He Who Owns The Talent Pool - Owns The Market

10 Lessons Learned at the Florida Staffing Association Owners Conference

1. The future competition is not just the newest recruitment / staffing firm offering better, smarter and more holistic talent solutions, it is also Monster.com and their NEW career portal as well as other specialty niche sites that aim to own the talent pool through various career pathing and career targeting technology.

As many of you know Keen embarked on creating a new kind of talent management firm 14 months ago and while we are having a great go of it and are making excellent margins, there is certainly something new to learn every time I turn around.

The most recent conference I led a key note for had a woman from Monster.com, Marica Biggar speak on the reality of the future for staffing and recruitment firms. She showed us demographics that were so evident of predicting our future the hair on the back of my neck was standing up. Obviously Monster.com has their hands on statistics that we only wish we had, and the good news is they are ready, willing and able to share it.

She showed us a chart of supply and demand, I think I first learned about supply and demand in 4th grade, and the picture shown on the overhead was a caveman and a wheel. Looking back it was Economics for Dummies.

What was quite stimulating about this Monster chart was the linkage to Thomas Freidman’s predictions in “The World Is Flat”. The jobs and skill sets in America are changing, the talent pool is changing and is more diverse than ever; to attract and retain the best people will take skills and tools most of us have not even begun to think about. We in Recruitment and Staffing need to shift as well.

2. When there is a need and limited supply, they will pay; when there is no need and a surplus of people, they don’t need to. As our speaker continued to blow us away with facts and figures that have everything to do with the amount of money we have in our bank accounts; we learned exactly where we need to focus our efforts, now and in the future.

3. If you want to own the candidate market – you first must operate in a niche specific enough to do so and capitalize on the economies of scale both in your recruitment processes and in your business development processes.

4. I believe that the hardest pill for recruitment and staffing owners, staffers and business development leaders to swallow is that they are going to have to reinvent who they are for their candidate pool and therefore reinvent who they are for their customer base. What worked in the past is not working now and wont in the future. Technology is advancing faster than humans are, and technology does not have get over the fact that times have changed, it just does. People on the other hand are so busy fighting the trends that in many cases they miss the boat.

5. When you own the candidate market you are no longer spending your recruitment efforts on filling jobs, you are working on attracting and capturing candidates for their career life cycle. Imagine how much more profitable we’d all be if we focused on retaining relationships with candidates before during and after the placement, and whenever our niche candidates needed something having to do with their career (advise, coaching, training, internal progression marketing, a new job outside the company, development in their new leadership role) they could get served by your team. Imagine the power if people were tied to you and your firm first and foremost before they began their search.

6. When you own the talent pool – you own the market. If you are the name to know for Talent Management in Clinical Research, if your company is the one sponsoring Career Progression workshops, Leadership Development programs, Campus Recruitment events, then your company becomes the “Go To” for that Brand of Talent.

7. Monster.com says they are No longer in the job posting business, they are rolling our an immensely powerful tool that uses algorithms to manage their relationship with candidates and keeps them coming back to their site, even when they are not in ‘search’ mode.

8. Vocational training is HOT, and needed. If you ‘Re-Train’ people with the right skill and talent and get them ready for the new emerging hottest roles, you become part of the Obama Stimulus Plan and win in more ways than one.

9. When you host a meet-up, gathering, advisory council or web site that acts as a social connectivity point you own not only the candidate talent pool, you own those that want access to the information.

10. The time for reframing who you are as a staffing and recruitment firm is while everyone else is waiting and wondering when the economy will turn around. The time to build your plan and plant the seeds is NOW.

After all who you were coming into the recession is no longer relevant. It’s who you are coming out that matters.

Comment by Jerry Albright on June 22, 2009 at 9:29am: I was somewhat in agreement with several of your points but then #10 changed my mind. I feel that "who I was" coming into this recession is the key to me still being here. Sorry but this statement is way off base.

Who I was "before" this has everything to do with my continued success. I was and am a person who has built REAL relationships with REAL clients who pay REAL fees. (Emphasis on REAL)

To say we need to "own" the candidate base (I would change the word to "know) is missing some clear points of our work here. YOU NEED A CLIENT.

So while I'll give your post another look to see if I'm missing anything - your last point more or less counters anything I may have gained from earlier in the read.

Recruiters running around trying to "reinvent themselves' using the latest tools and fads are the very ones going out of business each day.

Comment by Margaret Graziano on June 22, 2009 at 11:11am: you are sooooo funny. I am and was a great person, motivated, ect. AND........the way I see things, do things and BE....continually needs to shift, ebb and alter. If your we are not growing we are retracting...emotionally, physically and spiritually. Recruiters reinventing themselves at the cost of not working, are simply avoiding. Recruiters who operate with arrogance and an 'already knowing better' will find themselves in a pickle within in the next few years, mark my words. And.... I always appreciate your thoughts.

Comment by Jerry Albright on June 22, 2009 at 11:58am: What I was getting at in my reply was not needing to reinvent yourself. That in my opinion puts one in the position of chasing every trendy tool that comes out, embracing every buzzword of the week (branding, etc.) and feeling this need to chase markets and cycles. By the time you think you better embrace something in most cases the trend is over and it's too late.

Trying to change who you are is only recommended if you are a failure.

Comment by Margaret Graziano on June 22, 2009 at 12:03pm: dude....have you ever read think and grow rich? I was making a LOT of money, had a great business, and my industry was going to be dying over the next 5 years. Far from a failure. Ahead of the curve. Smart. Concerned. Are you really saying people should stay still, do the same thing and if they want to change it is only because they are loosers...... come on. Dont put a comment like that in writing. OMG CAPPS LOCKED!

Comment by Jerry Albright on June 22, 2009 at 2:56pm: Your post is probably very insightful for the post/sort/blast types of recruiters whose business model was centered around a mad dash onto the Monster account each morning to beat their competitors to the fresh meat. They most certainly should change. In fact I recommed they just go ahead and quit this all together.

But your fact that we should change who we are (as in the "person") could not be further from the mark for me. My success comes from being the PERSON I am and my clients knowing THAT PERSON rather than some trendy way to package myself. Most of my clients are not on Twitter, can't readily be found hanging out on Facebook and for the most part probably avoid a computer screen when they leave the office.

They're real people and we have connected as such. I won't be trying to put a new personality together any time soon.

Love,
Jerry (also very familiar with making the big bucks)

Comment by Margaret Graziano on June 22, 2009 at 3:01pm: LOL

Comment by Jerry Albright on June 22, 2009 at 3:03pm: Are we the only ones here?

Comment by Jerry Albright on June 22, 2009 at 3:06pm: I would like to add though that I do whole-heartedly agree with the need to take a look at the service you are providing and keep it fresh. That's what I have done (beyond anything I have seen anywhere else in the entire recruitosphere....seriously......)