The Race For Tomorrow’s Talent

Few employers would deny that successful hires justify the investments undertaken to search for them, and companies looking to secure their future must accept this reality.

Consider Apple Inc.’s demise in the period after its board fired Steve Jobs and how he pulled the company from the brink—after his return—and turned it into the world’s biggest tech company. Not every company can claim to operate at the scale of Apple, yet the lessons of this tale serve as a stark reminder: Talent can make, or break, a company.

LinkedIn’s 2017 report on global recruiting trends supports this stance. Of the 4,000 corporate talent acquisition leaders from 35 countries surveyed, 83 percent agree talent ranks as the top priority when it comes to defining the future of their organisation.

From visionary leadership to game-changing innovation and beyond, the contributions of people form the nucleus of every moving part that powers any company’s engine against their competition. In the race to the finish, winners often possess not only the right quantity of talent but those of the highest quality, too.

Diversity Attracts

The next challenge for organisations is to close the gap between this need for quality talent and the ability to attract them. At a time when the common theme of day circles around equal opportunity—regardless of one’s gender, race, sexual orientation and social background—enterprises that make every effort to embrace diversity stand a higher chance especially with millennial-aged talent.

Millennials aren’t gullible. They are a critical bunch who aren’t easily fooled. When companies declare in public new policies that support diversity and inclusion, millennials don’t just take their word for it. They demand proof. A study conducted by PwC states that more than 50 percent of millennials don’t feel opportunities are equal for all even though companies talk about diversity.

This mismatch of expectation could prove a stumbling block in convincing promising talent to join a company’s ranks. Rather than scrape the surface, recruiters should make every effort to reassure millennials about their future prospects at a company, and where necessary, use real-life examples to back their claims.

Truth be told, it’s also in an organisation’s best interest to follow through with their promises on diversity. Economists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that a shift from a single gender environment to one evenly split along gender lines could increase a company’s revenue by around 41 percent.

Defining Success

With countless variables to measure how recruiters fare in their hiring activities, LinkedIn’s report identified three metrics to benchmark one’s impact on a business. The first is how long new hires stay at the company. This metric is complemented by the time it takes to fill a job position. And lastly, the satisfaction of recruiters themselves.

Even so, the best endorsement still comes from performance. For example, a new sales hire who exceeds his or her targets in the first year. But such feedback can be inconsistent and depends how much reporting managers reveal. At times, a friendly or hostile relationship with these managers could also make all the difference on the level of transparency. Better then to treat such feedback as one-off bonuses when they occur, instead of an expected recurrence.

The gist of this article points to the complexities tied to talent acquisition in this time and day. Like the thriving businesses of the modern economy, recruiters who maintain a sense of nimbleness and open-mindedness to the ever-evolving needs of organisations will more likely succeed than others.