There is a great deal written on the recruitment blogs about the lost process of “old school” recruiting. Recruiters who learned the business with just a phone and a list of companies to call learned how to source, contact and garner the attention of a working professional long enough to gain the trust and interest necessary to guide a prospective candidate through a recruiting experience that resulted in a new career for the recruit, and fresh talent for the client – those were the good old days.

Face it – we are not going back. Our world is racing to new levels of interpersonal discovery. Gone are the days of simply using the phone to discover and encourage talent. The phone remains a dynamic communication instrument, and many recruiters and sourcers will continue to use it, but over all “old school” is rapidly diminishing.

We are entering a new world of profiles, alerts, messages and control for the talent seeking opportunities and for companies seeking talent. We receive the data we need and want when we ask for it. Think TIVO on steroids or Cruise walking through the store in Minority Report. People are controlling message intake and response through their phones, television, radio, Internet, and email. The same transition will or has begun with respect to how companies attract talent, and how talent networks to companies. At the forefront is the use of rich media as a way for both top talent and employers to grab the attention of a desired audience.

Right place right time
It used to be that when you asked someone how they found their job, many times a story was relayed about an event or a happenstance. “I was in the right place at the right time,” the serendipitous moment when a person one met, or a party one attended, or the call came from a recruiter just as one felt most disgruntled about their employer. The search to find ways to increase and control these serendipitous moments can be found in the placement of rich media in places on the Internet we are known to visit. (At least there is belief we will visit.)

We are rapidly entering a new realm of grabbing a prospective candidate’s attention, there will be new channels and new rules and it is not too early to prepare to compete for talent’s mindshare. Here are three concepts to carefully consider as your organization sources for talent.

New Concepts in Sourcing Talent

• Rich Media. Have you heard of companies creating advertising campaigns on YouTube? Visit YouTube and search recruitment. You will find high school football players who have slick marketing campaigns with stats and highlights hoping a college scout will check them out. The Military and a growing number of companies have videos profiling all that is good, inviting talent to send in profiles and resumes. Boeing recently caught the attention of a prospective candidate through one of their recruitment videos, and secured the talent.
  
  Many companies – of all sizes – have rich media content. For instance, videos of executives discussing new products and initiatives abound but traditionally have been used for customer attraction and retention. A small number of large corporations have sprinkled rich media recruitment videos through recruitment blogs, emails, and social networks. The opportunity to grab the attention of talent with a directed message of value is too great. If global competition for talent continues at the current rates, we can expect most companies to have some form of rich media in place to support their recruitment efforts in the near future. The trick for the traditional HR department will be putting a value on the effort in order to get funding for the project. Try working with marketing first to help tie recruitment to product and service sales. You may find mutual value.
  
  
• Transparency. The chance that talent knows more about you than you do about them is high. Expect that by the time talent agrees to see you they have Googled your company, read all the blogs – good and bad – and have found whatever information there is about you. Candidates expect a company to be true to what it says it is, and they will have a pretty good idea (because of the new transparency in media) whether a company is what it says it is. So, not a bad idea to stop and take a look around and ask, “If they know us, will they work for us?”
  
  Take the time to Google yourself, your company and your organization, to see what talent sees when they research you. There may be very positive information, and there may be something negative as well. Expect talent to find blogs discussing corporate issues that they will ask questions about when interviewed. Do not be surprised.
  
  Expect talent to know more concerning their value to your company. Payscale.com and Salary.com provide talent and recruiters compensation information. As more people on both sides of the equation enter data, the more efficient the salary discussion becomes. Good or bad, the results do affect the compensation discussion. Companies turning to internal compensation discussions are best prepared and will secure talent faster.
  
  
• Relationship. When top talent is interested in your company, they will want to participate in relationships on their terms. The days of, “Send me a resume and we’ll be in touch when we have the right opportunity” are gone. Talent today requires that we contact them immediately when an opportunity matching their interests becomes available. And, they will expect recruiters to contact them in any way they desire – email, phone, IM, SMS.
  
  Man, this may sound tough to old school recruiters – we used to say, “If they want to work here they’ll do what it takes.” Uh, uh… no more. When all companies seek quality talent and have the opportunity to interact online, time is of great importance. Talent and opportunities will be matched and each alerted when these profiles discover each other in cyber space. These matches will contain a level of scoring and ranking that separates the quality. Again, these will be based on the terms of the talent. They may not share contact data until they have been compelled by the company to act. Therefore, our market messaging becomes all the more important, and, if possible, personal.

Think about your organization. Do you have rich media contact you can use to compel talent? Does your team fully understand transparency and how to use it to your advantage? And do you have a relationship philosophy and process in place to insure you attract and retain the right quality talent?

New times, old issues – great opportunities!