WRITING SAMPLES : Articles March 2003 Finding High-Tech Talent: Savvy Companies Adapt Their Search Strategies to the Times By Robin Rasmussen, BrassRing LLC Not long ago, but in what feels like the distant past, recruiters were in a mad dash to find high-tech talent. Jobs were plentiful, skilled talent was not, and candidates held most of the cards. Today, candidates and recruiters face a very different world. Companies still are hiring, but not at the pace they were two years ago. They take on a more strategic and deliberate planning process than they did in the past. The right skills are still important, but so is organizational fit. Companies find themselves buried in resumes from both qualified, and more often, unqualified applicants. The challenge today is not finding resumes — it's to ferret out the right match from among the mound of resumes a company receives every day. Here's what's working when it comes to recruiting skilled tech talent in the current economy. Recruiting With a Business Strategy Companies are beginning to approach recruitment from a broader strategic framework of workforce planning. Instead of simply filling open jobs, they're aligning their people with long-term business goals. In doing so, they're asking themselves a series of key questions: Do we have the right people and the right skills for our business today? What skills and types of people will we need tomorrow? Next year? Five years from now? What talent is most critical to the success of the business and what can we do to keep that talent within the company? Recruiting Beneath the Surface When you look at the sparse listings on job boards today, it's easy to conclude, mistakenly, that recruiters are not terribly busy. In fact, because of downsizing, most recruiters are forced to do much more with less. Even if companies don't post as many jobs, recruiters are still searching the resume databases for new talent. Freshness is very important to recruiters, and while they may not wish to be bombarded with thousands of resumes from hopeful job seekers responding to a job post, they can quietly and easily search targeted resume databases and begin building private talent pools for the future needs of better economic times. Hiring Management Systems Gaining Ground Recruitment always has been a process ripe for automation, but trying to select and install a hiring-management system during a busy hiring period is like trying to change the tires on a speeding car. With the slowdown in hiring, companies are continuing to explore talent relationship management (TRM) systems with a goal of effectively managing the entire recruiting process. While there are many benefits to having a system at the core of the hiring process, many companies are relying on their systems to help them identify qualified candidates faster and measure their recruiting effectiveness over time. Assess Before Hiring One might think that because talent is more readily accessible, searches are taking half the time. That is assumption is incorrect. While it's true that companies might be able to find talent faster than before, our work with Fortune 500 companies indicates they are taking more time in assessing candidates, sometimes even before they begin the interview process. Assessment provides added insight to a candidate's future happiness and success within a company, delivering a greater return-on-investment for the organization. Technology enables companies to prescreen candidates by asking them a series of customizable questions as they submit their resumes to a company's recruiting Web site. These questions, which can be weighted, range from simple fact-based questions to those that assess intangibles, such as an individual's work or communication style. To speed the process, hiring managers can request that they be notified via e-mail whenever a candidate scores above a certain threshold. Building Tomorrow's Relationships Today There's currently a great deal of high-quality talent in the market. The challenge always has been to build relationships with the right talent so that when you do have an opening, you have pre-qualified candidates primed and ready for an offer. Strategic organizations realize that the hiring slowdown is temporary and they are building relationships with that talent now, with an eye toward the future. It doesn't matter if they have openings today. The goal is to have a fully stocked private talent pool of candidates with whom the company has an established relationship, making hiring for open positions in the future easier and more effective. • Robin Rasmussen is executive vice president of professional services at BrassRing LLC. Back to Top