Attracting Talent 4.0: The Keys to Building the Best Team.
19 de October de 2021
19 de October de 2021
You must have surely heard about Monchi — Sevilla FC’s sporting director has been called “The Wizard of Transfers” or “King Midas of Football” thanks to his ability to attract the best talents. However, he tries not to make it a big deal: “The only secret in life is hard work. Like Valdano said, ‘it’s only in the dictionary that success comes before work’. The secret is not mine; it’s Sevilla’s. The club has been able to create an environment where people feel comfortable and, when this happens, football players come up”.
Creating a good environment has become one of the key elements, together with knowing how to find the best talent and seducing them. Practically until the beginning of the new century, all of this was carried out through piles of printed CVs and, later, through job searching platforms. But now the game has moved to the social networks. Recruitment 4.0 —or social recruiting— already makes up 60% of the companies’ processes and that number goes up to 80% when it comes to professionals looking for a job.
In this process of digitalisation and socialisation, LinkedIn stands out: it is the biggest social network for professionals, with more than 570 million users. But, one word of advice: recruitment doesn’t end in one social network. On the contrary, almost 30% of companies stated that they have rejected candidates due to their social networks profile — and these include Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and every other social network where candidates offer information about themselves and their general profile. “That’s why it’s crucial to use social networks in a positive way in order to create a personal brand”. Carmen Gómez, Talent Manager at Minsait-Indra, summed it up like that during EAE’s Webinar ‘Recruitment 4.0: New Techniques to Attract Talent’.
As for big companies, “employer branding” must also be pampered. “Attracting professionals is an art form — you need a strategy, goals, determination and persistence”, Carmen pointed out. On that testing ground, the recruiter and the candidate must find and attract each other.
Recruiters insist on saying that, ultimately, it’s the workers the ones choosing the company. It’s them who decide whether or not they will join the team. That’s why Monchi says what he says about Sevilla’s success. With this in mind, following 4.0 guidelines, companies are placing candidate-experience at the centre of their processes. And this isn’t about the candidates’ work experience but rather the recruitment process experience. According to Carmen, having candidates experience something different during the recruitment process becomes crucial in order to tip the balance between two opportunities.
This is a key element in a competitive environment where there is a shortage of specialised talent. Recruiting, done well, can help us move through this magma more easily and it also offers other short and medium term advantages. Social networks make the job easier through segmentation and immediacy — they broaden the database and help recruiters check for aptitudes and competencies straight out of the social profiles. If the job has been done well, talents themselves become brand advocates, closing the “employer branding” circle.
The way in which we attract talent has changed a lot. The new recruitment techniques that are currently being implemented can be summed up with the following 5 keys:
Brand Image: A job offer isn’t just a piece of paper. Companies must show their value and create their image through the components of the process. The dynamics that were limited just to the reception of a CV have long been outdated.
Every Network: As we have already mentioned, companies don’t focus on LinkedIn alone. The other social networks provide relevant information on candidates.
Gamification: “Where do you see yourself in 4 years?” is no longer a mandatory question in selection processes. Old interviews about aptitudes and trajectory have given way to trials and simulation games in which the candidates’ competencies are evaluated — competencies such as leadership, teamwork and many others.
Networking: Companies’ workshops or online courses provide recruiters with the possibility to broaden their candidate portfolio and to take a look at possible talents.
Inbound recruiting: This methodology, that follows the marketing funnel principles, is centred on the candidate. These are strategies that focus on generating traffic on employment websites in order to attract candidates, convincing them, getting them to apply and finally hiring them.
Making up the best team is an art form: the art of becoming attractive for the most talented people in an environment that is increasingly competitive. It’s necessary to go out and get the future or present star employees, but also to seduce them. And, in this light, the use that companies make of social networks is becoming more and more important with each passing day.