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When a major U.S. retailer needed to fill 160,000 seasonal jobs last year, it didn’t post the openings in local newspapers, as com-panies had done for over a century, nor did it post them on job boards online. Instead, the retailer used its website, online social tools, and collections of profiled consumers, follow-ers, and prospective candidates to find the talent it needed. Continued on Page S3

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TalenT Wars

CorporaTe reCruiTmenT in The age of soCial media

B efore Jeff russakow Joined findly as Ceo, he had already established a reputation as a trans-formational software, services, and new media ex-ecutive at Yahoo!, Symantec, Adobe, and SAP. As a senior leader at these large companies, running a

variety of global business functions, Jeff always had a deep in-terest in better ways to find, attract, and develop great talent at scale. Russakow’s mission at Findly: to transform the talent acquisition space and reinvent how people find and acquire talent. In HR parlance, he was the right person for the right job at the right time.

“Talent acquisition has not really evolved over the last cou-ple of decades,” he explains. “Compared to e-commerce or advertising online, where companies know a lot about people and can target them, talent acquisition has really remained in the age of the newspaper.”

In the 1970s and 1980s, job seekers searched classified ads, circling the ones they wanted, then mailed résumés, and ultimately filled out application forms in person. The Internet Age turned the classified ad section into an online job board by moving the application online, but did little more. “All we did was put the process on steroids,” Russakow says. “We didn’t actually change the fundamental model.”

Meanwhile, the world has changed and with it the way people want to look for employment. Research shows that just under 50% of people in the U.S. who are looking for a job use a mobile device, but with some 90% of company job sites not mobile-enabled, it’s nearly impossible to apply for a job that way. At the same time, online worlds such as Amazon have profiled their customers, proposed products customized to them, and then enabled them to buy with the click of a button.

“We’re trying to evolve the talent acqui-sition community toward this more focused model,” Russakow proclaims. “Why should job applicants ever have to fill out a job ap-plication more than once? People have be-

come consumers of work. They tend to shop online for work, and they want their online shopping experience for work to feel like everything else in their world—mobile, easy, one-but-ton, intuitive, on demand. They’re looking for a system that finds them a job while they’re on the go.”

For recruiters, whose highest-converting sources of talent tend to be the people they already know, new technological recruiting tools work. And for employers, the process targets those who are most likely to be someone they would be most interested in hiring.

“What we’ve created at Findly is a software suite that fea-tures a lot of the traditional components that companies ex-pect, with the added advantage of richer profile information on potential candidates,” Russakow observes. “For example, rather than having to prospect in a talent pool of billions of people on the Internet, our clients can approach the right

100 or 2,000 people and get response rates of 40% to 70% because they’ve hit the right individuals with the right backgrounds who have an interest in what those employers are offering.” •

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Finding the right talent today takes time. And no one knows this better than Greg Miller, director of engineering talent at Ultimate Software, who started a unique talent acquisition program in 2006 to catch rising tech stars. Miller’s program stands apart with its hands-on approach, sending Ultimate’s engineers into school classrooms to teach. Seeing the students in action helps them identify the best and brightest for the internship program at Ultimate, one of the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For.

The key to Ultimate’s strategy is connecting with talented young people early on in high school. “It’s difficult to recruit top-tier students by going to a career fair,” says Miller. “They’re only found through building relationships and staying in frequent contact.” Ultimate also sponsors programming competitions—events that filter talent and nurture high potentials. “Recruiting high-tech talent can be a challenge,” Miller says, “but when talented young people learn about our unique, people-centered culture before they start the job search, it gives us a distinct advantage.”

CatCh a Rising teCh staR

he Company is hardly the only one using social media and other Internet channels to recruit work-ers from far and wide. During the past decade, if

slowly at first, companies have been recognizing the power of networking and turning to it for talent.

According to the 2013 Social Re-cruiting Survey conducted by Jobvite, a recruiting platform for the social web, the alternate human resources (HR) tool has gone mainstream, gaining nearly universal, industry-wide adop-tion. The survey finds 78% of recruit-ers have hired through social media, and 94% say they use or plan to use social media in recruiting talent for business.

The top channels? Facebook, Twit-ter, and the leader, LinkedIn, pulling in 96% of searching, 94% of contact-ing, and 92% of vetting, respectively. Other networks like YouTube, Yam-mer, and Instagram are proving rich sources of talent as well. Jobvite’s

conclusion: “Anyone not leveraging social referrals is behind the curve.”

The transition from print classi-fieds to online job boards—and then to social sites—is part of a larger trend, however, that is seeing tech-nology play an increasing role in HR strategies as well as a major shift in the recruiting dynamic. According to the Society for Human Resource Management, there has been a conflu-ence of factors making recruitment a more candidate-driven process, such as a more competitive global land-scape and demand for skilled workers; increased use of information and com-munications technologies; and aging baby boomers leaving the workforce.

As a result, recruitment platform and software companies, along with tech-savvy human capital consul-tants, are leading the charge in the new talent wars. But while the tools and methods have changed, the goals remain constant, if more critical than ever before to attain: Find the best tal-ent for the right job, make sure they’re

aligned with the company’s goals and objectives, and retain them for future leadership roles in the organization.

The New Job SeekerCompanies have always looked for the best workers to fill jobs, but the demand today for top talent, and candidates’ incessant desire to work for the best companies, have changed the equation between the two.

“Job seekers have a lot more op-tions today than they used to,” says Jeff Russakow, CEO of Findly, Inc. “And we see the rate of job turn is higher and higher, so companies need to think a lot more about employment branding and the quest to attract qualified talent.”

Russakow has seen this first-hand, as Findly builds cloud-based social recruiting solutions and helps companies around the globe fill their HR needs. “The employer has less time to please the employee, and the employee has more choices. There’s a lot of talent out there—if you can do a

T

Ultimate Software is committed to finding and nurturing talent — one relationship at a time.

