Talent Pipeline Playbook_Jan 2018 - Candidate.ID

Talent Pipeline Playbook 2018 Adam Gordon CEO, Candidate.ID linkedin.com/in/adamwgordon @Adam_W_Gordon

Praise for the Talent Pipeline Playbook "This is a must read for any forward thinking in-house recruiter - large or small company. The Candidate.ID® Talent Pipeline Playbook, superbly written by Adam Gordon." Steve Ward, The Talent Attraction Show "I don’t know what to compliment first – the content or the quality of the writing! What a delight to find both in the same document. Well done." Maury Hanigan, CEO, SparcStart "Splendid read. On point." Chris Raw, Candidate Experience Manager, Zalando "Put very simply the darn best recipe/playbook for candidate engagement content creation and management out there at the moment." "BOY this is good stuff. Really impressive and 30 point plan is pure gold dust." "Seriously impressive Mr Gordon and Co. You really have serious substance behind what you advocate." Be an early member of the world’s first talent pipeline community. https://www.facebook.com/groups/1969574746618339/

I love talent pipelines. They solve so many problems for HR and talent acquisition teams. Talent pipelining has been one of the top priorities for talent acquisition leaders for the last three years according to The FIRM’s Annual Membership Survey. http://www.thefirm-network.com/annual-membership-survey-results-20167/ The reason it remains a priority is because almost no organisations know how to create sustainable talent pipelines. That’s why I’ve created this playbook. Look out for some guru advice from my Candidate.ID cofounder, Scot McRae, one of the world’s leading authorities on demand generation (talent pipelining by another name)..

Who Should Create Talent Pipelines?

Simon Lancaster is Global Head of Resourcing at BP. One of his core objectives is "to develop high quality, diverse talent pipelines."

Employers with evergreen hiring requirements in highly competitive markets. Examples include almost every international employer. PwC are constantly recruiting tax experts; as are BDO, Deloitte, EY, Grant Thornton and KPMG. PepsiCo are constantly recruiting brand and sales pros; as are Coca-Cola, Danone, Mondelez and Nestle. HSBC can’t get enough of recruiting risk and compliance people. As for most technology companies, the door’s open to every engineer scoring a 7 and above. You get my drift..

Be an early member of the world’s first talent pipeline community. https://www.facebook.com/groups/1969574746618339/

Important Concepts A Pipeline Stolen from the sales and marketing world, the concept of a pipeline allows you to accurately forecast demand. In the context of talent, demand is candidate-led. Candidates choose employers and not the other way around. So it’s not about the demand you have for candidates. It’s about the demand they have (or otherwise) for your jobs. Think of them as consumers of houses, cars, holidays and other considered purchases. They go through the same cognitive decision-making process when choosing these as they do when looking at career opportunities. A talent pipeline allows you to determine propensity for individual candidates to move. When you have this information you are able to cut time-to-shortlist (and by default, cost-to-shortlist). When you have this information you are also able to nurture each person with appropriate, personalised content which will inspire them. Many people talk about talent pipelines when they really just mean a talent pool. It’s not the same thing and my glossary in the next section will explain why. Direct Sourcing Over the last 10 years,direct sourcing appears to have become the aspirational way to go about hiring as employers strive to reduce cost-per-hire. However, in most cases I’ve seen, direct sourcing isn’t much less expensive than other traditional channels of recruiting; advertising or working with staffing agencies.


Here’s why; the most expensive component of recruiting is human time. In-house talent acquisition teams may have all the skills and tools to find a long-list for almost all vacancies but they are almost always blind to which people they have found are in the market and which are not interested in a move. Because of that, recruiters need to approach every potential candidate to ask them individually. It means every vacancy needs a new search from scratch. Tell me this isn’t expensive? Here’s a pretty comprehensive blog which will help you establish the things you need to consider when measuring cost-per-hire: http://quarsh.com/blog/our-opinion/the-true-cost-of-recruitment/ Abundance of Information When I started in recruiting in 1999, candidates could only really find out basic information about an employer or opportunity before talking to a recruiter.

"In an interview with Recruitment Grapevine, James Purvis, Head of Talent Acquisition at CERN explained that a key aspect of his role was putting in place a long term strategy for talent pipelines to address future needs."


