Yves Lermusi, CEO, Checkster
Within three years, every professional in the US will be on LinkedIn. What will the impact be on organizations? How should they adapt their talent strategies?
The talent management space is red hot. In recent months, Oracle and SAP, the largest enterprise software companies, have been acquiring other players including Taleo, SuccessFactors, and Jobs2Web. A major new entrant, Salesforce.com (the most innovative company, according to Forbes), announced it is extending its product offerings in the talent management space. But probably the most noticeable event in the last year was the IPO of LinkedIn. With about two new users every second, we forecast the US workforce will be on LinkedIn before the end of 2014.
So just imagine we are in December 2014 and you are looking for a patent lawyer in San Francisco specializing in telecommunication issues, for example. You use the structured search that LinkedIn offers and 20 people come up. You have the 20 potential candidates that create the universe you want to consider. This will apply to every job, at every level. These key changes are happening now and driving the evolution of talent management.
Because those 20 people are all employed, the first step is to present the opportunity to them to capture their interest. This phase is the marketing of the job. Depending on the level and the strategic importance of the position, job marketing strategies can range from direct contact resulting from close connections you have in common, to leveraging an executive search firm to get the call back, to targeted display ads appearing on a tablet newspaper. Leading brand names will always have an advantage here, but creative approaches and timing will enable organizations to reach anyone at any time. Accordingly, retention strategies will become even more important because good corporate ‘marketers’ will be after your talent too.
So this first change is that organizations will have total visibility of the available talent pool. The best marketers will be able to interest and attract many candidates to have them consider their opportunities. In short, posting the current job description to career websites will become the second step or may even disappear completely for some positions, as jobs are marketed selectively to specific individuals. Organizations will be divided into good marketers and poor marketers, with the upper hand going to good marketers since they will have the greater number of candidates to choose from. That is where the second strategic differentiation will kick in.
The second skill—the selection skill—will be the most critical. An ample choice of candidates is useless if you select the wrong one. In other words, once you attract the candidates, make sure to pick the best one.
Many selections methods will be further refined from traditional interviews to assessments and leveraging collective intelligence from colleagues. But even more than looking at skills, knowledge and abilities, greater emphasis will be on fit. Fit will address two issues: the ability to attract more people and simultaneously prevent further turnover. Towards this end, talent recognition programs will also have a resurgence. The successful companies at this stage are the great selectors.
So, organizations must be ready for tomorrow’s transparency. Everyone will be able to see who works where and the ability to retain your talent will present a new struggle. That is why LinkedIn is changing everything. But talent mobility with or without LinkedIn is a reality. The means to achieve it may change yet the two key skills organizations have to master: being a good marketer and a great selector.
In summary, the destiny of an organization based on those two skills shows the doomed organization poorly selecting future talent among a poor shortlist compared to the striving organization making good talent selection among a good pool of candidates. In the middle is the failing organization, which makes random selection among a large pool, while the improving organization makes good talent decisions among a more limited pool of candidates.
Where are you today? Too many organizations are in the failing stage with an adequate candidate pool and inadequate hiring selection. To garner the best talent for your organization, maintain good marketing and strive to master the selection skill.
Yves Lermusi (aka Lermusiaux) is CEO & founder of Checkster, a Career and Talent Checkup tool. Follow him on Twitter @YvesatCheckster.
Well said Yves. The front end of the recruitment process (marketing and selection) must adapt to the coming change in the marketplace.
I question the projection that the US workforce will be on LinkedIn before the end of 2014.I’m sure there are plenty of people in the workforce who have no good reason at all to be on LinkedIn, or those like me who have an account but almost never use it because their job doesn’t require ‘networking’. LinkedIn may only become a good place to source active job-seekers or to seek out job roles like sales which require social interactions, but there will forever be a large chunk of the talent pool that will remain disconnected from business-oriented social networks.
Yves, I know first-hand that you’re a very sharp guy, but the opening sentence of your first paragraph was attention-grabbing hyperbole and your evidence in the second paragraph is insufficient to support it. LinkedIn may currently be getting 1-2 new profiles/second, but many of those are *duplicate* profiles (from recruiters, career changers who effectively have multiple professional identities, people who simply forgot their original login or no longer have access to the associated email and don’t realize LinkedIn will help consolidate lost profiles, etc.).
More importantly, the join rate will slow eventually, and many people will never put their profile on LinkedIn. As Maureen Sharib’s recent post (http://www.ere.net/2012/07/05/linkedin-lemons-to-lemonade/) and comments such as mine under Dr. John Sullivan’s post (http://www.ere.net/2012/07/02/20-reasons-why-linkedin-will-be-the-1-recruiting-portal-of-the-future/ ) indicate, there are several reasons why desirable candidates are already turned off to being included in such networks.
Notwithstanding the foregoing, I do agree with your post’s fundamental points that self-branding (particularly from a recruitment marketing perspective) needs to undergo a major upgrade at most companies and selection processes need at least significant tweaking at most companies.
As an active professional recruiter for over the past 40 years–I’ve found there are those who are gainfully employed, and happily employed, who will not be dragged out into the public view that this new transparency you suggest LinkedIn will present in 2014.
LinkedIn is not changing everything but it is accelerating changes to gaining better direct access to more people than ever before. While there is certainly more transparency coming it is not necessarily appreciated transparency. Many working professionals value visibility but not the visibility that suggests they are now open to leave their current employer.
Your thinking that “marketing opportunities” will bring out these highly attractive candidates is missing the point as to why such candidates were never available in the first place. LinkedIn will certainly provide exposure to a larger employee population with great tools to decipher great “fitting” candidates. The question continues to be, “Will employers leveraging LinkedIn be able to woo such great candidates away from their current employer?” Some will move but most will not. In fact the smart employers will now do more to “golden handcuff” highly valued employees more so now that LinkedIn is throwing a brighter spotlight on who works where.
LinkedIn is not changing everything but they are accelerating the development of enhanced employee retention programs as well as identifying and off-loading unhappy campers.