Courtenay HR

Building a Pipeline of Talent

Even in these uncertain times, resourcing, particularly for key roles within an organisation is an issue for nearly every major employer in the City. Over the last 2 years many have considered the recruitment supply chain an opportunity to drive efficiencies through the process.

Our research shows that lots of activity has taken place in the pursuit of ‘world class resourcing’ including the structuring of preferred supplier arrangements (PSL). But whilst these quite readily delivered up front cost savings, those organisations that recruit talent to a standard, rather than a cost, were seeing these standards slip, both in the quality of the available talent and the level of service provided by those preferred suppliers. This also produced a further undesirable effect, which was to reduce the perception of quality and professionalism of the client organisation in the eyes of potential new recruits.

We found that the potential benefits of PSL type initiatives were not being realised; nothing had really changed. Instead, the existing recourcing practices were simply being encased in a more formal, perhaps rigid framework, across a smaller number of suppliers for a perceived reduction in costs. Despite all the efforts of those involved in the preferred supplier process, the fundamentals – lead times for filling assignments, filtering out the best people - remained unchanged. Time and time again, the same word would come up when discussing this issue with these organisations - pipeline. The right people were never available when they were needed, consequently the recruitment process continued to be disruptive to business operations.

So how can organisations solve the problem of developing pipeline – is it really that difficult to achieve? The answer of course is no. How should you go about building your own talent pool?

First and foremost, start talking to more people!

There are hundreds of talented people passing through your hands every week, in the form of speculative CV’s and recommendations. Most organisations don’t follow these up, and only rarely keep them for future reference. When they do keep them, they usually find their way into some form of ‘Gold’ file – lets face it we have all had them – but there they languish forgotten and neglected.

This is obviously a waste of a contact, especially if they are not followed up. But why does this happen? In a recent client survey we found that many organisations were ‘cautious’ or ‘reluctant’ to follow up with these potential stars when there was no official opening to offer them. They were nervous about starting a dialogue that would not result in a job offer and, ultimately, misleading the job seeker. Interestingly, they were also not keen on having a dialogue with any of their recruitment suppliers regarding any speculative candidates they had put forward for fear of being ‘pushed’ into doing something – says a lot about the suppliers!

The truth is, when it comes to the candidates viewpoint, these fears are unfounded. When conducting candidate research we had a very positive response to the notion of introducing them to clients, regardless of any immediate need. There was a genuine interest in starting and maintaining a dialogue, even if it may take months or years to come to fruition. Even the possibility that it would lead to nothing would not put them off.

Initiating and maintaining this dialogue has a number of advantages for the recruiting organisation:

• They get to know you and you get to know them – both sides get a chance to understand the potential commitment more deeply and to decide, ultimately, if getting together would be the right move.
• Recruitment lead times can be shortened – Even a saving of a few days in a recruitment process can pay huge dividends, particularly where the role is mission critical.
• Reduced costs – having a pipeline of potential candidates that are well known to you can reduce the cost per hire substantially.

So Where to start? Fundamentally, it’s all about the resources you have but you don’t need to have a large team or resourcing budget to get results, simply cut your cloth accordingly. If resources are limited, start by focussing on key roles only; don’t attempt to keep ‘all’ the gold file types. Narrow it down to the absolute priorities, then either start the dialogue yourself or enlist the help of your suppliers.

If you want to start dong it yourself, then technology can play a big part. But again you don’t have to be rich in this area to make significant gains. If you have an HR information system it may hold functionality that you could use. Better, a dedicated recruitment product. Better still, an organisation wide ERP system that provides HR/resourcing elements. Even if you do have this level of technology its possible that you are not using it to its best advantages but you will certainly have a head start on those that don’t.

For those that do not have such luxuries, or the resources to manage them you can still achieve a great deal with the software that probably already resides on your desktop. Keeping in touch with potential candidates demands a certain level of contact management and for most people, Microsoft Outlook™ will provide all the functionality you will need. It may sound basic, but the contact management part of Outlook provides everything you need:

• Capture of key contact details
• Ability to add attachments – CV’s etc
• Contact record – all conversations and email correspondence is stored automatically and easily
• Ability to categorise candidates
• Contact management – prompting that all important next contact call/corporate update email

The list goes on. Obviously if you are managing tens of thousands of candidate records this is not for you, but it will easily cope with records that number hundreds.

If you cant or don’t want to do all this yourself, enlist help from your suppliers. Talk to them and see if they are prepared to ‘unbundle’ their services so that you can start to manage contacts yourself. Most recruitment organisations worth their salt should be able to provide you with identification and research services that will enable you to target candidates you want to begin a dialogue with. They may also offer to manage a pool of candidates for you on their own systems, something to consider if your own technology or resources are stretched. You should also ask if they would be prepared to create and run networking events, managed by them, where you can begin to make those valuable connections.

You may find, of course, that some suppliers might not be too forthcoming, as they might see this ‘DIY’ approach as a threat and an encroachment on their ‘patch’. If you encounter this kind of resistance then our advice is to shop around. You should be able to identify a number of suppliers who would be prepared to unbundle their services for you and to be creative about transaction pricing.

The recruitment market is changing; we can all see that and those that don’t adjust will flounder in the future. Getting in touch with people early gives both sides a chance to look a little deeper and determine if it really would be a marriage made in heaven, and the potential benefits to the business of getting it right can be substantial. As an inhouse resourcing or HR professional, you may not have considered yourself to be a recruiter – but maybe its time you got on the phone and made contact. Remember – its good to talk!