To me, there is nothing more majestic than the American Bald Eagle. In pursuing my passion of photography, the bald eagle is a favorite subject of mine. From near extinction, the bald eagle population has grown enormously. Saving the bald eagle is a wildlife success story that involved changing hunting laws, curtailing pollution and other measures of conservation. In short, it required all parties to make changes on how they interacted with the bald eagle ecosystem. And the result was a big win.
But sadly, it is time to update our endangered species list. The signs were there. The warnings were ignored. Behaviors did not change. No big surprise, the latest endangered species is our key target talent.
As you go to your favorite internet hunting places, perhaps you have noticed the species of talent you need is no longer plentiful. The cry of talent shortages rings around the globe.
Instead of waiting for the talent to come to us, talent safaris were organized to actively hunt the talent. We learned all the Boolean hunting tactics in an attempt to track our prey. We invested in the latest technology in order to track our quarry into even the deepest digital hunting grounds. We invested in tools that afforded us the opportunity to engage multiple targets at the same time, as it turns out, that only accelerated the talent migration.
A recent talent report on “digital deserters” by Corporate Executive Board (CEB) points out the approaches that the target talent is taking to elude the many talent hunters. A cursory glance at the graph below indicates that target talent has taken steps to ignore, hide and even move away from the digital hunting grounds.
The promise of the Internet and its Social Revolution was that target talent was much easier to identify. A decade ago, Social Recruiting was all the buzz; the talent was plentiful and the numerous social platforms opened up new digital hunting grounds. But over poaching, the overuse of amateur tactics and a general exploitation of talent has resulted in some very challenging trends, especially on the digital platforms as the CEB data concludes.
As job board advertising and email recruiting become less effective; what do we do? Just as we have brought the American Bald Eagle back from extinction, there are strategies for preserving our target talent. The short answer is we must have a better relationship with the talent ecosystem. The longer answer lies with how we use the resources at our disposal. We can change our approach to hunting; we can build game preserves, and we can employ a variety of conservation measures. But first, all of us need to acknowledge the problem and commit to taking corrective action. We must treat our scarce human resources like we deal with the scarcity of natural resources. More of the same is going to result in more of the same.