Modeled after Pinterest, Weddles.com offers four channels of information and resources found nowhere else on the Web. And, one of those channels is specifically tailored for those Employers and Recruiters who are determined to find the best talent for their openings!
What’s in the Employers & Recruiters channel at Weddles.com? There are:
- Books & Tools for recruiting & sourcing excellence
- An archive of outside-the-box Recruiting Tips
- An Association Directory organized by career field & industry
- Information on the International Association of Employment Web Sites
- And much, much more!
So, don’t delay! Visit Weddles.com today. And, make sure you tell your colleagues about the site, as well.
Forget Relationships, Build Allegiance
The received wisdom these days is that relationships are the key to recruiting top talent. As anyone who’s been in a relationship knows, however, establishing such a connection with someone is both time consuming and hard work. What’s the alternative? Build candidate allegiance. It’s just as powerful a recruiting strategy.
Recruiters have long focused on building relationships with top talent for one very important reason: these prospects listened to their mother. What was the first thing your mother taught you? That’s right, “Don’t speak to strangers.” So, establishing relationships enables recruiters to move from being unknown to being recognized and listened to by top talent.
The downside to this strategy, of course, is that it’s hard work – relationships don’t come easy and they require constant attention. And, in today’s economy, the last thing recruiters need is another big requirement on their plate. So, what happens? In an awful lot of cases, the effort to build relationships starts out with banners flying and lots of enthusiasm and then slowly but surely gets overtaken by events.
That’s why building candidate allegiance is such a powerful tool. The Google dictionary defines allegiance as the “loyalty or commitment of a subordinate to a superior or of an individual to a group or cause.” A relationship is an emotional bond that is based on the regard two parties have for one another. Allegiance is also an emotional bond, but it is based on the care and support one party provides to the other.
Allegiance in recruiting occurs when an organization serves the individual, rather than friending, following or connecting with them. As a result, the individual perceives that the employer cares about their success and will do what it can to support their advancement. That perception, in turn, generates the familiarity and trust that are essential to recruiting top talent.
The best prospects are almost always employed, so to recruit them, we have to convince them to do the one thing we humans most hate to do: change. We have to persuade them to move from their current employer to ours. By building familiarity and trust with those prospects, allegiance creates the conditions for making such a case effectively and efficiently.
Making the Case to Change Devils
Relationships are interactive experiences. They require continuous communications and lots of at least virtual handholding. Allegiance, in contrast, can benefit from ongoing communications, but is primarily developed with the right resources tailored in the right way.
Allegiance cannot be effectively built in someone else’s backyard. Therefore, the strategy should be implemented not on a social media site, but on your organization’s own career page or Web-site. It involves taking just three steps:
- Organize the site’s content into channels. Top talent hate to be treated as “generic candidates,” so present your employer’s value proposition in channels devoted to and written in the language of the specific career fields for which you’re recruiting.
- Provide a fulsome array of career self-management resources. Top talent are the “career homeless” of the workforce. They know the corporate career ladder and gold watch have disappeared, so they’re looking for a place that will help to nurture their continued success regardless of where they are employed at any given moment.
- Help top talent get to know your employer’s top talent. Avoid the “unilogue” feel of most corporate career sites by giving top prospects a way to have a dialogue with those who would be their new colleagues and coworkers.
Building relationships with top prospects typically involves time-consuming and labor intensive initiatives to create talent communities and network on social media sites. It’s difficult to sustain such efforts and thus hard to reap their benefits.
Building allegiance, on the other hand, involves a re-imagination of the organization and content of your corporate career site, but once that’s done, requires very little investment of time or work. Equally as important, by building familiarity and trust among the best prospects, allegiance predisposes them to change devils, and that’s an outcome made in heaven.
Thanks for reading,
Peter
Visit me at Weddles.com
Quick & Easy Survey on Your Recruiting Tools
Please use the Forward function in your email reader to send your answers to the following 5 questions to peter@weddles.com, We’ll publish the results in our next newsletter.
1. Do you have the sourcing and recruiting products and services (e.g., apps, software, systems, contract support) you need to do your best work on-the-job?
- ___ Yes, I have all of the tools and services that I need to be successful at my job
- ___ I have some of the tools and services that I need to be successful at my job, but I need others
- ___ No, I do not have any tools and services that I need to be successful at my job.
2. If yes, in which of the following areas has your employer acquired advanced products or services for your use? (Please select all that apply)
- ___ Candidate identification & communication
- ___ Candidate credential presentation
- ___ recruitment marketing
- ___ Employment branding
- ___ Employee referral program management
- ___ Talent community development/management
- ___ Internal mobility
- ___ Interviewing
- ___ Interview scheduling & management
- ___ Assessment
- ___ Applicant tracking
- ___ Background checking
- ___ Compliance
3. If no, in which of the following areas would you most like to see your employer invest in order to provide you with the most advanced products or services available? (Please select all that apply)
- ___ Candidate identification & communication
- ___ Candidate credential presentation
- ___ recruitment marketing
- ___ Employment branding
- ___ Employee referral program management
- ___ Talent community development/management
- ___ Internal mobility
- ___ Interviewing
- ___ Interview scheduling & management
- ___ Assessment
- ___ Applicant tracking
- ___ Background checking
- ___ Compliance
4. In which one area do you most need advanced tools and services in order to be successful at your job? (Please pick only one)
- ___ Candidate identification & communication
- ___ Candidate credential presentation
- ___ recruitment marketing
- ___ Employment branding
- ___ Employee referral program management
- ___ Talent community development/management
- ___ Internal mobility
- ___ Interviewing
- ___ Interview scheduling & management
- ___ Assessment
- ___ Applicant tracking
- ___ Background checking
- ___ Compliance
5. As far as you know, what is your employer’s investment in advanced recruiting and sourcing products or services likely to be this year?
- ___ Increase over last year
- ___ Decrease of last year
- ___ About the same as last year
- ___ My employer doesn’t invest in such products or services
- ___ Don’t know
The Recruiting Resources You Deserve
The best recruiters use the best resources to get the job done. And, when it comes to reaching top talent online, their choice is clear. It’s WEDDLE’s Books. Get yours today!
WEDDLE’s Guide to Employment Sites on the Internet. This is the 11th edition of the Guide the American Staffing Association called the “Zagat” of job boards and social media sites.
The Talent Sourcing & Recruitment Handbook. This is Shally Steckerl’s tell-all guide to his sourcing secrets and cybersleuthing for hard-to-find talent.
WEDDLE’s Guide to Association Web Sites. This book details the recruiting resources and capabilities that are available at the Web-sites of over 3,000 professional and technical associations.
Finding Needles in a Haystack. This one-of-a-kind guide lists over 25,000 keywords and keyword phrases, across 5,400 job and position titles in 28 industries and professions.
2014 User’s Choice Award Winners
If you’re tired of reading the pundits’ picks for the best employment sites on the Web, here’s the alternative you’ve been looking for.
Each year, WEDDLE’s hosts an online poll for job seekers and recruiters to vote for THEIR picks of the best sites. We call it the User’s Choice Awards.
To see the 2014 winners, click here.
To cast your vote for next year’s winners, click here.