Changing How Talent Acquisition Will Compete in the ‘Expectation Economy’

I am energized by what the concept of a “career” will look like in the very near future. It’s not going to look much like it does today. There will be more exploration across industries and less expectation to pick a singular path.

There will be more personal re-invention as skills become investments in career growth.

There will be more risk taking as failure is no longer risque’.

There will be more moves as moving becomes the norm.

Every career move will start with a story, rely on relationships, generate an experience and require perfect timing; this process will become a cycle we repeat 10 -12 times in our ‘careers’.

Even as those of us responsible for re-imagining talent processes/strategies or upgrading our technologies might feel like the concept of a career changed overnight — we know it didn’t. This more fluid concept of a career is the inevitable result of trends we’ve been experiencing for at least a decade:

● Our rising consumer expectations “bleeding into work”

● Our growing demand for transparency, positive impact and purpose

● Our deepening desire for rich experiences over stagnant tenure

At this moment, our society — and our workforce — has an excess of three powerful things: choice, access, and freedom. Why is this important? Just think about life before smartphones.

… exactly.

How did we get things done? We moved slower, decisions were mostly guesswork and frankly we still had patience. Now think about HR’s life before Glassdoor, LinkedIn and Facebook. HR still had the highly controllable task of building experiences around the internal needs of the organization.

That’s over.

As we began designing the new Symphony Talent and integrating the capabilities of Hodes, SkillCheck, Findly, QUEsocial and HRLogix we focused on building a unique end-to-end Talent Acquisition capability that is hyper relevant to the world we operate in both now and into the future.

From the development of the employer brand strategy and creative, to activation across paid/owned/earned media channels, to candidate management to how we harness employee engagement to connect people to their next career move.

Symphony Talent works for both sides of the talent equation. For candidates, employees and recruiters, it accounts for the growing number of places they will start relationships. For employers it answers the rising demand to optimize resources and keep pace with innovation.

Why Symphony Talent, Why Now?

The simple answer is changing expectations. Even as our collective processes and strategies begin to catch up to new expectations across all audiences, the products that enable us to connect with talent and measure what works has not. We aim to change that. (Take a peek at this video for a quick overview.)

Talent’s expectations will not slow down.

We’re living in the expectation economy. David Mattin from Trendswatching.com defines this perfectly: “The expectation economy is an economy of ever accelerating expectations, applied ruthlessly to every purchase decision, experience and moment of attention.”

The ‘gig economy’ will be mainstream by 2020, with 50% of all U.S. workers freelancing in some capacity. As today’s workers value experiences, skills growth and the chance to build something of their own, they want more freedom to define their own path.

These are the expectations of consumers. These are the expectations of the talent you seek.

With Symphony Talent, candidates and employees will experience a personalized, integrated brand experience at every step of their talent journey — from the first point of interaction, to the interview process, to employee advocacy.

What we must expect from recruiters has changed.

Today, candidate relationships start well before a job hunt begins and grow stronger across multiple touch points. It’s no longer enough to have a short game; recruiters need a strong (well organized) long game too. Long term relationships built on trust will grow in importance as highly skilled alumni and current contractors are absorbed into the open talent marketplace and constantly re-engaged for project level work.

Speaking of project level work — how work gets done will never look the same, therefore jobs don’t look the same and recruiting can’t look the same. Talent acquisition teams are competing in the midst of a massive shift in organization structure where successful businesses will have small cores and powerful ecosystems. From now on, recruiters must master skills based recruiting instead of roles based recruiting.

Finally, the “art of recruiting’ will become a more cognitive “science of recruiting” as the gut gives way to the data. We can no longer expect recruiters to guess where best fit talent comes from. They need to know it, and focus their efforts accordingly.

With the new Symphony Talent, recruiters will finally have an A.I. powered command center to master their long game, search for skills and connect with the best fit talent at precisely the right time. They’ll do this using behavioral based marketing campaigns that create a consistently personal experience from first hello through hiring, onboarding and beyond.

What is expected of the organization has changed

Speed.Transparency. Accountability. These are the expectations of all stakeholders.

The speed of innovation has changed the landscape for nearly every product or service we encounter. We can board a plane from our Apple Watch, we can unlock our homes with our smartphones, and we can order nearly anything just by mentioning it to Alexa. With every innovation our expectations rise and our patience dwindles. Without an exceptional, friction free candidate experience, the organization doesn’t stand a chance of holding our attention.

For the first time since Edelman has tracked it, global trust in government, media and NGO’s is at an all time low and business is officially “on notice.” So who do we trust? We now trust “someone like ourselves” more than we trust academic and technical experts. Without a doubt the most trusted spokesperson to communicate what it’s like to work for your organization is your employees.

In an era of greater distrust comes a higher demand for transparency. Every organization is now stack ranked via Glassdoor and must compete for talent’s attention using the strength of their employer brand and the authenticity of their employee advocates. If either part of that equation is missing, talent will simply take a pass.

Inside the organization, the demand for transparency manifests as clearly measured results. At every level in the organization, TA included, we’re expected to account for how we invest our resources and continually prove that our decisions are optimizing what we’ve been given.

With Symphony Talent, organizations will have a 360° view of what’s working and what’s not across all candidate touch points — paid, owned and earned — enabling stronger decision making and greater efficiencies in their Employer Branding and Talent Acquisition efforts. Great talent attracting great talent will become the culture as the organization harnesses the power of trust in employee advocates. Artificial Intelligence will automate media spend to focus resources at the right time and place helping organizations connect with their highest priority candidates.

I am excited for what lies ahead and the future of careers. I am excited that we now have the insight and technology to connect amazing talent to their perfect opportunity. I am excited that we have connected the tools organization’s need keep pace with changing expectations. I am excited to re-introduce Symphony Talent.

Want a quick (and awesome) overview of Symphony Talent? Check this out.

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