Tailored candidate value propositions key to attracting scarce talent

Whilst rising inflation and fears of a future recession, or stagflation, are creating hiring slow-downs in some sectors, those that are continuing to hire are finding it no less challenging.  And we shouldn't be surprised, staff turnover has shown little signs of reducing and recent data shows the number of open vacancies is greater than the number of unemployed in countries including the US and UK.  

The research I have linked to below from McKinsey & Company provides valuable insight in to another factor that is driving talent shortages.  According to their research 48% of job leavers are moving to roles in other sectors or industries.  And that's in addition to the proportion of leavers who are stepping out of the workforce entirely, moving in to temporary or gig work, or setting up their own companies.  In total 65% of job leavers did not return to the same industry in which they were previously employed.

I've written extensively this year about the need for companies to hire for skills and potential over job-readiness.   Those companies that fail to do so are facing an ever-growing challenge.  With 65% of job leavers failing to return to the same industry, job-ready talent will continue to diminish.  

McKinsey go on to describe 5 personas that can be used to tailor an organization's EVP (employee value proposition) to best attract and retain talent.  These personas describe the various 'employee experience factors' (such as meaningfulness of work or adequacy of total compensation) that drive talent to join or stay with an organization.  I would consider these personas to be useful in considering the extent to which a company's existing EVP will meet the needs of talent (existing and prospective).  But of course an EVP can't simply be tailored to meet varying needs of candidates - at least not authentically.

That's where the concept of CVP (candidate value proposition) comes in.  Most companies today will leverage their EVP to create a general recruitment brand which they then take to market to attract the broad range of talent that they need to hire.  But this recruitment brand is often too generic to appeal specifically to the candidate segments that they are seeking to attract.  As an example, if you're looking to hire sales staff you would likely need a very different proposition to that which you would use for hiring manufacturing talent.  

We now have a wealth of insight and information that we can use to identify where external talent may be based, to understand (as McKinsey demonstrate) what the drivers may be for various segments of potential candidates and to understand what our competition for talent looks like.  In a talent market this competitive, Talent Acquisition leaders need to find new approaches to win a disproportionate share of new talent.  Focusing on creating differentiated candidate value propositions is one tool that will provide an advantage.