Jessica Booth, senior HR advisor at CSIRO, believes ‘talent management’ is serious business in public sector organisations across Australia, and argues that positive ‘brand experiences’ are the key to attracting and retaining talent.

The notion of “Talent Management” has been bandied around for many years despite the difficulty in precisely defining the concept. A good definition that I like to refer to is that ‘talent management concerns competencies – what employees should know and be able to do, and performance processes – how to leverage those competencies by putting them in the right parts of the organization, and then measuring their impact on real goals’ (Galagan. 2008). More crudely, some say it’s about getting the right people in the right place at the right cost.

What does ‘talent management’, in public sector organisations, entails? At CSIRO, faced with an ageing population, skill shortages and the management of four generations in our workforce, the challenges of ‘talent management’ are many. It can involve strategies around recruitment, leadership development, culture, succession planning, performance management, brand, learning, career development, remuneration, and employee engagement.

The changing demographics of our workforce is one of the biggest challenges we face. We are witnessing a mass exodus of baby boomers (who’ve to date been our ‘lifers’). Bringing in Generation Y to replace them isn’t always the solution either. The skills we seek are sometimes so niche (I need to Google the titles sometimes!) they need to be sourced from around the globe. This creates additional complexity because staff in public sectors are remunerated within particular ‘bands’ rather than what the market is offering. In spite of the recession, redundancies and rising unemployment rates, public sector organisations are still embroiled in the ‘war for talent’.

So, what are we doing about it?

A robust recruitment strategy, no doubt, forms an integral part of any good talent management plan, and developing an ‘employer brand’ plays a massive part in this too. It’s all about how you sell yourself to current and future employees. Companies like McDonalds, SEEK, and Google invest a lot on their employment brand, similarly many public sector organisations in Australia are now putting some serious effort into understanding and communicating their ‘employment brand’. Many are creating positive brand experiences at each of their organisational touch points such as HR processes, internal communications, development opportunities, career management and interactions with the management team.

A study of Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, winner of the ‘Best companies to work for 2008′ award, workplace found the following themes:

• there is a strong focus on work-life balance
• there are flexible work practices
• quality and relationship with co-workers is extremely positive and strong
• employers feel pride in the work they do
• senior staff are accessible and approachable

Such positive brand experiences are not uncommon in Government agencies. Most public sector companies genuinely focus on things like flexible work practices, work life balance, and career development for its employees. Communicating these unique brand experiences effectively is important and challenging at the same time.

Progress, however, is encouraging. Many organisations moved from pretty looking glossy brochures to putting videos on the Internet. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare has done this. At CSIRO we also developed a video to promote our ‘employment brand’.

In the video we see engaged employees who are encouraged to have a ‘great idea and then go and develop it’. They are empowered, they say they have the resources to do their jobs, they’re excited about tackling the problems, they say it’s a great working environment and overall a great place to be. A convincing and real brand experience is communicated in a short (1 minute 35 seconds) video. Public sector organisations have a long way to go in understanding and communicating their employer brand, but it is going to be absolutely necessary in the near future.

It’s truly about brand experiences that are going to enable public sector organisations to attract and retain talent, and also improve employee engagement across the workforce.  Developing and communicating brand experiences, I believe, is at the crux of ‘talent management’ strategies in public sector organisations.

The time for using VIDEO in recruitment has arrived; Justin Hillier, International Sales Manager, Talent on View, explains.

It’s hard to imagine that it was only 10 years ago that recruiters and the corporate world advertised vacant positions in the newspaper, listed their postal address and or fax number and waited a week to see what the response level was like. The Internet and E-mail have now changed the way in which recruiters go about their daily job and 24-hour turnaround times are not unusual.

The newspaper, as a means of sourcing candidates is almost dead, and the fax machine is something that is only used by people who don’t know how to use email and attach documents (if your reading this then you’re unlikely to be one of those). We moved down this path because it was faster and easier to produce results and far more cost effective. It was an Employer’s market, and there are so many quality candidates to choose from that in the past, many employers had a hard time deciding just which one to hire.

