Talent Is Top of Mind To Every CEO Today

By Jessica Miller-Merrell

Everywhere I turn, the topic of recruiting, training and retaining employees and talent is buzzing louder than a bumblebee in spring. The skill gap and need for talent is the key component of many of the keynote talks and panel discussions from the conference circuit and from the one-on-one conversations. Open any magazine that covers business and the economy such as Fortune, Forbes and Harvard Business Review and you will find articles, resources and studies discussing how development, engagement and hiring can impact business in both a positive and negative way.

I recently wrote about the future of recruitment and trends and shared that 30% of CEOs say there is a concern they will not have the necessary talent to fulfill their future growth ambitions.

With all of the conversations about the need for talent for companies to succeed, sadly, there is little mention of the role that HR and recruiting actually plays.

Why is that? Even after all these years, it seems like the role of HR and recruiters as valuable business partners seems to be in question, and that’s more than extremely frustrating.

We’ve examined the needs of Blogging4Jobs readership and have found some important statistics that are relevant to the success of all levels ranging from human resources, operations, recruitment agencies and vendors. Why? Because if the CEO ain’t happy about HR then we all need to be working together to represent the industry as high performance leaders. Here are some important stats that we as an industry need to recognize so that as professionals, perhaps we can work together and earn that seat at the table.



HR: We Have a Problem

77% of more than 2500 business and HR leaders in 94 countries share that the single biggest challenge they are faced with is “reskilling” the HR function, according to the Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends 2014 report. This report also states a staggering minority of HR leaders, have confidence that their teams have the skills needed to meet the challenge of today’s global environment and deliver innovative programs that drive business impact. One third of HR leaders claim that their own HR and talent programs are just “getting by.”

Our Brand is Marketing’s Problem - NOT

Less than one half employees do not know what differentiates their employer’s brand from the competition, according to the Gallup’s 2013 State of the American Workplace report. A company’s brand should be that human piece that brings employees and their values together, leading to increased connection, morale and loyalty. Are you leaving the responsibility of your company brand in the Marketing silo? It may be costing your company talent.

Disengaged Employees are Expensive

50% of workers are not engaged in their work and this is expensive, costing U.S. businesses $450 billion to $550 billion per year, according the Gallup report. When workers are engaged and emotionally connected, they are up to four times more productive that disengaged employees. Are you making the business case to show your boss that you need those team building morale boosters?

It is clear that HR and recruitment leadership is critical to develop and manage the talent that is required for companies to succeed. Hopefully, some of these statistics can help you by becoming aware of the industry’s need for leaders.

Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is a workplace and technology strategist specializing in social media. She’s is the Chief Blogger & Founder of Blogging4Jobs. You can follow her on Twitter @jmillermerrell. 

Talent Network, You Complete Me (Part 2 of 2)

By Jessica Miller-Merrell 

Earlier I wrote about an emerging trend impacting the HR world in a big way. Our industry is in the transition from managing silo activities into a more holistic, integrated approach to the entire lifecycle of talent management. The HR professional can no longer approach the role with a one-size-fits-all silo approach or an out of the box plug and play system.

To optimize a company’s talent system, successful HR professionals must design customized talent systems that weave each key area of the talent lifecycle. These key areas, according to a recent Bersin trend report are:

• Attracting and Acquiring Talent,
• Managing and Developing Talent,
• Extending Talent and
• Understanding and Planning Talent.

Technology provides amazing tools that focus on the first phase of a company’s lifecycle. As mentioned in my article previously, today’s talent growth hacker can benefit from a variety of apps and services like LinkedIn, Talent Networks and Glassdoor.

TalentCircles can provide a one-stop shop in managing the necessary information so that you can grow your talent pool. At first glance, it is obvious that having one portal that can bring together social media, email campaigns, online events, video interviews, chats and online content can save time and headaches when it comes to the hiring of new talent. Finding the right recruitment tools can seem like love at first sight.

You had me at hello.

However, smart HR professionals know that growing a company’s talent doesn’t stop at the recruitment phase. What we really need is something we can lean on and grow our entire talent life cycle with. Let’s put on our talent growth hacker hat together and let me share with you some special ways you can develop your talent network using TalentCircles.

Grow beyond the honeymoon phase.

TalentCircles provides a wide range of features that span across all key areas of a company’s talent system. Here are some of the features that will allow you to optimize your resources.

Candidate profiles provide up-to-date information from your talent’s social media profiles. Easily accessing this data can be just as useful once candidates enter the company’s talent pool too, providing HR with direct access to their entire company’s social networks.

Webinars are a great recruitment tool. They also provide long-term benefits in growing the talent pool internally by engaging with employees through training sessions. Scheduling and managing attendance for those mandatory sexual harassment videos just got a whole lot easier!

Recorded questionnaires and online interviews are special features that engage and capture candidates responses with a webcam. This could provide useful information in internal surveys and reviews as well as exit interviews.

Job post feature allows candidates to easily share jobs through their social networks. How about sharing the feed so that the internal talent pool can easily share the posted jobs to their social networks too?

Circles help manage, segment and target messages to the right group of candidates. This is an excellent way to create mentor and coaching programs based on subject matter or separate and segment contract labor. Frankly, this feature is TalentCircles sweet spot, hence the name…

There are endless capabilities this feature will allow to help you grow and manage your talent system. It is secure, comprehensive and so effective compared to company-wide contact management systems.

Show me the data.

Big data. The last but not least feature that TalentCircles provides is the ability to monitor the analytics and generate custom reports of your talent network. Plan ahead and know where future gaps and openings are before they happen. Compare performance and activities to better understand the areas of growth or weaknesses across multiple circles of talent. As any growth hacker would confess, the proof is in the data.

You know it is special.

When you find that one technology platform that allows you to manage, monitor, analyze and report a variety of data points not only in the recruitment phase, but through the full lifecycle of your company’s talent network using one portal, you will fall in love.

Picture Source: Bersin by Deloitte, 2013

Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is a workplace and technology strategist specializing in social media. She’s an author who writes at Blogging4Jobs. You can follow her on Twitter @blogging4jobs. 

Photo Credit.