Many organizations have been faced with halting hiring plans and furloughing employees. However, as stated in a recent Harvard Business Review article, now is an unprecedented opportunity to hire great talent. “The pool of available talent is suddenly both changing and expanding, and visionary leaders can make the most of it, preparing the ground for post-recovery crisis recovery and growth.” Harvard Business Review, May 1 2020 “Now Is an Unprecedented Opportunity to Hire Great Talent ”
An External Talent Mapping and Talent Pipelining process can ensure that your organization engages top level talent to gain a competitive advantage. However, many organizations struggle with the bandwidth required for this critical portion of the talent search process. In turn, organizations can significantly reduce internal costs and increase their talent sourcing effectiveness by leveraging a recruiting partner for this critical and time-consuming process.
Talent Sourcing Success Story
Not too long ago, before this COVID disruption, MICA Consulting Group partnered with a global Client that faced two specific hiring challenges across its North American operations:
The first was identifying a Senior Executive for its Leadership Team.
The second was finding multiple Mid- and Senior-Level Managers across various disciplines (Design, UX, Content, Marketing Operations).
The company was fantastic at interviewing, evaluating and on-boarding talent, but it just didn’t have the bandwidth for extensive candidate mapping and pipelining.
MICA addressed both critical hiring needs:
For the Senior Executive, MICA provided senior candidate mapping and pipelining, and delivered a prescreened group of 10 candidates meeting the organization’s criteria. The Client then managed the detailed interview process with these candidates.
For the Mid- / Senior-Level Managers, MICA conducted candidate mapping, resulting in a robust list of highly qualified applicants for each role. Each applicant met the job description, required years of experience, and skill set. The Client then managed the interviews through to offer.
External Talent Mapping and Talent Pipelining
While many organizations also leverage recruiters for shortlisting talent, interviewing, and offer negotiations, the first two steps in the process can be incredibly time consuming but are critical to reaching a larger and more qualified talent pool. These steps are critical to filling the top of the talent pipeline that meet the specific job specifications.
External Talent Mapping is an important complement to an organization’s internal talent mapping process and starts with a partnership between the Hiring Manager and the Recruiter. The objective is to build a broad pool of prospective candidates based on specified attributes and skill set parameters, such as years of experience, seniority, job titles, education, and category / industry experience. The recruiter then establishes a list of 80-90 candidates meeting the defined criteria. This strategic consulting function adds significant value by qualifying the job description and identifying unique parallel industry opportunities.
Talent Pipelining is the process of contacting all 80-90 candidates, interviewing and shortlisting. This pre-screening process ensures that all candidates align with both the soft and hard skills required for the position. This shortlist of candidates is then delivered to the Hiring Manager to review, input and next steps. Deeply understanding behavioral interviewing techniques, and the client’s industry, ensure that the candidates meet both the client’s skill requirements and cultural fit.
Ensuring your recruiting team are experts in your specific industry will increase the impact of these services. As a team of former marketers, the MICA team specializes in identifying top marketing talent, across all specialties.
Recruiting Firms are Critical in this Process
There are three main reasons why recruiting firms are your best bet for Talent Mapping and Pipelining:
Recruiters have access to the tools and resources that Hiring Managers do not have. This includes tools like LinkedIn Recruiter and a Recruiting Firm’s internal talent database and network.
Recruiters eliminate the time, paperwork and admin that the hiring process takes. Recruiters are specialized in this wide reach search process and can dramatically decrease an organizations time and financial investment in this process.
Recruiters identify REAL candidates that meet the organization’s criteria. A Hiring Manager can then interview pre-screened candidates, who meet the criteria, and focus their time and effort on determining which candidate is the best match for the job and the company culture.
Hiring a recruiter for External Talent Mapping and Talent Pipelining will also provide significant cost savings to traditional recruiting fees. This increases the efficiency of your talent sourcing costs, and maximizes the effectiveness of your internal team.
As you look at your hiring needs, contact your recruiting partner to discuss your strategy, and how External Talent Mapping and Talent Pipelining can help your organization identify the best talent for your long-term growth.
MICA Consulting Group is a recruiting and consulting firm focused on connecting people in Marketing, Interactive, Business Development, Creative and Advertising. Our industry knowledge and professional matchmaking experience allows us to take a consultative approach to put the correct people in place to build your business.
We offer three key services: Executive Search, Contained Search and Contingent Search. Also ask us about our External Talent Mapping and Talent Pipelining services.
Comments