Achilles' Heel
The art of recruitment, pt 3
In Sun Tzu’s Art of War, he posits, "Invincibility lies in the defence; the possibility of victory in the attack."
Of course, there’s no such thing as the War for Talent, given all you need do is get your affairs in order, Talent makes its own mind up, what even is Talent anyway?
Did you know Talent was originally a unit of money? Funny how everything we do commoditises people.
But then, if it’s actually the war for commodities, there are only two considerations:
Gaining commodities - attainment
Keeping commodities - retention
So it’s not a stretch to say, “Invincibility lies in the retention; the possibility of victory in the attainment,” when talking about the War for People Who Make Their Own Minds Up With Their Own Hopes and Dreams.
Defence here means not losing your people unnecessarily to other employers.
While attainment doesn’t just mean attraction, which might seem the more obvious word to use.
Attraction means to bring something towards you.
Attainment also means going out there and getting it.
So perhaps all you need to do to win in recruitment is
Retain your staff so you don’t need to recruit their replacements. Something I write about here.
(Of course, attrition is sometimes inevitable, such as a change in the individual’s circumstance, and sometimes it is required, such as consistent underperformance or restructuring)
and
Attain new employees through an appropriate multichannel approach involving inbound and outbound activity
Attainment involving attraction (job adverts, social media, career’s page, branding) and proactive sourcing (candidate databases, LinkedIn, networking, referrals).
The benefit of this second is that you needn’t worry intrinsically about passive, embedded or active Talent, you need only worry about the elements in your control and the paths you take.
The devil is in the detail - “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”
Though philosophy, the why of it, might trump all, given how it relates to people’s ikigai, reciprocity (how you can give them what they need so you benefit in return), and what drives you.
In next week’s article, I’ll google another obscure Sun Tzu quote in the hope it hasn’t been badly translated and try to show how thousands of years old insight still matters today, because people are still people and technology is just another layer on top.
Thanks for reading.
Regards,
Greg