Why I Started Proactive Talent Strategies, LLC

The talent landscape has evolved and we're on a mission to help companies evolve with it. I started Proactive Talent Strategies, LLC after years of building modern recruiting strategies and programs due to the fact that the recruiting industry is being completely disrupted by new technologies -- and it's having a hard time catching up! It's also becoming very apparent that HR and Talent Acquisition have been slow to keep up with the changing expectations of candidates in the hiring process, a lot of this due to shifts in consumer marketing and technology.

Last year, while I was Head of Talent Acquisition at Glassdoor,  I did a talk at SHRM National in Orlando on this very topic called "How Social Media is Transforming Talent Acquisition". In it I talk about how now is the time for companies to start changing how they attract and hire talent. It's the very reason I started my consulting company...to help companies do just that.

The Evolution of Candidate Expectations

What used to be a world consumed by job boards, applications, automation, and job hunters is now a place of social recruiting – one where referrals, analytics and integrated recruiting strategies rule. Candidate expectations have shifted drastically, too. Today, 47% of workers were born after 1980. And by 2025, more than 75% of employees will be of the “social media generation” and will have grown up with real-time social communication as the norm. Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, YouTube and other apps, social networks, and mobile technologies have reinvented the way that job seekers research companies as well as search for and apply to jobs.

It’s these expectations and advancements in technology that make it imperative that businesses evolve the way they recruit and attract talent. I started Proactive Talent Strategies to consult and advise companies on how to adapt to this complex and ever-changing landscape. 

Below are the five aspects of talent acquisition evolving the most due to this technology shift that I've helped companies, from startups to the Fortune 100, navigate with modern approaches.

1. Sourcing and Pipelining Talent

Finding talent has never been easier than it is today. With the increasing adoption of social networks and with the use of open web sourcing tools like Entelo and Connectifier, finding talent with the skills you're looking for is just a click away. 

With social media, the world has become smaller and people more accessable. It’s important to recognize, however, that while these new technologies make it easier to find talent, this boost from the constantly changing social media landscape is also making sourcing for talent much more complex and candidates more segmented across the web. In turn, the role of a recruiter has evolved to that of a marketer, technologist, detective and the best salesperson at the company. With 96% of the online population on at least one social network, having a multi-channel sourcing and talent attraction strategy has never been more important.

These technologies and social networking sites are changing every day so making sure your recruiters get trained in the latest social and web sourcing tactics is essential to your recruiting success.

2. Employer Branding and Talent Attraction

Employer branding is maturing and the need to "consumerize" the way you market your culture is becoming as important as marketing your products and services. Social has made employer branding extremely complex, which means you need a dynamic content marketing approach to your talent attraction strategy. Employer branding today is all about content and conversations, so it's time for companies to tell their story!

At Proactive Talent Strategies, we get companies started on building a presence on social media, create compelling culture videos, and work with their employees to bring it all together. We partner with internal stakeholders to make sure we're consistent with their branding, help them promote their culture and manage their reputation online, and showcase their unique employee experience. 

3. Candidate Experience and Engagement

At the beginning of the web era, when job boards ruled, recruiting was transactional and impersonal. Now, social and mobile applications can be accessible and extremely user-friendly. People have always talked about your company, but social technology and online communities have transformed talent acquisition by enabling candidates to join the conversation. Engage talent and gather insights to help make your company culture something worth tweeting about! In today’s connected and mobile world, candidate expectations are high, which means it's time to focus on making their lives easier on mobile.

With social also comes the need for transparency. Real-time communication is not necessary, it's essential to building a proactive recruiting strategy. We help companies engage with their audience and encourage them to learn more about their company and brand. In short, it’s about building talent communities and leveraging your employees networks to shift away from reactive recruiting environments towards a proactive approach.

4. Talent Acquisition Technology

Social media sites like Facebook and Pinterest have completely transformed how we think of recruiting technology, from both a data and user experience standpoint. CRM technology is now fused with social technology, from capturing social profile data to conversations and engagement. The time for candidate relationship management is now – capture rich living profile data that can be stored and utilized for strategic recruitment initiatives. The ability to create internal databases of social profiles, competitor intelligence and past applicants is at our fingertips.

A rising trend in talent acquisition technology is towards open web sourcing tools. Technology like this simplifies the vastness of web sources to a single search of aggregated information on talent, making sourcing more efficient and saving recruiters time in identifying top talent. We help companies take a look at their current technology stack and work with them to suggest the right solutions, implement them and train their recruiting teams on how to use them effectively.

5. Recruiting Analytics and Metrics

The great thing about a content rich social media and web marketing strategy for recruiting is that every bit of it is measurable. It’s no longer just about time-to-fill or cost-per-hire -– recruiters have to start thinking about engagement metrics, reputation, brand impressions and source analytics. You need help from employees and leadership to make your social strategy successful. Getting employees engaged and signed on as ambassadors is a must to succeed, and so is communication from leaders to the organization as a whole explaining the mission and plan.

To do that, we help recruiting teams show employees and executives how their efforts impact the success of the company. You can't do this without the right data and it's different for every company in every industry.