Contrarian recruiting works very similarly to investing – go against the crowd. My recommendation is to use the economic downturn and pandemic as a fantastic opportunity to source top talent and build your employment brand.
Am I nuts?
No, and I’ll tell you why: people are nervous right now. Candidates are edgy about their jobs, career growth, and the long term prospects for their company. So is your competition and they’ve all but stopped recruiting. In other words, it’s quiet out there right now…the perfect time to build relationships with the best talent.
Some of you are thinking “ah, that doesn’t work since people only want to talk about open positions” but I think it’s fundamentally about high quality, authentic relationships. If you’re doing talent planning you’ll know the kinds of skills that are either missing or that need to be augmented by either more people or better performers. You don’t need to have a ton of recruiters or money to make this work, either. Using this targeted information, take people to coffee, sponsor industry events or discussions, involve outsiders in strategic brainstorming, write a blog, write articles for industry websites, etc. The key is that your representatives have to sound intelligent, have a vivid vision for the company and its role shaping the industry’s future, and come across as an ideal future teammates.
So spend some time asking yourself whether you’re passionate about your organization and its future. If you are, hone your pitch and figure out ways to build relationships with the best people now, before the economy heats up. When it does, you’ll have actually have relationships with the best candidates which should give you a competitive advantage and may even lower the need for joining incentives.
Adaptive Talent’s retained search practice is designed to help you land high impact talent. Contact us at info (at) adaptivetalent.co to set up a discussion.
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Adaptive Talent is a talent consultancy designed to help organizations achieve amazing results and ongoing adaptability. Founded in 2008 and based in Vancouver, Canada we offer retained search, assessments, total rewards consulting, training, leadership coaching and development programs, and culture & organizational development consulting.