We all know how tough it can be to find the right people to lead our organizations. According to a recent research report on the state of recruitment, internal recruitment is exploding. Organizations are putting significant investment into growing their internal recruitment functions to deal with an increasingly complex labour market environment. This trend to hire more recruiters and grow HR can be seen in many organizations. In today’s tough labour market, recruitment can no longer be based on advertising and personal networks (i.e. Rolodex recruitment) or shot-gun approaches that lack a planned and structured approach. Recruitment has become complex, difficult, and strategic.  Now it takes talent to find talent.

Using job boards, social networking tools like LinkedIn and Facebook, and referrals are typical approaches to recruiting today. These approaches may find the occasional ‘A’ player but typically attract ‘B’ and ‘C’ players who are actively looking for work. The ‘A’ players are happily employed and not checking job boards or ads. How can your company find the ‘A’ players? Develop a recruitment strategy and talented recruitment function that knows how to find talent!

In the past, recruitment was viewed as a sales function where companies would sell the company. Now, as an employer, you need to have a complete value proposition to attract great people. The internet and social media provide both an opportunity and a risk to your recruitment function. Your brand and value proposition are dispersed world-wide on the internet, but if the value proposition is weak, your company’s exposure on the internet can be a risk to successfully recruiting talent.

Companies that are successful in recruiting talent have evolved from a “candidate relationship management” model to a model of building a “talent network”. A “talent network” acts as a magnet for all of your outreach to all audiences, be it current or prospective employees, client and customers, fans and followers, and other constituents. A “talent network” model is only used by some employers and offers a unique competitive advantage to employers who make that transition.

The biggest change in recruitment is the fade-out of personal networks and the use of the internet to access to a broad variety of the right candidates. Your recruitment staff needs the skills and know-how to sift through the ‘big data’ available on the world-wide web to target and source potential candidates. Data mining skills support their ability to strategically source and attract passive ‘A’ candidates.

And finally, companies who excel in the art of talent acquisition understand that using the right high value outside executive recruiter or search firm is not a cost-prohibitive transaction but rather, an investment. Considering the value to your business of locating hard to find, well-qualified and capable people for your organization, investment in developing internal resources and using external recruiters to find talent is smart business.