Now however, they can become aware of an employer and opportunity, educate themselves through your careers site and social media and consider more deeply by reviewing sites like LinkedIn, Glassdoor, The Muse and more.

Then and only then do they need to talk to a recruiter. What does that mean? Ironically, it’s possible to find almost everyone you want to hire online but because of that, prospective candidates are approached regularly and have become much more aware of their value. The 8s, 9s and 10s simply don’t need to talk to you unless you have something very special for them. The 5s, 6s and 7s know they have multiple opportunities and will only respond to you when they are ready. Flight of the Bumblebee Although we know that many potential candidates come through the awareness / education / consideration / application process in that order we also know that, like a bumblebee’s, most candidate journeys are not linear. People are more distracted and disrupted than ever because of the explosion of communication channels and methods organisations can now adopt to try to get their attention. Be an early member of the world’s first talent pipeline community. https://www.facebook.com/groups/1969574746618339/

But if we agree that once a potential candidate starts to become interested in looking for new opportunities and that they will now do far more self-directed research than in the past, before contacting a recruiter, we must be able to help them on their journey.

You should bring every potential candidate into your talent pool and create a comprehensive suite of content, produced in multiple formats and which satisfies the needs of those at the awareness, education, consideration and application phases. If you create ‘something for everyone’, you will touch the optimum number of potential candidates. When they read your blog, watch your video, scan that infographic, they will generate goodwill towards your organisation for being so useful. And when you know who is at which stage, when they prefer to recieve content and what formats they’d rather consume, that insight is gold dust. Be an early member of the world’s first talent pipeline community. https://www.facebook.com/groups/1969574746618339/

An example content nurturing map follows in this playbook. Communication channels you might now use include email, instant messaging, social media, SMS (yes, really this is surprisingly effective) and telephone for example. Don’t keep using the same channel which doesn’t produce results over and over. Try different channels, subject headings and timings. Keep testing and remember, those with the most flexible communication skills will achieve the most influence. Spear Fishing


I don’t need to add a lot to that except to explain, to become a spear fisher, you really need to understand deep insights into potential candidates. Most people in your talent pool aren’t ready for a hiring conversation but when you know who are coming into the consideration phase, reach out to them; your response rate will be much higher. That’s spear fishing.

"In a Q&A with Osney HR, Ali Gilani, Global Head of Resourcing at ArcelorMittal cautioned on the importance of observing local elements when managing a global talent pipeline."


Glossary OK, so we’re all talking about the same things, here are my definitions of talent pools, talent communities and finally, the holy grail; talent pipelines. Talent Pool A database and no more. It might be an ATS, CRM, spreadsheets or the contents of your top drawer but regardless, it’s nothing more than a location. Please stop telling people to “join our talent pool.” That’s akin to saying “gicve us your data so we can spam you.” If you’re trying to inspire the very best people to interact with you, you need to be a bit more compelling than this. As @GoogleDave puts it “people can drown in a pool.” Fair enough to use this terminology inside your business but just bear in mind a ‘pool’ is a location and nothing more. Talent Community This is different. A community only exists when people are able to interact with each other and not just 1:1. This could be a MeetUp group for example (Comparethemarket runs an excellent MeetUp group for web developers in East Anglia for example). It might be a Facebook Group, a Slack Team or something similar. Be an early member of the world’s first talent pipeline community. https://www.facebook.com/groups/1969574746618339/

Since most of the people you want to join are not in the market looking for opportunities, the vital component to creating a powerful talent community is to make sure the subject isn’t ‘Careers at BAE Systems’. I’d prefer it was about ‘Engineering Excellence’ for example. You would go to these lengths when you’re in a highly competitive recruitment environment and need advantage. See our supplementary content for our 30-Point Plan for Powerful Virtual Communities. Talent Pipeline As far as I’m concerned this is the most exciting initiative you should be working on in 2017. A talent pipeline is a candidate nurturing programme. This is a beautiful tool which helps you convert strangers into people who would run over their granny to work for your organisation. People you want to hire will be at different stages within your pipeline. Some will only be aware of you as an employer. Others will be educating themselves. Some will be considering you as well as potentially other employers and some will be coming to a decision about whether or not to send you their CV.

