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Talent Part 3 – Building Talent in Your Organization

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Prior posts in this series”
Talent Part 1 – The Rules of Talent
Talent Part 2 – HCI on Talent and Engagement

For part 3 of this series, I’m going to focus on building talent through talent acquisition and learning management. However, I’m not going to talk about them as separate and distinct processes. TA and LM will be reserved for other posts. Instead, we’ll talk about why recruiters should be actively thinking about learning management.

We are all well versed at this point regarding the recruitment of talent. So well versed that we have long called this process “talent acquisition.” To acquire talent, our compensation analysts put together comprehensive job descriptions that include all sorts of skills and competencies. The recruiters then go out and find candidates and measure them to these attributes and one of them gets hired. Oversimplification? Yes. Off target? I don’t think so. It is true that aquiring talent is the target, but a true recruitment process must consist of more than the normal processes of yesterday with a new process name.

What attracts talent to an organization? As we’ve posted before here, compensation and benefits are attractors, but not long term motivators. Instead, long term indicators of satisfaction and engagement are about job design, culture, and the ability to impact their end deliverable. In the post I pointed to, I missed one critical element. Engagement also highly depends on the opportunities for growth. This growth may come in the form of new experiences, broader job duties, ore management. One thing they all have in common is learning.

I believe that learning is one component that is missing from most talent acquisition processes and strategies today. We talk to our candidates about growth opportunities, but how many of our recruitment staffs actually strategized with our learning organizations to talk about and implement new ideas? As noted by Jason Averbook (CEO, Knowledge Infusion):

In a job market where employees have more choices about their futures, selecting a job with an organization that enables learning and growth opportunities can make or break a candidate’s decision. An organization’s branding and reputation as a learning leader will attract two to three times more employees than will be drawn to an organization that is not known for its development programs.Averbook, Jason, June, 2005. “Connecting CLOs With the Recruiting Process,” CLOmedia.com. Retrieved from http://knowledgeinfusion.com on December 27, 2005.

With everyone waiting for the impending workforce supply crisis, creating an externally focused learning brand becomes more important. Sure it’s wonderful if your employees know you have a learning environment. In many industries, your clients will be pleased to know this as well. However, the next audience is the potential candidate pool. This means the rest of the world. If you can make them understand what your organization supports in terms of ongoing learning, you win the battle for talent.

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2 responses to “Talent Part 3 – Building Talent in Your Organization”

  1. 7. Oracle versus SAP – 2008 8. The #1 and 2 Factors for Successful HRMS Implementation 9. Vendor or Client: Who’s Fault is it? 10. Talent Series: The Rules of Talent; On Talent and Engagement; Building Talent; What Does Talent Want?

  2. Independent Consulting: Perception or Reality? Oracle versus SAP – 2008 The #1 and 2 Factors for Successful HRMS Implementation Vendor or Client: Who’s Fault is it? Talent Series: The Rules of Talent; On Talent and Engagement; Building Talent; What Does Talent Want?

  3. regina Avatar

    Absolutely, the other thing is that with the younger workforce – learning and career development will be seen as the main attractors and play into most candidates’ decisions about where to work. I think that recruiters often times focus on the trees and not the forest in this scenario and that learning professionals forget to query recruiters about getting a grip on the needs and requirements of the “potential employee segment.”

  4. […] 10. Talent Series: The Rules of Talent; On Talent and Engagement; Building Talent; What Does Talent Want? […]