Greg Miller

UltiPro® from Ultimate Software. HR, Payroll, & Talent Management in the Cloud. For the human side of human capital management. UltimateSoftware.com

From FORTUNE Magazine, 2014 © 2014 Time Inc. Used under license. FORTUNE 100 Best Companies to Work For is a registered trademark of Time Inc. FORTUNE and Time Inc. are not affiliated with, and do not endorse products or services of, Licensee.

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“Treating recruiting like a consumer interaction and designing the experience around the candidate are crucial for businesses that want to attract top talent."

— CeCile leroux VICE PRESIDENT ULTIMATE SOFTWARE

better job at getting the right people, you’re going to do better.”

If some HR departments have been slow to embrace social media, it may be because HR is the last function in an organization to be approached by the software industry. But as Rus-sakow and others in recruitment have found, the new model lines up with the world of e-commerce—where many candidates expect a consumer-like experience in a world where compa-nies such as Amazon track customer purchases and preferences. Now employers need to do the same.

For employers, social media offers ready-made profiles of likely candi-dates for any given job. At the same time, the need to attract talent has driven companies to promote their brands online, where they can project their image and culture and develop communities of not just consumers but also of potential hires.

“Employment brand is now one of the most important and complex parts of talent acquisition,” says Josh Bersin, principal and founder of Bersin, a research and advisory service, and an authority on talent management. “Your ‘talent brand’ is your ‘company brand.’ Companies are building corporate followers to drive the employment brand. These communities are not really ‘recruiting’ communities but rather high-value so-cial networks that include employees, alums, candidates, as well as potential customers.”

Russakow adds, “People have become consumers of work, and they tend to shop online for work the same way they shop online for everything else. They want to review and check out employers even before sharing their résumé as much as employers want to check them out.”

New wAYS To INTerACT As a result, the talent drive has changed the way employers and em-ployees interact with each other at the recruitment and acquisition stages.

“Engaging people in the talent ac-quisition process—which is frequently the candidate’s first interaction with a company—can be very challenging,” says Cecile Leroux, vice president of product strategy and product man-agement at Ultimate Software, a lead-ing cloud provider of human capital management solutions. “We know that technology that supports a candidate-friendly experience is crucial when attracting top talent.”

Ultimate applies a people-first philosophy to its own talent processes

as well as to the technology it creates. For example, when future employees first visit the company’s south Florida headquarters, they pass through an atrium converted into a basketball court, which signals that the culture is both competitive and fun.

Ultimate’s recruiting technology is part of its UltiPro offering—a compre-hensive HR and talent solution that includes onboarding, performance management, succession manage-ment, talent retention tools, and ad-ditional features. “One essential com-ponent of our culture is identifying and hiring the right people so we can build successful, long-term relation-ships. Our technology is designed to attract and retain the best talent while delivering a personal, engaging experi-ence for people,” says Leroux. “By providing technology that is simple, intuitive, and enjoyable to use, we can help companies recruit, develop, and engage highly qualified talent for their organizations.”

opTImIzATIoNOnce talent is recruited, of course, it has to be managed, retained, aligned with business strategies, and guided toward future positions. What gives these processes greater weight today is the rapid pace of change in the marketplace, and the tightening of the labor market.

“Optimizing talent is key for com-panies,” says Rainee Busby, a manag-ing partner at Fokal Fusion, LLC, a Houston-based human capital consult-ing firm. “Where we really see a need is to ensure that development and ca-reer paths are structured in support of an organization-wide succession plan. That plan helps leadership identify critical and key roles within their com-pany and make sure they’re developing and retaining a pool of talent specific to being able to take over those jobs at some point in the future.”

Fokal Fusion also works with HR and other corporate departments to assess and implement the right

To advertise in our Human Resources sec-tions, contact Ron Moss at 212.522.6069. For reprints, call PARS at 212.221.9595, ext. 437.

®

platforms and systems that, increas-ingly, are helping recruit, develop, and retain talent. “HR or shared services are there to support the conversation about talent and succession planning through tools and best practices,” adds co-managing partner Alexsys Thompson, “but business needs to own that talent.”

Optimizing talent in the current environment has become a major concern of business leaders, not just nationally but globally as well. The Conference Board CEO Challenge 2013 survey of 729 top executives from around the world found human capi-tal—and how best to develop, engage, manage, and retain talent—to be their main challenge, ahead of operational excellence and even innovation.

Summing up the results of the survey, the Conference Board came to

a hard-hitting conclusion: “No busi-ness strategy can be executed without the right talent; no innovation occurs without creative, inquisitive people; and no company survives without lay-ers of strong, vibrant leaders who lead it confidently forward.” The ability to place the right person in the right job at exactly the right time has become critical—particularly since manufactur-ing and high-tech jobs once outsourced overseas continue to migrate back to the U.S., and as 21st-century work-place skills are increasingly in demand. In fact, America’s position in the global economy—and companies’ competitive edge—may well depend on it. ●

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of recruiters say they use or plan to use social media in recruiting talent for business.

— Jobvite social recruiting survey

ThE MOST SuCCESSFul COMpaniES pROMOTE TalEnT within their organization. It’s worth the time to internally build and develop the talent you need in your key positions. fokal fusion is armed with a versatile repertoire of services ready to enhance your workforce, such as recruitment and workforce optimization, human capital planning and metrics, strengths-based ecosystem, and related technology. We don’t just tell you how to do it; we roll up our sleeves and partner with you to optimize talent to change your game. In a business landscape that is ever-changing, there is one cer-tainty: Fokal Fusion, Human Capital Strategists.

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recruiting from the inside out

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