It’s a new world that we live in today compared to 10 years ago. iPhones, webcams, blackberries, Skype, Google (and all that comes with them), digital cameras and micro projectors are changing the way we view things and seek information and quality candidates are a needle in a haystack.

Youtube, Google, Hulu, are just some of the sites that people are flocking to, to watch all types of video productions across the Internet. These sites are not only market leaders, they are growing at a pace that is hard to comprehend. People’s thirst for video content via the Internet is unprecedented.

Whilst the majority of this content is seen to be of a personel use, there is no denying that video is taking over as a means to more easily engage with a rapid growing Internet audience. Hulu’s long term goal would seem to encourage all T.V viewing to be internet based, and will slowly bring in advertising as the audience grows and revenue requirements dictate.

Video is taking over the Internet as a means of enhanced engagement and product placement and many industry segments are already on board. People are now able to view not only T.V shows and the latest news, companies are now producing video compilations of their products and how their company operates internally, the famed Employer Branding or Company Profile video.

People no longer are satisfied with simply reading about a company on their website, they actually want to “see” what it is that they would be doing and buying into. They want to see the work environment, the layout of the floors and the general vibe of the staff. A written company profile is extremely useful, however people today want their information fast, exciting and relevant; a 30 second video can sell your company or vacant position far faster then a 5 paragraph written job ad or “About Us” page ever could.

If a candidate “buys” into your company far before they start working for you, your retention abilities would undoubtedly be higher. How else can you “show” a candidate your company before they walk in the door?

It is strange to think that only 5 years ago, a company without an “About us” page on their corporate website was falling behind, now it is a video profile that is taking over to add greater value. The candidate of today doesn’t just want to see a video thrown together, they want to see what makes your business special, how the company supports staff development, encourages staff input and also how they support the local community and environment. They want to see that not only that they are right for your business, but also that you are the right business for them. It’s now a 2 way street.

Television has long held the mantle as the medium of choice for advertising, If a company does not advertise on television, then they risk reaching the most engaged audience. Why?

When we watch television we are entirely engaged in what is on the screen, we are tuned in to every breathing moment waiting to be entertained or informed, think of how many people of all ages sit “glued” to the screen, it simply captures them.

Television advertising is video, simply in a large box that we sit in front of to view other information that we are interested in. Are we starting to see the correlation here?

We all remember the great T.V ads that are funny, outlandish, or just plain clever. They have a tune or rhyme that we simply can’t get out of our heads. They turn viral, and the word of mouth advertising that is generated from this is priceless. This surely must be the aim of the business world when creating a video to attract candidates.

There is a lot of hesitancy in the recruitment market place regarding video of any nature. Many see candidate videos as greater potential for discrimination (really, if your going to discriminate get out of recruitment and seek help), whilst employers believe that a video advertising their company, would add little value. If the latter is to be true then I hope these companies also don’t utilize T.V advertising to sell their products or services. You are after all trying to “sell” someone the vacant position you have. The marketing philosophy is the same.

Video has arrived to the Internet and is here to stay, 12 billion minutes per month of viewed video is proof of that. The increase in broadband access globally and an candidates want for a more entertaining and attractive job advertisements demands something different, we can only read the same styled 5 paragraphs for a job ad for so long.

“Actions speak louder then words”, “A picture tells a thousand words”, “Don’t just say it, do it”, are all great idioms for yesterday, but what about tomorrow. Perhaps recruiters of all walks of life should be considering how to “glue their candidates eyes to the screen” with their job and company video advertising. “A video engages a thousand emotions”, now that’s something I would like to see catch on.

If you would like to contribute to our guest post section, write to phillip (dot) tusing @ destinationtalent (dot) com (dot) au

Phillip asked me to write a few words on topics that I’m very passionate about – referrals and the relevance of social media in the talent acquisition process. Oh yeah and he’s asked me to make some predictions for 2009, too. So here goes..

