How to stop cyclical recruitment processes and get proactive about talent

I’ve run an inclu­sive recruit­ment and exec­u­tive search busi­ness and a diver­si­ty, inclu­sion and equi­ty con­sul­tan­cy prac­tice for over 14 years. Two ques­tions come up again and again. One: where can we source diverse tal­ent? And two: how do we increase our recruit­ment of diverse tal­ent?

After estab­lish­ing what exact­ly is meant by ‘diverse tal­ent’ (usu­al­ly refer­ring to those indi­vid­u­als whose iden­ti­ty falls under the Equal­i­ty Act’s pro­tect­ed char­ac­ter­is­tics), I begin to point out the obvi­ous: there is a war on tal­ent. Every com­pa­ny wants the best peo­ple. Organ­i­sa­tions are becom­ing savvi­er and more alive because they must work hard to entice that tal­ent. The busi­ness­es that have grasped this con­cept are leav­ing their com­peti­tors behind.

The tal­ent mar­ket­place is burst­ing with excep­tion­al pro­fes­sion­als from var­i­ous back­grounds who are all for the tak­ing. The chal­lenge is not whether you are fast enough; it’s whether you are prepar­ing enough.

An ongoing challenge

My school­teacher’s advice to me dur­ing revi­sion peri­ods and ahead of loom­ing course­work dead­lines still holds true: “Fail to pre­pare and you will be prepar­ing to fail.” The same applies to attract­ing and recruit­ing tal­ent. If you don’t pre­pare your place of work to respond proac­tive­ly and effec­tive­ly to attri­tion, you will lose your oppor­tu­ni­ty to find the very best peo­ple to grow and build your busi­ness. 

Unless you are a par­tic­u­lar­ly lucky organ­i­sa­tion – or an incred­i­bly unique one – your need to source tal­ent will be an ongo­ing activ­i­ty through­out the year. Under­stand­ing this means hold­ing your­self account­able for search­ing open­ly, proac­tive­ly, and con­sis­tent­ly to source and engage with tal­ent from a vari­ety of back­grounds.

You may be think­ing: “Yes, Jo, we know all this.” Yet here we are. Organ­i­sa­tions such as my con­sul­tan­cy are in con­stant demand to help busi­ness­es, small and large, find the best tal­ent, diverse tal­ent, tal­ent that organ­i­sa­tions find hard to source. 

I can’t promise to solve all your cycli­cal recruit­ment issues in one col­umn, not least because I’d need to dive deep into your peo­ple strat­e­gy to under­stand your spe­cif­ic needs. But I can cer­tain­ly steer you on the right path with prac­ti­cal and anec­do­tal tips from a pas­sion­ate, proac­tive, con­sis­tent tal­ent find­er.

Seeking the best must be an ongoing exercise

First: have a peo­ple strat­e­gy con­tributed to by all the stake­hold­ers rel­e­vant to your recruit­ment process and estab­lish your col­lec­tive attrac­tion and recruit­ment val­ues.

A focus on proac­tiv­i­ty and con­sis­ten­cy must be at the heart of this strat­e­gy. Only by com­mit­ting to look con­stant­ly for the best will you remain steps ahead of your com­peti­tors. 

There is no harm in con­stant­ly mar­ket-map­ping for crit­i­cal roles in your organ­i­sa­tion. Try to estab­lish who is in your sec­tor and who is on their way to being the best in your indus­try; this allows you to respond rapid­ly to exist­ing tal­ent and to estab­lish a pipeline of tal­ent for future roles. 

Set your terms and get everyone on the same page

Next, your team must answer crit­i­cal ques­tions. Do you prac­tice acces­si­bil­i­ty, equi­ty, and inclu­sion in your attrac­tion and sourc­ing approach­es? What do these terms mean to you and your exist­ing peo­ple? Is there a con­sis­ten­cy in the process and val­ue of these terms – and how do you know? 

Once clear def­i­n­i­tions of these terms are estab­lished, and effec­tive stake­hold­er man­age­ment has ensured that each influ­encer knows why it mat­ters to the oth­ers, we’re one step clos­er to cre­at­ing a strat­e­gy that every­one feels invest­ed in and can see the val­ue in deliv­er­ing.

Where to start looking for diverse talent

Then the deep work can begin. Be pre­pared to look in places you would­n’t typ­i­cal­ly con­sid­er. Ask your­self: “If I was apply­ing for my dream job, and had­n’t found one yet, what might I do?” 

For me, it might be one or more of the fol­low­ing things:

• Join an inter­est group on social media which could cre­ate net­work­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties

• Fol­low social media accounts and thought lead­ers who share oppor­tu­ni­ties or have deep exper­tise in the sub­ject mat­ter

• Attend career-relat­ed events. I don’t mean careers fairs, I mean dis­cus­sions on lead­er­ship or career pro­gres­sion, for exam­ple

• Estab­lish what organ­i­sa­tions I might engage with for their sec­tor-spe­cif­ic webi­na­rs and free dis­cus­sions with indus­try peers

• Explore whether there are any organ­i­sa­tions – char­i­ta­ble or oth­er­wise – that exist to sup­port tal­ent with their inequity

Once you iden­ti­fy these organ­i­sa­tions or spaces, become strate­gic about cre­at­ing mean­ing­ful and mutu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial rela­tion­ships with them. They will be able to vouch for your exact val­ue of diver­si­ty and pro­vide you with a mutu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial way to plug into their tal­ent pools. 