"According to recruitment legend Andy Headworth, a talent pipeline allows hiring managers the chance to get more involved and engage with potential hires." I couldn't agree more.

Objective 1 is to turn your pipeline into an extensive, sustainable warm bench Objective 2 is to understand precisely what stage each candidate is at so you have an immediate shortlist for all vacancies


Building your Talent Pool If you don’t already have a candidate database you’ve got work to do. This is the foundation of your talent pipeline. Most large employers have a stale applicant tracking system that isn’t very useful for sourcing. There are two reasons why. First, because ATSs often don’t include much search functionality but also because even if you can find every Project Manager on your database, you don’t know who is active or otherwise so you need to make contact with all of them which is very time consuming. That said, your ATS data is likely to be the biggest head start you have on building a talent pool. Other ways of building your talent pool include: Advertising - include on all your job and employer brand collateral a form where people can opt in to keep informed about career-focused content Careers site - include pop-up forms where people can opt in to keep informed about career-focused content Direct sourcing - every time you approach a candidate who kindly responds with “not right now”, tell them you’d love to keep in touch and share talentfocused content which will help them improve their career prospects and ask them which email address to share this with Be an early member of the world’s first talent pipeline community. https://www.facebook.com/groups/1969574746618339/

Events - your hiring managers and talent development team are brimming with great content which will help potential candidates get ahead in their careers. Sign people up to on and offline events, share the knowledge and add all relevant attendees to your talent pool ExecConnections - map all your competitors using social media and other online sources, then connect your hiring managers directly online. Use hiring managers because according to LinkedIn, 80% of people are not in the market. They’re more likely to connect with and follow hiring managers with the same technical background than they will with you. Here’s our suggested process


Social media - use your careers Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter for example, to attract people to your talent pool. Ensure they understand the benefits they’ll get from allowing you to keep in touch Social Media for Sourcing Facebook for volume roles including call centre, manufacturing and retail for example LinkedIn for general ‘office’-type roles; what I call the ‘Michael Page’ level StackOverflow for software engineers Email Identifiers Various exist. We recommend Hunter: https://hunter.io/ Cross-Referencing Tools Again, various exist. I like https://www.lusha.co/ although Rapportive, 360Social, HireTual and others are also good Skills

"It's never too early to build your pipeline. Taking a tactical approach is Kelly Jones, Director of Talent Acquisition and University Relations at Cisco. She told CEBGlobal that the company is focusing on building a pipeline of diverse STEM students early on in their college careers, engaging with sophomores because seniors have already decided on their major."

Boolean Search: an algebra which allows you to filter search results online with more accuracy. The simplest operators are AND / OR / NOT. Take a look here to learn how to make use of this X-Ray Search: a way of looking deep into membership sites. N.B. you can find more candidates by X-Raying LinkedIn from Google than from within LinkedIn’s own advanced search Be an early member of the world’s first talent pipeline community. https://www.facebook.com/groups/1969574746618339/

Creating content You need to segment your content for four different groups of candidates as follows: Awareness - for those who are not currently in the market. Content suggestions might include Career advice Industry insights Employer news Networking events Hiring manager insights Subtle employer branding

Talent Acquisition leader roles need talent pipeliners:

Education - for those starting to explore potential new employers. Content suggestions might include Employer brand Talent brand Vision, mission and values Corporate social responsibility Hiring manager ‘hero’ videos Colleague success stories Career-focused events

FNZ's Head of Talent Acquisition for Asia needs to "develop our employer brand and talent pipeline." GroupM need their Group Talent Acquisition Director to "research and implement new strategies and technologies to build talent pipelines." JPMorgan's Head of Talent Acquisition should develop a comprehensive sourcing strategy to meet talent needs with qualified and diverse talent pipelines."


Consideration - for those who want to know what the coffee tastes like. It’s important you understand candidates’ specific areas of interest so you can introduce a more personalised approach by now. Suggestions include Focus on EVP Personalised career vision Meet the team Personalised video message Hiring manager social media connection Job description Application - roll the red carpet out at this stage. Suggestions include 1:1 telephone call 1:1 meeting No terrible application forms No making candidates jump through hoops

Talent Acquisition leader roles need talent pipeliners: Nike's Talent Acquisition Director will "know the top talent bench across a complexity of pipelines." Bristol-Myers Squibb's Global Head of R&D Talent Acquisition will "be accountable for global external talent pipelines."

