When it comes to talent, the hare wins…
It doesn’t matter whether you’re a traditional recruiter, an online talent marketplace, or just someone who is a whizz at spotting job-hunters on Linkedin. The question you’re most likely to be asked when someone is looking for talent is ‘how quickly can I get them in?’ It seems that in the world of talent, everyone wants the hare, and not the tortoise.
And in this fable, there’s a pretty sound reasoning for this. If it’s an interim or contingent placement then there’s a chance that something very important just isn’t being done. And, as the old adage goes, time is money. Every day without that person is a day further away from getting the returns that you want, creating the value for the business.
For permanent projects it’s not just about the time to find the person, it’s then the time to make them effective. The J-curve of employee learning – and the horrific situation when they don’t make it up to the straight.
The permanent hiring process, coupled with the likelihood of failure (and cost), is one of the reasons why companies are mixing up their workforces. Projects not people (link to previous), independents not permanent. There’s only an advantage though if the mix is created quickly, and up and running with minimal ramp-up time. The fluid workforce has to be like smooth water, not treacle.
How can you fulfil your talent requirements without spending forever on getting the result you want? It comes down to three things:
You have to be able to reach enough talent in order to make connections. This is just a basic business maxim – it is a numbers game. If you can’t connect to enough talent, your process will be slower. 
You then need to be able to make fast connections. The connections need to be active and rapid, not a static list. As your requirements develop, the talent connections need to move with it. Follow the talent.
And the third is that you need to make the right connection from the many available. If you get talent fast, it’s one thing, but getting the right talent faster, is obviously where you want to go. You need to filter and refine, and do it quickly.
At Talmix we use vast datasets to create the starting point to navigate between requirements and talent, and create instant connections for you between these nodes. This needs both data and technology to understand and predict requirements, and not just in simple functional terms, but covering cultural fit and soft skills – and then intelligence to accurately match talent to those requirements. And to do it in the blink of an eyelid.
Over half the businesses who use Talmix will have connected to the talent they ultimately use in under 24 hours. Our continued technical developments, our unmatched datasets, and the quality of the business talent we connect to, means that we are aiming to make that 100% of users. That’s it. Everyone gets a match to their requirements, talent that’s available to go, within 24 hours of first thinking about the requirement. Sorry tortoises, we’re happy to be talent hares.
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