Monday, June 22, 2009

High to Global Talent Market

The movement of employees across continents in the modern day job world coupled with the mobility of most organisations moment has made global sourcing an important part of recruitment. The success of a global sourcing faces steep challenges of intensive and competitive nature, this has heralded the wave of internet sourcing as a viable medium to achieve success for most organisations. Given the adaptable functionalities of web medium. Let us focus on these two essential issues
1. Relationships between the internet and global sourcing
2. How does internet help global sourcing to perform better
The relationships between internet and global sourcing needs to be addressed from different perspectives multinational companies should be fosucing on .
1. Mobility, Space and Time
2. The scope of the business (ROI)
3. The changing face of the job search market
The advantages of internet sourcing for organisations hiring top talents globally lie in the enhancement of components internet sourcing can provide and the effects of the source strategy. Secondly, it provides a platform for communication between employers in any part of the world and global talent market to facilitate interaction; it also holds the key role to the success of such organisations as well. Eventually, the effect and integration of global sourcing with internet techniques can provide companies with a significant improvement in terms of outcomes (ROI).
No doubt, globalisation of the job market is delivering solution based “scalability” requirements that multinational organizations demand as they try to find the best employees and leaders to drive their vision and provide a solid foundation for the future of their companies. Multinationals, benefits from the functionality the internet sourcing platform provides in terms of enhanced flexibility, global reach, Opportunity to promote their brand to job seekers, added value structures and real-time transactions between the potential partners. Strategic global sourcing by multinational companies provides the necessary wherewithal to be competitive in their market.
Misconceptions by multinational CEO’s, CFO’s and Human resources Directors about internet sourcing potentially prevent companies from leveraging the awesome advantages of this method to effectively increase their ability to find the top calibre candidate globally.
Furthermore, multinational companies need to remember that unproductive internet sourcing can leave a damaging effect on their global sourcing drive. However, as truth would have it, multinational companies prepared to invest in developing the required internet sourcing skills to support global sourcing can succeed.
The significance of internet sourcing techniques (Social Media, Search Engines, Networking, Blogging etc) doesn’t dwell on how and where, but more on why and what to source for using the internet. The transformation of multinational companies, SME etc from the present mindset to internet sourcing may seem to be time consuming initially, but once set up and the relevant skills required to succeed are imparted to the consultants then it becomes a very low cost but highly effective way of find, attract and also retaining the best candidates in the market place globally. Despite basic problems, most organisations are moving on to adapt internet sourcing tools and techniques as the most popular method for securing the future of their organisation by making sure they hire the best talents in the market place.