My best advice when thinking about creating content for the top of the funnel is, both your general marketing team, talent development team and hiring managers are brimming with assets which were not created for the purposes of talent attraction but can absolutely be repurposed for this.


Your content plan So now you understand which content is going to work best for candidates at different stages of the pipe, print this flow-chart, TipEx out our content suggestions and once it’s dry, write in your own, as a quick reference and stick it to the wall by your desk.


Building a scoring model In order to understand where candidates are in the pipe, you need to score all of their interactions with your content. Allow your talent pipeline software to automatically accumulate a score for each potential candidate and then create your long-list in record time by filtering your candidates by engagement score. Candidate.ID for example (although to be honest there aren’t any other examples) will score candidates’ interactions with your emails, links, landing pages, careers site, videos, blogs, infographics, SMS, WhatsApp and social media channels. Every organisation’s scoring model is going to vary. For some, if a potential candidate reviews the job description, they are typically just browsing. For others, it will mean they are deep into their journey. The process of creating a scoring model is iterative and you’ll need to continually refine until you’ve achieved perfection. Here’s a sample scoring model we’d recommend employers use:



Once you know what type of content you are going to share for candidates at different stages of the pipe and you have determined what you think your scoring model should look like, next step is to get on with running your first pilot campaign. Here is an example of a 4-week drip campaign designed to nurture product managers. Use this as a template for your own.


Conclusion The five components you need to create a talent pipeline are: 1) A talent pool (database) 2) Content segmented for the different levels of the pipe 3) Talent pipeline software 4) Patience 5) Tenacity

About Author Adam Gordon is a recruitment marketing specialist who started his career at Hudson, HAVAS People and PwC before going on to found Social Media Search which is now Candidate.ID’s sourcing team. He has professional qualifications from the Chartered Institute of Marketing and American Board of NLP. Adam launched Candidate.ID with Scot McRae in September 2016. The following month, Candidate.ID was acknowledged as a top 10 most disruptive technology at HRTech World, Paris.


About Candidate.ID Candidate.ID is the world’s first talent pipeline software. It allows the most sophisticated nurture marketing in talent acquisition and generates unrivalled candidate insights. As well as our software, our services include consulting, content and sourcing. Based in Glasgow, Scotland, Candidate.ID works with employers around the world. It’s Advisory Board includes talent acquisition leaders at employers including Barclays, Intuit, Philips, QuintilesIMS and Thermo Fisher Scientific. Trusted Partners Alan Walker https://www.thetalentfinders.com/ Alastair Cartwright http://talentscape.co.uk/ Chris McKinney https://www.linkedin.com/in/cmckinneynz/ Garry Franklin https://www.linkedin.com/in/garyffranklin/ Graeme McConnell https://www.linkedin.com/in/graememcconnell/ Iain Hamilton http://www.peopletraction.co.uk/ Jenn Fenwick https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennfenwick/ Jeremy Russon https://www.thetalenttailors.com/ Kenny Phipps https://www.linkedin.com/in/kennydphipps/ Lee Burman https://www.linkedin.com/in/leeburman/ Martin Dangerfield https://www.martindangerfield.com/ Martin Lee https://www.linkedin.com/in/martinjlee/ Niall Clerkin https://www.linkedin.com/in/niallclerkin/ Paul Angeli http://www.digitalpact.net/ Shirish Mistry http://www.agilise.co.uk/ Stuart Jones http://insourcetalent.co.uk/ Be an early member of the world’s first talent pipeline community. https://www.facebook.com/groups/1969574746618339/

Bonus Content 30 Point Plan for Talent Communities

Be an early member of the world’s first talent pipeline community. Visit: http://www.talentpipe.org

30 Point Plan FOR CREATING POWERFUL TALENT COMMUNITIES

Adam Gordon CEO, Candidate.ID linkedin.com/in/adamwgordon @Adam_W_Gordon

A few notes to begin...

