You may be hearing a lot about Talent pipelines - or Talent Communities. They’re the flavour of the month. Yesterday I heard a story from the Head of HR at a very well known retail brand who is looking to do the same for their retail staff. Great idea.
They’re doing it through LinkedIn. Not so great idea.
It reminds me of that old story about why a fisherman fishes in a certain spot. It’s where the fish are, he says. Makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it?
But this Head of HR doesn’t seem to get it.
LinkedIn is a great source of professional talent. Professional. That is, white collar, executive talent. Retail workers are not on LinkedIn.
Retail talent need to be sourced differently - as do staff for a variety of industries including hospitality, childcare, logistics and supply chain and fitness, health and beauty.
Our HR friend has got part of it right. Building a talent pipeline is a great idea. It will allow her to create a pool of people who she can tap into when jobs become available, but LinkedIn is not the way to do that.
To find good retail staff, you need to “fish” where they are. And, in many cases, that’s in your store, the centre your store is in, on your website or on your social pages. But, interestingly enough, when we ask retail clients if they ever recruit in these places, the answer is typically no.
The world is getting to be noisy place, and jobseekers now are inundated with messages from an ever increasing number of job boards. How do you cut through this noise and get to the people you want in retail, hospitality and the like?
It’s not on LinkedIn.
Building a talent pipeline is a winning strategy for so many reasons, but you need to consider where best to start doing that by looking at where people are - rather than just the tools for doing it.
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