Thursday, March 09, 2006

Einstein, Compound Interest and Talent Networks - 5 Steps to Setting Talent Networking Goals

Albert Einstein once called compound interest the 8th Wonder of the World and along with it he created the compound interest rule of 72. The rule tells you how to determine the number of years it will take for your investment amount to double in value. You simply divide the number 72 by the percentage rate you are earning on your investment.

For example...

"You have a savings account with $500 deposited in it. It earns 4% interest from the bank. 72 divided by 4 is 18. It will take 18 years for your $500 to double to $1,000 if you don't make any deposits."
Keep in mind, the higher the rates are the less accurate the formula is. But...Lets try applying this concept of compound interest to our network of contacts and our efforts to make the network grow. If you are serious about building a "talent network" or establishing a "talent pipeline" I would suggest using the Jobster.com services. Their current version can do the job, but I know they are actively working to make it better in new and soon to come updates.

So, if Einstein was a recruiting manager, I would guess that his strategy might look something like this.
  1. Identify the number that your current network is at. This isn't the "total number of candidates" in your database, but rather the number of people that have "opted in" to receive information/jobs from your company. For this purpose...Lets say its 5,000 contacts.

  2. Determine what your goal growth rate is. You will have to set realistic expectations in this matter. If you network is small now, then you can have a higher percentage of return. If your network is medium or large in size already, your percentage rate will be lower. For this purpose, lets say we want to see a 250% growth rate.

  3. Take the # of contacts and multiply it by your growth rate: 5,000 contacts x 2.50% = 12,500 contacts. This would be your goal for the size of your new network within one year with a growth of 7,500 new contacts.

  4. Take the new contacts number (7,500) and divide this by the number of working days in a year, which is 260. So 7,500 contacts / 260 working days in a year = 29. This means, to meat your goal... You need to add 29 new contacts a day to your talent network.

  5. Divide the number of needed new contacts a day (29) by the number of people you have on your recruiting team. Lets say you have 6 members on your team. So, 29 new contacts divide by 6 team members = 5. This means that each team member is responsible for networking with 5 new people a day that your company has never had contact with.
Now, the tricky part. Most corporate recruiters are too busy to take on anything new....like this. So the magic comes from finding a way to accomplish this without adding work to a recruiter's desk.

Here is what I suggest. Have your "system" automatically designate the 5 new contacts for the recruiter based upon predetermined criteria. Like....specialties that your company has needs for. Present these new contacts to the recruiters in the form of a task which can be managed by the recruiter either within your "system" or within the recruiter's Outlook email program. This task then allows for follow up and task management by the recruiter and also allows for reporting for leadership purposes.

Keep the manual task of adding people who opted into your talent network OFF the recruiters desk. Within your "system", simply add a check box field to the main screen of your contact's record. The recruiter than just asks the new contact, "can we add you to our talent network, we use the Jobster networking tool." If the contact says yes...the recruiter checks the box and that's it. At the end of the day your "system admin" pulls an automatic report of all new contacts that "opted into" your talent network that day for all recruiters...and does one upload to Jobster and they all get in email that adds them to your talent network. And so it grows...

The secret to building a strong network, a viable and targeted database, is to do it on a daily basis. If you can make it happen "behind the scenes," more power to you.

1 Comments:
Sean,

Great post! It's always good to see science applied to art.

One rule I've used in Technical Sourcing for Recruiting purposes (aka "building my Talent Pool") is called The Rule of 5x5. This is something I came up with years ago as a way to make daily habits yield direct impact on overall corporate hiring strategy. Someday I might post my own Blog about it, but in essence the "Big Picture" is this...

The Rule of 5x5 Benefits:

1.) Focus.
2.) Synergy
3.) Effectiveness

I don’t know 1 CEO that would argue against those 3 being at the top of his Corporations list!

Happy Sourcing,

Jeremy Langhans
See: www.jeremylanghans.com/blog
For a Definition of The Rule of 5x5
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Contact Information
Sean Rehder
Principal
Orange County, CA.
Phone: (951) 858-4901
Email: sean.rehder@talentlogistics.com

Feel free to connect with me through LinkedIn.com I am an active member with the Human Capital Institute within their Contingent Workforce Strategies group
This is a link to Salesforce.com's App Exchange program.  All work that I do will be made available through this program I use the Microsoft product LiveMeeting to demo, deliver, and train new users to my program
Great online group for those in the recruiting industry.


Past Events
ER Expo 2006 Spring
San Diego, CA
March 14-16, 2006

I'll be there
"Now in its sixth year, the ER Expo conference series has helped hundreds of corporations develop and sustain world-class, industry-leading recruitment and staffing functions."



HCI's 2006 National Human Capital Summit
Chicago, IL
Chicago Marriott Downtown
Pre-Conference April 5, 2006
Conference and Expo April 6-7, 2006

I'll be there
"HCI's inaugural National Human Capital Summit Conference and Expo is this year's most important event for human capital professionals, line managers and executives who understand that talent will be the key driver for success in the knowledge economy."
Key Topics of Discussion
LEAD MANAGEMENT
Leads are suspects or people who have been identified as being part of your company's industry. These people need to be qualified to make sure they are someone you want to have a relationship with.


CONTACT RELATIONSHIPS
Contacts are individuals who are associated with your competitors or Acounts as I call them. Or people you have inditied for potential employment.


ACCCOUNT MANAGEMENT & COMPETITIVE INTELLIGENCE
Accounts are companies. They can be business partners, vendors or one of two types of competitors. Either a Direct Competitor which is a company that is in the same business you are and sells products “against” you, or an Indirect Competitor which is a company that is not in your business but does employ people similar to whom you employ.


OPPORTUNITIES
Opportunities are what you qualify Leads and Contacts against. Your open opportunities constitute your predictable talent pipeline and opportunities also serve as the foundation of your talent management forecast .


STRATEGIC PLANNING
Strategic Planning is used by both your talent acquisition team and your hiring managers…together. Together you create and manage plans and the associated strategies and execution tactics for these plans.

The planning process will most likely be performed for each quarter and be used only for strategic planning where a company makes the decision to proactively target either a highly desired skill set or to “staff up” for a large, high profile project. Strategic Plans are tied to specific departments or divisions and contain the overall objectives for the strategy such as targets, goals, strengths, and challenges.


STRATEGIES
For each Strategic Plan there is a set of strategies that define how the talent acquisition team will meet the hire targets by using a combination of sourcing, interviewing, recruiting, and presenting qualified applicants to Hiring Managers. Multiple strategies for each Strategic Plan allow a company to implement best practices and effective planning processes which includes plan activity management via collaboration of the talent acquisition team and their goals.


CAMPAIGNS
Campaigns are specific marketing activities that you manage to drive leads, build a brand, or stimulate interest in your company.


REPORTING
Reports are data analyses for you and your organization. You can create a variety of best practices reports, and you can build custom reports on the fly to better measure your team's activities, failures and successes.


DASHBOARDS
Dashboards are graphs, charts, and tables based on your custom reports. You can use dashboards to visually measure and analyze key elements of your talent acquisition efforts.


HOME PAGE
Your home page that displays your Outlook synched calendar and task list, along with a customized Dashboard view. You can also disply a list of "hot" links, RSS news feeds, and more web based customization at an individual user's level.


DOCUMENT STORAGE
These are documents that you use as part of your sourcing and recruiting processes.
Recruiting Links
CRM Links
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