John Kamara

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Talent Bank

June 18, 2009
I have continued my quest in search of the right balance between Talent Acquisition (using all the latest technology and social media networks we have at hand) and Talent Management. So far what I ve discovered from research is that the modern day jobseeker or employee is more confused than he would have been say 7 to 10 years ago. Lets take a look at a couple of reasons listed by some of the over 70 candidates I interviewed below
1, Too Much information to consume at the same time
2, Difficulty in keeping pace with change((Huge)Across all Industries especially online)
3, Not enough Knowledge management experience
4, Lack of Mentors within organisations
5, Predicting the future * (Recruiters Delight)
Thinking back on some of the answers it came to my mind that most organisations especially in these times of reccession, are not doing enough to help employees or job-seekers re-invent themselves or keep up with the change happening at lightening pace in the current global job market. A lot of jobs created in the past couple of years due to the growth in online technology dont have any real growth pattern, or very few can carry along the vast number of employees who have taken up temporary career paths in some of these industries.
My main focus on this part of my discovery journey is how the recruitment world can help with this change and become a trusted advisor to jobseekers and employees(Like a sales man who becomes a trusted advisor to his client over a lifetime). A couple of things come to my mind, recruiters are in the front line of change, so naturally we should be more upto date with whats going globally. We have the ability to become the foundation for the general job-seeker looking to change their career path or looking to improve in their current role. I ve heard jobseekers come out of meetings with career advisors in various universities and are still not clear on what next for them in the job market. Our role as recruiters and the gate keepers become fundamentally important to the future of the job market and how change will affect most people on a daily basis. A job seeker once complained to me that he went to a known recruitment agency and was looking to find out what other type of career path he could take in regards to his next move. The recruiter told him that it would be almost impossible for him to change career path at this late stage, so he should go for a higher paid job (most likely a dead end). I will leave it to you to come up with your opinion on how the recuiter should have handled that problem.
The internet has provided us with the greatest opportunity in our industry, to acquire new and passive talents for our clients but also like one recruiter in Singapore put it creat your own Talent Bank over a life time.
Your talent bank come become your cash line in so many ways she said, her idea was very simple. In the old days people dealt with recruiters based on relationship they had built up or the reputation of the agency. These days we have the internet and the opportunity to reach thousands of people but also the ability to keep track of our people and create a Talent bank of your own. The recruiter was able to create a talent bank of top calibre candidates using some of the basic things we know in the industry(relationship management) and also increase her tracking scope using the internet. She had a Talent bank of 500 top candidates who made up 60% of her cash line every year and also gave her in-roads into new companies and new opportunities. The key to her success was in the service she provided to her “Trusted (Passive&Active) Candidates” in her Talent Bank.
She gave them career Advice, she gave them industry updates, she provided them with information when they needed it and sometimes a go to market strategy in terms of career development programs. She also worked with them to analyse the future and were the next opportunities were going to explode. The beautiful thing was that 70percent of her Talent Bank were based around the world. My point is that her Talent bank become her cash cow, the people who trusted her with their careers. Even if she couldnt find them a job when they were looking for one, they still asked her to be part of their process. A lot of her Talent bank are A level candidates.
It got me thinking how can I use the awesome value of the internet to build not just a network or people but a Talent bank of candidates who place me in their circle of trust. She finished up by saying that the candidates in her job bank are in what she calls “Her circle of Influence” and every other candidate is in her circle of concern. I will be back with my next discovery soon, the search goes on.
John Kamara

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

online recruitment, cloud recruitment, social media and what not. It is the generation now tools and the future of most if not all industry BUT how confusing can this be for people who arent experts or have no idea of how to measure the value from all these sources. I was listening to a lecturer from stanford talking online recently and he raised some interesting issues about the amount of info and data consumers and have to assimilate with the daily development of new applications and tools available online at the moment. This made me think of a few years back when I went for a job interview in Dublin and was telling the owner of the agency about my source strategy and how I find the candidates online and what not, he stared at me for about 20mins before telling me I was reaching for the stars now in his own words. Roll on two years and things have changed organisations are talking bout SEO's, recuiters, agencies and companies are talking bout online source tools and social media networking etc. I follow the updates on what google will do next, what Microsoft will try to achieve and how other media networks are going to come out with new solutions that will blow the market open once more. But as times flies and I remember my experience from two years ago and the change that has taken place in the job market in Ireland I put on my predictive intelligence hat and try to look into my crystal ball at what the future will bring for the internet enthusiast.
Recently I had the opportunity to advice some young and upcoming recruiters about how to use the pletora of online information and tools available to them and they managed to drag me into the conversation about the death of the job board! do I think job boards are dead? certainly not, what I see if job boards reinventing themselves with technology and becoming more visual in their approach to the industry, thats the advice I gave to a job board recently anway. But my advice to the recruiters I was talking to was to simplify and learn the basics of what they need, while using different tools on a needs basis as well. Information is key to everything but how we manage or use that information is the recipe that will determine success or failure.
Staying on that conversation we talked about search strings, new metasearch engines, micro search engines and other creative forms of internet sourcing. I took a lot out of that conversation and their enthusiasm for the journey of discovery ahead for them, but for me it was more about finding a balance between the present and the future. You hear about companies creating jobs that I think from a strategy perspective are not sustainable because nobody really thought about the relevance of the positions to the future of the organisation. Most are thinking about now and getting on the train of what the internet has to offer, hiring young intelligent people and paying top dollar for now, without thinking much about sustainability. So my quest is not just about improving my Talent Acquistion, strategy or development skills but also looking into the world of Talent management and re-engineering.
I will tell you what I discover in my next blog, am off to prepare for my next training program on sourcing strategy.

John Kamara
Talent/Strategy Manager