Recruiting is Sales (and marketing)

Yesterday I had the pleasure of spending the morning with the world class talent acquisition team at Boston Scientific.  As part of their Global HR Summit I was invited to share my insights specific to emerging trends, best practices and competency specific to Talent Acquisition.

The central theme of our workshop centered around one core insight:  Recruiting is Sales.

Every organization makes foundational decisions about how to approach talent strategy.  Doing it right mandates C level support and buy in, resources, investment, strategy, competency, tools, technology….all of those things.  It also requires a fundamental decision around what kind of talent you want to hire…

There is a difference between recruiting for each open requisition and relying heavily on the in-box vs developing a Target Candidate Universe and Precision Targeted Sourcing/Recruiting Strategy. The difference often requires a shift in competency and resources. And progressive organizations with a Talent First mindset are recognizing that now is an ideal time to begin building a pipeline, relationships and demonstrating value around the career opportunity you provide with high quality, right fit candidates. Sounds like a sales and marketing conversation to me.

What is the business performance plan your organization has committed to delivering on over the next 12 months? 3 years?  Do you have the talent and workforce readiness to ensure it happens?  Who are the most important external individual contributors you need to add to ensure the outcome objective? When do they start?

It’s the people that deliver the plan.  Knowing The Best Talent Wins is there anything more important going on in your business today than the ability to get and keep the right people?

Its an important strategic consideration and necessary conversation for every organization to have.  I enjoyed sharing my thoughts with the energized team at Boston Scientific yesterday…..and look forward to watching their success.  I hope they enjoyed it also!

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