The rise of social media and digital marketing have introduced a new dynamic into a market scrambling to provide solutions to sourcing talent while adding real value for customers.
Social media provides a cost-effective platform to engage with potential employees, so it’s understandable that numerous digital sourcing “experts” are jumping at the chance to represent your businesses in this dynamic new market.
As I see it, the real value associated with emerging technologies is not just the perceived “ROI” (this is a given), but the opportunity to adapt sourcing initiatives to incorporate the behaviours of potential employees.
This is where emerging technologies begin to get interesting – the monitoring of web-based traffic is becoming increasingly intelligent. We are starting to identify opportunities to target passive candidates which have never existed before. We can target our messages and tighten spend by identifying the digital behaviours of potential talent.
So what does this mean for small to medium businesses?
Think laterally for a moment – we already have the technologies that can predict how potential employees will behave in a given work environment. So why can’t we map the workplace behaviours of key performers back to their use of the digital environment?
How powerful could your tweets, likes and fans be if you could leverage the behaviours of your target employees, online?
The fundamentals of demographic profiling that have been used and proven over many years still apply. But the dynamic nature of the digital world opens up new opportunities to employers in targeting and reinforcing their employer brand and talent sourcing (and even hiring and onboarding) strategies via non-traditional means.
Take the role of an accountant. Through behavioural profiling, we can identify that ‘typical’ high-performing accountants are analytical and have high levels of self awareness and self improvement. This would suggest the need to identify platforms that attract astute business men and women.
How effective could a campaign possibly be if you’re targeting platforms that neglect the behaviours of the very candidates you’re trying to attract?
My recommendations to employers looking to utilise demographic profiling and digital media to source and attract talent are:
- Know your business – understand what type of business you are trying to build and the behaviours required of key performers to support that.
- Know your target market – understand your key performers, identify opportunities to support their behaviours and retain their talent.
- Carry the approach and intelligence around employee online behaviours through your hiring, onboarding and management practices.
- Measure, review, refine and adjust – the great thing about the digital environment is its flexibility and cost effectiveness. Use this to your advantage to change your approach as the behaviours of those you seek evolve (and they will).
- Engage the right subject matter experts – not all digital strategists or talent sourcing partners are equal.
