In 1997, strategy consultancy McKinsey coined the (perhaps controversial) phrase, "the war for talent" and while it’s a given that having great talent is business critical for any organisation, many companies have still taken a reactive rather than proactive approach to talent attraction.

In a lot of cases, employers will only start to source talent when a vacancy arises when in fact, building a talent pipeline starts way before that. If you ask any (good) recruitment consultant what value they can add to a hiring organisation, the answer should be their network, their knowledge of your sector and business and their ability to come up with solutions. Good recruiters – those with a truly consultative approach spend a long time building networks – and that means developing relationships, not databases. It also means that they are delivery and solutions driven – not sales people looking to put bums on seats before moving onto the next job order.

So what happened to the war for talent during the last economic downturn? The recession left many employers with the view that there was a wealth of talent just waiting to be picked up. The reality was that while the numbers on the market definitely increased, the quality was decidedly variable. The recession gave companies the permission to cut out the dead wood – the really good people were the ones that stayed employed. That’s not to say that some good people didn’t caught up in the aggressive cuts. Sifting these out was also a value-add from recruiters in the recession.

And that takes us back to our consultative recruiter who will tell you that the best candidates – and consequently the best talent – are those people who are not actively looking for a new job, but who may move if the right opportunity comes along.  Dubbed ‘passive candidates’ they won’t respond to advertisements on job boards, they won’t be on CV databases, ready to be cherry picked by an online recruitment tool – but they will be in someone’s network.

And that’s really the key – building up a talent pipeline is about networking, talent mapping competitor organisations and building relationships with professionals who may be the person you could be looking for in a year’s time. And so whether you have an in-house resourcing team, a recruitment consultancy you use regularly – or a combination of the two, what’s really important is that they have credible commercial skills. That means having an understanding of the how all aspects of the business operate and what skills are needed to drive the business forward. Simply matching a CV to a job description is not enough – particularly for senior hires. Building a talent pipeline means interviewing even if you are not actively looking and encouraging everyone in the organisation to be on the lookout for key talent.

A good starting point is to look at your competitors – and your recruiters’ relationships with those competitors.  What’s their employee value proposition? How do you rate against it and what can you really offer someone? One of the things many employers forget is that they are selling as well as buying so think about that USP that will make someone want to join you – employer brand is king. Your recruiter should also act as an extension of your brand and position the business in the best possible light compared to the competition.

If you do use a recruitment consultancy then make sure you know how many of your competitors’ preferred suppliers’ lists they are also on. If the answer is most of them then you are automatically reducing your route to the best talent pipelines. Often the best person for your vacancy, particularly if you are in a niche sector, financial services for example – will be working for one of your competitors. If your recruitment consultancy is also working for all those competitors then they can’t be seen to be attracting talent away from them! It’s an obvious point but one that is often missed. It can take several years tracking a candidate before they are ready for a move but if they’ve been consistently provided with quality market information from a recruiter who really understands what they are about and what pushes their buttons then they will move with the recruiter that’s provided it and already have a good view of the company. There are short-term recruiters and those for whom this is a career – you need at least one firm populated with the latter on your PSL to deliver senior talent.

While many recruitment pundits are now forecasting a return to the war for talent, the truth is that it never really went away – it’s just that the rules of engagement changed. And with a slow but steady recovery on the cards, the companies that will ultimately win that war will be the ones who understand that sourcing talent is not as simple as downloading a CV from a database but a process that demands skill, tenacity and integrity.
 

Adrian Kinnersley is managing director of Twenty Recruitment Group