Referrals in a downturn
Now, being the CEO of 2Vouch – an online job referral platform – I’m obviously convinced of the value of referrals in the sourcing process. In fact, after over 12 years in executive recruiting, I believe they are the most effective sourcing strategy. Research has shown that with referrals you can reduce; the cost of hire, time to hire and increase the quality of hire.

Actually, I’ve been using referrals my whole career and I think they become even more relevant in a downturn, why? Increased unemployment = increase in direct job applications and active candidates = increase in the time cost of screening, filtering, responding, interviewing etc.

I recall working in New York at the backend of 2001 and remember listing jobs on Monster – within the hour I would literally get 200 email applications. I had to quickly log back in make the ad inactive because I couldn’t deal with any more responses. Okay, this may be an extreme example and you won’t experience that with SEEK et al but I would much prefer a candidate being referred to me by someone that has put their reputation on the line and vouched (sorry couldn’t help it J) for the prospective candidate. This allowed me to focus on the important parts of the process like building relationships and qualifying the match.

Where is Talent Acquisition heading?
On the agency side, I have noticed a very strong trend of customers moving from larger generalist recruiters to highly specialised boutiques. In fact, the most interesting trend is the rise of the independent recruiter and the ‘virtual recruiter’; this recruiter is very tech savvy, has all of their data “in the cloud” and is extremely mobile. These recruiters don’t just communicate with their candidate and customer community; they live in the community. It is these recruiters that participate and drive activity in these communities that will survive and thrive in ‘09 and beyond! So if you are an agency recruiter and you want to remain relevant, put yourself in a position where customers in your industry must use you because they cannot get to the people that you can as you have the relationships.

Corporate recruiters and HR will become more educated about proactive and direct sourcing. The use of social media tools to impact employer brand and talent attraction will increase. Lastly, the percentage of hires that come from employee referral programs (ERP) will increase as new tools to manage these programs will make ERPs more efficient and the business case for investment in this area will be too compelling not to be heard by the business.

Social Media’s relevance to recruiting.
Social media is the future – I know I’m probably preaching to the converted but if you are in a role that requires you to find people for your company and your colleagues don’t know what Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook, Blogs, social recruiting and boolean search strings are – then you have a responsibility to get them to Google these terms and suggest they to catch-up.. quickly!. You will see more active candidates responding to advertisements but keep in mind even in a down market companies hold onto their best performers, and these are exactly the people that you should be trying to attract to your company – these candidates are not waiting by their computer for your SEEK ad to go up so that they can respond. You must build relationships with these people over time using social media tools, so that when they decide it might be time for a change you will be the company or recruiter they contact.

Predictions 2009 in Australia
For both Corporate and agency recruiters SEEK will remain the default option in the short term as unfortunately most recruiters are fundamentally lazy (now before all the recruiters reading this post fly of the handle, I speak from experience as a recruiter and as a manager running recruiting businesses globally, so I’ve seen similar characteristics all over the world) and the easiest thing to do is post an ad on a traditional job board and pray that the ideal candidate falls in your lap.

Other innovative business models will take time and cash to gain traction in 2009. For all of those start-ups out there, unfortunately it’s going to be a tough time to raise money in this economic climate. So the big guys will not have to change unless a competitor becomes a pain in the a*se, and that might be a couple of years off.

Having said that, there will be a LOT more active candidates out there so we may see traditional approaches creating floods of applications that are frustrating enough to push recruiters and hiring managers to look for alternatives. Naturally, these people will be extremely cost conscious, so new solutions had better deliver great value FAST.

Lastly, I think social media will play an important role in recruiting, particularly Twitter the micro-blogging service within the Tech and Digital markets. We will also see the virtual recruiter start to go mainstream! Viva la virtual!

If you are interested in listening to my rants or would like to keep updated about the developments at 2Vouch you can follow us on Twitter

Riges Younan http://twitter.com/rigesyounan

2Vouch http://twitter.com/2Vouch

All the best for 2009!