Time to start marketing your company to talented people

The employment market is changing. With the stock market static and final salary pension schemes disappearing fast, ambitious professionals know that loyalty to one company, even in the medium term, is probably not in their best interests. If the stock options are not that enticing and pensions are now fully portable, then it pays to shop around for the best deal and career opportunities. Indeed, the number of jobs that the average UK professional has in their lifetime has increased from 7 to eleven over the last 20 years. Many up-and-coming professionals have a completely open mind about where in the world they work and for how long. They just want to make sure they time every company move to perfection.

Well-qualified people are very choosy about where they work and they spend a lot of time researching what they see as their market. Of course, the Internet is a boon for these people; but they make their judgements based on information from a wide range of sources. They form opinions based on what they read in the media; they monitor the financial performance of the company and they keep an eye on the movers and shakers within these organisations.

However, probably the most important influence on them is the grapevine. Opinions about companies and their prospects and inside information about way they look after their high flyers features on countless email exchanges among networking professional-types as they plot their next big move.
Indeed career planning has taken on a whole meaning. Take the example of James, a qualified accountant with four years at one of the top three professional services companies. He is not yet 30, but he has already decided that he wants to move into the mergers and acquisitions business within the next year or so. He scans the Internet and the media and networks assiduously as he narrows down the list of target companies for which he would like to work. He has also identified one company in particular where he is aiming to gain a senior management role in five to seven yearsí time.

James would value the opportunity to build and maintain some discreet contact with all of these companies, but the process for doing this in all but one case does not exist.
He says he would certainly have no objection to some of his details being held on any of these companiesí databases so they regard him as a potential employee at some point.
In my experience, James is not untypical of the way top quality professionals now want to manage their careers. Itís almost as if there is a new market for companies emerging here; call it ëcareer futuresí. If they want to attract good people they need to start building a relationship with them long before they actually plan to recruit them.

Clearly this is where technology, such as BrassRingís Talent Relationship Management (TRM) systems come into their own. Our software is geared towards enabling organisations to establish long-term, personal relationships with talented people both inside and outside their organisations in the wider employment market.
However, there is another dimension to the maintenance of relationships with talented people. In the employment market, companies have to manage a particular kind of brand value which is focused around issues such as their reputation as employers and the efficiency with which they handle job applications. If they are bad at putting forward internal candidates for new opportunities or are slow and inefficient at processing job applications generally, then word will soon get round. Talented people will be put off, and the companiesí brand value in the employment market will be damaged.

This is another application for TRM technology, which ensures that the recruitment process is handled efficiently and effectively. As hiring managers identify the need to fill a vacancy or create a new post, the system will take care of the whole process from that moment onwards. If company policy is to look at internal candidates first ñ perhaps a deployment strategy is in place, which is common enough in the current economic climate ñ then the software will automatically access the correct database, picking out people with the relevant skills, experience and qualifications for the post.

In the context of an external hiring programme, the TRM system will handle the whole process from beginning to end ensuring that deadlines are met, appointments are kept and that all candidates are treated promptly and courteously. The ideal scenario for hiring companies is that all candidates, even the unsuccessful ones that go back into the employment market, feel positive about your company and the way they have been treated. This way your employment market brand rises in value every time you recruit someone.
Any change in the employment market, especially in the dynamics of the relationship between people and potential employers, presents an opportunity for the enlightened and poses a threat to those who chose to ignore it. There is no doubt that successful TRM, which is clearly growing in importance, demands proper workflow and process management. And you cannot have that without the right technology.