Idea: Source your own people first
Throughout my career in recruitment marketing, I have always advocated for an “advertise-last” model. The theory here was that you have already been paying to attract hundreds (maybe even hundreds of thousands) of applicants each month. People who know you enough to share an application with you. People who learned a bit about you. People who are already into you!
Now, amplify that.
Psst…I am talking about your current employees.
What I continue to advocate for is the following:
Open a requisition.
Source from your own people first.
I bet there are enough people that already work for you to build a strong slate. Talent that is already being tapped each day on LinkedIn by other recruiters at other companies. They’re executing their Switcher Strategy on your people!
You know the job market is hot right now. You know how hard it is to find people to do great work. The reality is, you already have these people and they have PROVEN that they do good work. But we don’t source internally first.
And I know the reason why?
I hear it all the time.
“We can’t poach our own people.”
Why not?
Other people are.
It’s time to talk to our managers. It’s time to tell them that talent hoarding is killing the business. It time to tell our managers that if they are looking inside, they are looking outside, too and will leave. Essentially, we need to tell our managers, “your going to lose them anyway.”
Managers: Your people are making this choice. You can either grow them or lose them.
The choice is yours. And you should choose to help them grow. To let them make choices, to help them feel special. To know their options. To help them stay.
Internal sourcing and recruiting should be basics. Recruit your own people first. Your own people who want to stay. Your own people who are looking for the next thing in their career and the people who want to add more value to your org.
Your people want to stay. LinkedIn tells us this as does our own data. When employees are logging into WORQDRIVE every 9 days to update their skills and see new matching jobs, we know they want to stay. Help them.