Objectives The main things you want to achieve from your community/communities are to create goodwill from an audience because you have given them knowledge, demonstrated your expertise and won their trust. Think like a publisher and consider your community as a media channel. Why do they normally fail? The three reasons communities normally fail: 1. They are over-branded 2. You have no robust content schedule 3. You haven’t done enough to create a strong invite list How do I ensure success? You’re in luck! We have pulled together the 30 things you need to do with your community to make sure it works. Let’s get started! Be an early member of the world’s first talent pipeline community. https://www.facebook.com/groups/1969574746618339/

Building your brand 1

3

Do not use your organisation’s logo in your community. By all means use similar font and colours so that it although it does not look like an obvious marketing exercise, at a second glance people know your organisation’s behind the community and you benefit from the goodwill you will create.

Upload a ‘hero’ image to create a distinct vision when members log in to the Group. Again, it’s unlikely this should include the name of your organisation but feel free to select some existing branding your organisation uses for other purposes (with the permission of your brand team of course).

Do not use your organisation’s name in the name of the community.

2

However, the exception to this is if your organisation is considered the unparalleled experts or premier source of information for your chosen topic. Use key words in your title to appeal to your target audience, and set out the intentions of your group

People don’t like being marketed to on social media; they consider it to be their own personal space


4 Make sure the owner of your community is the most senior/best known professional in your organisation for the subject matter.

5

Recruit other senior professionals from inside your organisation to act as managers at your community. Again, this need not mean they have to undertake much work personally but their visible presence will add further credibility to the community.

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Recruit credible professionals from outside your organisation as managers on your community to make you appear well networked and to add richness to the perception of the community’s value.

This gives your community credibility and links it at second glance to your organisation. When invites are sent, recipients will read them more carefully and feel special to be invited. Ensure your chosen manager is fully aware as to the purpose of the community and why it is important her/his image is used as the figurehead. Make sure (s)he is happy to lend their online profile(s) to the initiative and that all (s)he will need to do will be to will be to approve content being posted in her/his name. It may be that this job is naturally deferred to a communications professional meaning even less work for the chosen community manager.


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Run a workshop for community managers so they fully understand the purpose of the initiative and what’s expected of them. This will give them time to ask questions and resign from participation if they feel they can’t commit.

9 Ensure your description (an extended version of your summary) lists all the relevant key-words someone you wish to attract might search for to find your community. If for example your community’s for in-house marketing professionals on the subject of digital, list: ‘CMO, chief marketing officer, marketing director, head of marketing, brand director, head of brand, director of communications, head of communications’ AND list subjects to include

8

Ensure your summary is written in a way which reinforces the reasons why members you wish to attract should join.

‘digital marketing, SEO, search engine optimisation, paid search, ppc, pay per click, social media, blogging, mobile applications, apps, CTR, clickthrough-rate, bounce rate, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Twitter’


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Make use of the templates to create an experience for members before they have joined. On LinkedIn for example you can use: Request-to-Join template - this is the message someone receives when applying to join your community. Use this as an opportunity to re-affirm the community’s purpose and sign it from the owner of the community for name recognition. Perhaps include in here the length of time the recipient can expect to wait before being approved to the community as well as a link to any complementary resources. This sets an expectation which becomes part of the member experience. Welcome - this is the message someone receives once approved to the community. Use this to again re-affirm the community’s purpose and sign it from the owner of the community.Perhaps include in here a request for ideas and suggestions and include contact details for the community owner and a named manager to add a personal touch and to give the recipient reason to feel they can make contact. This also subtly links the community to your organisation through use of professional email addresses. Reject/Reject-and-Block- make use of the ‘Reject-andBlock’ message so you automatically store a list of those who have requested to join and been rejected. That way you have a ready-made invite list should criteria change and you wish to invite a broader list of members. (The ‘Reject’ option doesn’t capture data).

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Write rules which allow and encourage rather than permit and dissuade. For example: ‘Do not write about subjects irrelevant to employment law’ could be better written as ‘We welcome employment law-related discussions.’ Use the Rules section to further remind members of the details of the group.

You may or may not wish to enable ‘Jobs’ at your community. However, this may be off-putting to the top candidates who have joined to learn rather than be marketed to.

