Many recruiters I know take a deep breath when they place an ad on a job board, for they know they will have to waste precious time sifting through inappropriate candidates in order to find the few gems. Increasingly, they are pursuing more direct and efficient alternatives.
The decline of Job Boards has been predicted for several years now and there is evidence to support the fact that both Job Board Vendors and Employers are investing in new ways to create relationships between people and employment.
So, what does the future hold?
Seek, developer Australia’s largest Job Board, indicated in its 2018 Annual report, that their future was solving problems around, “engaging and coordinating large pools of labour.” That sounds like a move away from the traditional job board business.
In fact, since 2016 Seek has been strongly encouraging individuals to create profiles to enable organisations to proactively search for applicants rather than waiting for them to apply for posted jobs.
Interesting.
In 2017, PageUp, one of Australia’s largest HRIS and Recruitment software companies predicted that Talent Relationship Management will accelerate quality hires.
Also interesting in the context of Job Boards.
There is increasing evidence that many organisations are moving away from traditional Job Boards towards creating Talent Pools as a way of managing talent, be it internal or external to the organisation.
What are Talent Pools?
For businesses, it refers to a database or repository of people capability which they can leverage to meet the needs of their business. It doesn’t need to discriminate between people already employed by the business or prospective hires, indeed the employment relationship these days is more fluid than of yesteryear and a good TP needs to capture both personas.
For individuals, it means a place where you can promote your skills and experience in a public or private profile that can be matched to work opportunities.
What makes a good talent pool?
So, if you are an organisation considering building or accessing a TP – what are some of the things you should consider?
Contemporary Information
The data must be up to date. Things like accreditations, competencies, availability, even basic details like contact information must be accurate and able to be relied upon. Without this, the TP customers (recruiters or internal managers) will quickly lose faith in the viability of the pool.
Self-maintaining
An internal HR or Recruitment Officer does not have time to spend hours building a TP nor ensuring the information is up to date. This defeats the purpose of having one in the first place. An effective TP leverages a range of methodologies to ensure the information is constantly renewed without impacting the customer.
Small
What? Hold on… small?
Yes. You read correctly.
There is a reason why a recruitment agency only ever shows a client a shortlist.
It’s because there is usually only a small number of people who are the best. A TP should operate the same way. People who are not suitable for hire should be curated out of the TP so as to not sully the customer experience.
Reflect your company’s requirements
Today your company needs C# coders, tomorrow it needs skills in Artificial Intelligence. Whatever your company requirements are, your TP needs to be able to reflect the current skill base, and quickly adapt and capture new and emerging needs.
Communicative
Today – people want engagement. You are creating a community and letting people know about your organisation so that when the time comes to formally connect in the form of a job or an assignment, they are already invested in the company.
Not just for Candidates
The best person for your project could be sitting down the hall, you just don’t know it.
For example…
Imagine you are the MD of a Courier company. You are aware of new technology being used to deliver packages and you want more information but, your team’s domain expertise is in traditional delivery methods.
Mike works for you in your IT infrastructure group but, unbeknownst to you, Mike spends his weekends Drone racing.
He has Drone Pilot certifications and did some Mechatronic units at Uni which have helped him modify his racing machines. He is the right man to help you undertake a review of the viability of Drones in the Courier industry but instead – you hire an external Consultant who costs you a small fortune.
A good TP would tell you about Mike.
So, in summary, yes, the age of Job Boards is waning and there is a (not so) new kid in town.
We will be exploring more on TP’s in articles to come.