The above approach will take time; build­ing trust­ing rela­tion­ships and estab­lish­ing your tal­ent pools does. 

Sourc­ing tal­ent dif­fer­ent to your exist­ing pro­file also requires you to recog­nise you are sourc­ing sought skill, not mere­ly can­di­dates who are ‘dis­ad­van­taged’. You have to recruit this tal­ent based on the same val­ues you use for oth­er, ‘tra­di­tion­al’ can­di­dates

Getting the word out 

Addi­tion­al­ly, it always sur­pris­es me how few CEOs, senior lead­ers or those seen as influ­encers in their sec­tor share the open job oppor­tu­ni­ties with­in their organ­i­sa­tion on their own pro­fes­sion­al social media plat­forms.

Can your col­leagues pro­mote your job, par­tic­u­lar­ly those in the roles named above? I’m sure they would­n’t be short of cold calls and con­nec­tion requests from prospec­tive tal­ent.

Think­ing in this way can also inspire you when it comes to Google search terms. The say­ing “Google is your friend” will be extreme­ly help­ful at this stage. Using clever and spe­cif­ic search words will pull up a vast num­ber of organ­i­sa­tions plugged into tal­ent pools at all stages in their career. Again, invest in under­stand­ing who their tal­ent is and where they would fit into your busi­ness. 

When you do this lev­el of research as a start­ing point, you can become proac­tive about cre­at­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties to meet tal­ent through­out the year, encour­age spec­u­la­tive and infor­mal chats with them, and know who to reach out to when that inevitable role appears. 

Meet­ing tal­ent does­n’t have to be a cof­fee. It could be invit­ing indi­vid­u­als to a lunch and learn, an inter­nal event or a talk by a senior leader in your busi­ness. Start to ask poten­tial new hires to come and get to know your busi­ness to show that you are seri­ous about hir­ing them. Good news trav­els fast, too, and your best pro­mo­tion is word of mouth, so this approach has mul­ti­ple ben­e­fits. 

Crucial questions for your recruiters

Final­ly: put your search firms to the test. Many recruit­ment agen­cies have sud­den­ly become incred­i­bly pas­sion­ate about diver­si­ty and inclu­sion. They have mas­tered cre­at­ing shop win­dows which present the com­pelling and con­vinc­ing sto­ry that they are com­mit­ted to inclu­sive hir­ing. In real­i­ty, some are incred­i­bly hard-work­ing and proac­tive tal­ent find­ers. Oth­ers are not.

So, when brief­ing a recruiter, ask them on the spot to out­line how they are build­ing diver­si­ty into their tal­ent pool? How do they plan on reach­ing diverse tal­ent? Who were the last five or so peo­ple placed into work and what were their back­grounds? Do they have the names of any indi­vid­u­als that come to mind imme­di­ate­ly? We would ask for this kind of detail for so many oth­er things in our life – we should apply it here, too. 

The tal­ent mar­ket­place is burst­ing with excep­tion­al pro­fes­sion­als from var­i­ous back­grounds. The chal­lenge is not whether you are fast enough; it’s whether you are prepar­ing enough

Why not go a step fur­ther and ask the tal­ent you are organ­i­cal­ly attract­ing about the search firms they hear from, the recruiters they use and why, and the job boards they typ­i­cal­ly use? Don’t be afraid to ask col­leagues these ques­tions. Again, word of mouth is as valu­able for you as the tal­ent.

Avoid falling into the trap of using job boards that appear to be for diverse tal­ent. Again, work is required by you. Who uses the web­site? Will adver­tis­ing your role on that web­site get your oppor­tu­ni­ties seen by the broad range of tal­ent you want to engage with? There are suc­cess­ful job boards out there which specif­i­cal­ly tar­get diverse tal­ent, and they do so very well. Make sure you know the dif­fer­ence and don’t assume that diverse tal­ent will only use those that mar­ket them­selves as diver­si­ty job boards. 

Don’t be afraid to include a com­mu­ni­ca­tions plan in your strat­e­gy: all of these activ­i­ties take time. They require you to try as many unique recruit­ment pipeline oppor­tu­ni­ties as pos­si­ble with as wide a range of tal­ent pools. It might not be an instant result, but how great would it be if you were ahead of the com­pe­ti­tion when a vacan­cy comes up, because you were inten­tion­al, con­sis­tent and proac­tive?

Want to be ahead of the com­pe­ti­tion? Stay com­mit­ted, be relent­less in pur­su­ing your peo­ple’s ambi­tions, go that lit­tle bit fur­ther, and work that lit­tle bit smarter.

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