Most companies are generally only concerned about the hiring needs of the here and now. After all, being able to meet current staffing requirements is itself a Herculean task.
But, let’s stop and spare a thought for the future. What when your star performers decide to retire or even leave for greener pastures?
Won’t you find yourself running helter-skelter looking for an appropriate replacement? And everyone agrees that you can never find a completely suitable candidate at the eleventh hour.
Oh…how you wish you had a magic wand, which you could simply wave and conjure up a ‘perfect’ replacement out of thin air.
All it takes is building a ‘talent pipeline’, and you can have high-potential candidates literally waiting in the wings for such contingencies.
But the good things in life seldom, if ever, come easy. It takes a lot of careful planning and strategy to build a strong supply of talented candidates that can beat the impending talent squeeze.
But rest assured that the substantial results will more than put paid for the gargantuan efforts.
You will successfully build a solid competitive advantage that will future-proof your company against any sort of skills shortage.
Therefore, needless to say, building and maintaining a strong and talent-rich pipeline is an important part of recruitment. But the big question is how:
Your needs– Building a talent pipeline begins with clearly identifying and defining your talent needs for the future. You should create a well-articulated picture of the expected competencies and characteristics that you are most likely to need in the long haul.
Moreover, this should not be limited to the top positions, but cover all levels throughout the organisation so as to maintain ongoing success and stability.
Finding the key players – Now you have to proactively work at finding the right people for building a continuous supply of talent. Start by strategically reviewing the competencies of individuals already on your payroll to pinpoint worthy successors.
Careful succession planning will enable you to groom the ‘chosen’ employees to fit into higher positions.
But the internal talent pool alone cannot suffice. You have to identify both active and passive jobseekers outside the organisational walls through recruitment efforts, employee referrals and networking.
You can also contact ex-employees, competitors’ workforce or even use the customer database to fuel your pipeline with potential job candidates. The key is to retain any promising prospect you come across for future openings.
As a recruitment expert says, “Organisations don’t need to hire all the ‘A-performers’ today, they just need to know where they are!”
Keeping them on the radar – The next step requires targeted strategies to keep the identified prospects in your orbit. For this, you will have to employ technological tools to track the candidates’ career trajectory as well as build bridges with them. This brings into play candidate relationship management for wooing the prospects and turning them into prospective candidates.
It also requires the organisational HR systems to develop and maintain active communication for informing candidates about available opportunities and generally keeping in touch with them through multiple channels.
Only then will your organisation be able to remain visible and connected.
A catalyst to win them over – You may have been tracking the right candidates for years. But when the time comes and you call them up, what is the guarantee that they will actually be willing to join your organisation (that too in the prescribed role) instead of the competition? This is where a strong employer brand comes in handy.
An employer brand is nothing but the sum total of your organisational values, spirit, mission, culture, image and employment experience that will determine the attractiveness of the company to outsiders.
So, you have to first build a strong corporate environment that will appeal to the talent pipeline and then create all-round awareness. This will serve as a talent magnet that can easily draw a winning and talented team onto your side. Therefore, make developing a ‘talent pipeline’ a prolific and natural part of your hiring process. After all, today’s talent pipeline alone will translate into tomorrow’s successful workforce!
PAYAL CHANANIA
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