purpose of these campaigns is to drive engagement with the right talent, highlighting why they need to work for you, and building a relationship that will be lasting and beneficial for you both.
The goal is to have the talent engaged and keen to join the minute the need arises. Talent Brand wants to partner with you, be your trusted advisor, inspiring passion in your engagements and creating a memorable experience for all involved.