If you allow your competitors to join your community, they may make use of ‘Promotions’ and you will not want them to use your channel to broadcast their services. If you are not accepting your competitors to your community, you may wish to include ‘Promotions’ so members can share their events, research and white papers for example with the community.


Permissions – this is a minefield so here are the key things to consider: If you are happy for anyone with an interest in the subject of the community to join, allow them to do so without approval. If not, you will need to monitor and approve/reject people who wish to join. Make sure you do this regularly so that people feel the community is ‘manned’.

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The Content 15

Welcome discussion – make sure a welcome discussion is the first thing that members see when they join. This should be posted from the owner of the community and marked as ‘manager’s choice’ so it is always at the top of the discussion page (the ‘home’ page for a community).

Are you happy for all members to post their own discussions and comment on discussions without approval? Some communities use a highly structured ‘magazine’-type formats where the only people permitted to post discussions are owner/managers and other appointed spokes-people, to ensure consistent quality of discussion and relevance of the subject.

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Others allow all members to post their own discussions but subject to approval. Some allow all members to post discussions and contribute without permission. There are pros and cons of each approach but note, if you restrict members’ ability to post discussions/comments, you should explain why in the description and rules; otherwise members may feel policed and at worst, resentful.

17

Pre-load discussions before you send invitations so members have content to engage with on day 1. These may include details of the inaugural community event, research, white papers, hot topics and more. Make sure you finish your discussions with an open question to encourage members to participate in discussion. In terms of engagement, one way to measure success is based on the number of comments your discussions create. Create a communications calendar and include a rotation system so that each representative from your organisation only needs to write or approve a small number of discussions each month. Post discussions late morning as LinkedIn traffic surges at lunchtimes.


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You can send an ‘announcement’ to all members which they receive as an email once every two weeks. Use these announcements to create some structure to your communications; this will become part of your community’s brand and the member experience. At the end of each month for example you could send a monthly summary of activity at the community and look to the future with any upcoming events or other features.

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Offline events are very powerful ways of engaging with your members. Although most members of your community will read the discussions, many people do not yet contribute online. Some however really value the opportunity to meet and talk to fellow community members..

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Competitions held at your community can be an interesting way of getting people engaged. In particular, those professionals who love a challenge (developers for example) like to take part in activities where there’s an element of competition.


Members 21 Many community invite mechanisms are very convenient to use and you simply need to upload email addresses and press ‘send’. However, bear in mind that some of your contacts will not use their work email addresses (which you probably have stored) on their social media profiles. They will still receive the invite via email but it will not be linked to their profile. On LinkedIn, you can go to ‘invited’ at the ‘manage’ section of the Group and where an email address is listed, this address is not attached to that invitee’s account. 3 Google Chrome Extensions for Finding Email Addresses: • Hunter • Contact Out • Prophet

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While making sure the name of your community and the person from whom the invites are coming will help optimise acceptances. Customise the invitation message to include the 3-4 reasons why the invitee should join and send via email with an embedded link and mention that the recipient will subsequently receive an invite through the community’s official invite system. That way, you can encourage people to join by email and they will have two chances to simply click and join.

On LinkedIn, it’s easy to download a list of your connections. Use this as a starting point to populating your community.


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Your database will already contain an instant guestlist so make use of this existing data to invite members to join your community.

Ask all appropriate colleagues to invite their relevant contacts from LinkedIn, Twitter or other sources. On LinkedIn for example, it’s easy to download a list of your connections from ‘network’ -> ‘contacts’ -> ‘settings’.

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Go through your existing connections on sites like LinkedIn and invite them to the community.

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Source potential members you don’t know including their email addresses from social media and other online sources. N.B. always observe Data Protection rules on storing people’s information.


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Use ExecConnections to approach your target community members and build a strong relationship.

Broadcast your community as a ‘Featured Group’ on your company page (on LinkedIn for example).

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Broadcast your community on appropriate pages of your website and your other social media channels such as Twitter.

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Encourage your owner/managers and others in your organisation to mention the community at their online profiles and including a hyperlink. They may even choose to add ‘manager’ at ‘XYZ Community’ as a job title on sites like LinkedIn to raise your community’s status.
