Candidate Mapping
Here is how Referable defines our role in "Talent Mapping".
A "talent map" should include two parts: 1) a list of strengths and weaknesses across the company (usually shown in a 9-box grid, or even a 4-box grid), and 2) a map of where the desired skills and experience can be found. #2 is where Referable comes in.
We will build the features to help managers and HR on #1 (Skill/Needs Mapping) above, but for now there is a broad range of existing HRM solutions that can handle this. What Referable does best at present is taking #2 and amplifying it (Candidate Mapping).
Referable enables the recruiter to leverage the team to build a treasure map showing exactly which candidates possess the desired skills and experiences, and who in the company can help the recruiter to engage. This Candidate Map can be built through a just few clicks, minimal fuss for employees and maximum credibility for the recruiters!
Why? To find "The 5%"
Candidate Mapping gives you the pathway to engage high performers. As Scott Keller points out in his 2017 McKinsey article "Attracting and retaining the right talent": the top 5% of employees deliver 95% of the value. In highly complex roles these people are 800% more productive than the average employee and these are the people that every hiring manager wants recruiters to bring in.
Why would any company not be spending as much time as possible on identifying, engaging and hiring the top 5% who deliver such significant value? This is exactly what recruiters can do during the current hiring slowdown.
So, what is a Candidate Map?
A candidate map is not just a long list of names, but a list of pre-qualified prospects. A candidate map enables recruiters to bypass many thousands of “cold” prospects to focus only on pre-qualified ”warm” prospects that have been referred or recommended by employees.
It goes without saying that pre-qualified candidates will have high close rates and make better hires, while a recruiter focusing solely on high probability candidates that produce successful outcomes will be significantly more productive than one who blindly scouts from a long list.
A candidate map not only gives recruiters a clear view on who the talent is that they should be engaging with, but when used effectively a candidate map can make the entire hiring process more efficient. Pre-qualified candidates will have significantly lower interview fail rates, thus saving everyone time over the interview process.
Features of a Candidate Map
The features of a good candidate map include:
- Pre-Qualified Candidates (Shortlist) - the recruiter should focus on shortlisted candidates that result in high probability outcomes.
- Disqualified Candidates - this list is useful for recruiters to avoid wasting time and resources on low probability outcomes or "false positives". Not only sourcing time, but screening and interview time of anyone involved.
- Unknown Prospects - recruiters can decide whether to engage with prospects that appear good on paper but are unknown and cannot be pre-qualified, or they may leave these prospects to external agency recruiters, depending on time and resources. (Any agency that does this work and brings you qualified people is worth their fee!)
Limitations of Manual Candidate Mapping
Without Referable, many best-in-class talent acquisition teams make use of spreadsheets or LinkedIn project folders to map out talent that employees may know. Manual candidate mapping works effectively enough, but only in companies with a culture driven toward collaboration can it have real impact.
Most companies do not have this in reality and while employees may sit down with the recruiter once or twice, they do it out of courtesy and eventually this type of interaction becomes intrusive and bothersome to the employee. This culture needs to be driven from the top.
Talent IP needs to be secured as a corporate asset, but whether done in a project folder or a spreadsheet, manual talent mapping the entire program runs the risk of failure if the recruiter owning the project leaves the company. More often than not their successor will not continue the program and projects or sheets are lost.
Employees become frustrated with the recruiting team when asked to repeat the same tasks they already completed for the previous recruiter, rendering such candidate mapping programs doomed to fail. Recruiter credibility fades...
Benefits of Automation
The interpersonal side of recruiting will never disappear, but the manual aspects that take recruiters so long to execute on will thanks to automation. To manually build the candidate map is a fools task when you have an app that automatically maps it all out for you and enables collaboration in just a few clicks.
What is that old cliche? A recruiter is not an island. But all too often, they are. Any recruiter working without the platforms to leverage the team of employees, is an island or at least on an island. One platform is culture, and another is Referable - a talent mapping automation illuminating the "referable networks" of employees.
User data suggests that recruiters can be up to 80% more efficient when using an automation like Referable to identify pre-qualified candidates. The reason for this is that for every 1 "referable" candidate, there are 4 who are not. So rather than spend too much time on 4 "false positives" (looked good on paper, but didn't pass muster), by using Referable recruiters can focus on the 1 who will not only pass screening, but very likely get offered the role. Let the agencies do the heavy lifting of the other 80%!
Put this kind of efficiency gain in the hands of a good recruiter and you make them great! They can spend their time on the high value task of talent attraction and engagement, rather than spending all day identifying who to scout.
To learn more about how Referable can help your recruiters find the 5%, drop us a line at hello(at)referable.ai