A few months ago, I was speaking at a conference in Chicago. The morning of my big presentation, my girlfriend and I went to breakfast next door at a place called Yolk. Highly recommend if you’re in the area. The coffee and food are excellent.
In this particular location, there are big bay windows that look out on the block surrounding the House of Blues. When I looked out the window, I noticed a really long line of people that wound down the block. Some had chairs. They clearly had been there for a while.
Out of curiosity, I googled to see who was playing that night. Clearly someone with passionate fans. It was Maggie Rogers. Then, to our surprise, there was Maggie walking down the line of passionate fans to say thank you. It was a gathering of people from her fan community.
What Went Wrong
No, I am not going to talk about “raving fans” and employer brand shit because let’s face it: that’s wishful thinking for the majority of brands. There are so few brands in the world that anyone cares enough about working for that they’d wait in line in the rain for even 15 seconds with a recruiter. In fairness, I doubt nurturing raving fans was ever the intent of talent communities.
I’d guess most talent community creators thought “if we build it, they will come” based on the limited effort used here. Most of them learned quickly just how hard community building is. Very few people joined and an even smaller percentage of those participated in the really weird conversations employment brand managers tried to start in these rooms that were only marginally superior 2009 versions of the 1999 version. They put in a lot of effort and got very few results. It’s why people aren’t talking about talent communities as much any more.
The other big mistake? Companies also tried to make a community a one-way communication platform. If you ever joined one, you know what I’m talking about. It felt like email, just in a chat room format with other people’s icons across the bottom. Oh, and they were also not responding. Pretty much impossible to build community in these conditions.
How Can We Make Talent Communities Worthwhile?
The intent was good - get a more diverse pipeline, reduce time to hire, improve quality of hire - the reality is that with this kind of engagement? It was just another thing on the to do list. Today, there are far more signals and opportunities to make this work.
I loved the idea of a talent community. Here’s a place where candidates can interact with recruiters and get information about jobs first. The execution has been all wrong. Here are a few things I’d change off the bat if I were trying to use talent communities to build my pipeline.
- I’d make it invite only. If I review the resume and it’s a “yes but we don’t have a role open right now” or a referral? They get into the talent community. You can really change the tone of the messages and create better relationships with emails to small groups of people that all have something in common.
- Focus on what’s in it for them. Promote jobs to people who are qualified for those roles, not everyone. Don’t just promote your business or pictures of employees doing stuff that you call employer brand.
- Use segmentation. Give segmented business updates based on interests. Inform and update people with information that’s useful to them. Segment. Segment. Segment. Very few pieces of information are universally interesting.
- Think outside this opportunity. Give career advice and industry insights that make everyone better. Sure, they may not need a job now. But when people learn from you? They stick around.
- Deliver opportunities. Special access is a perk and people know that. Make it feel special.
If you’re considering talent communities, take a different approach. Be smart about your user and content to build a pipeline of candidates that can’t wait to work for you.
