At Konnexus being a specialist sourcing highly calibre talent within the data market, I spend a large amount of my time talking to hiring managers. Like many of us, they too are facing the challenges of attracting data talent to work within their teams.
The days where you can send InMails to potential applicants or simply put up an ad on SEEK and hope to attract the best talent – have gone. These days your messages will simply get lost in a bulk of message they receive every day, and no talent is going to look at a SEEK advertisement when they get calls for opportunities all day, every day.
In this market, the power of specialisation plays a key role in the strategy that needs to be used to attract talent.
Let us face it, most good talent is not actively or even passively looking. They are busy kicking goals in the roles they are in and most of the time enjoying what they do. To gain credibility and trust we have found that our interaction and engagement with the data community has required us to go outside of the ‘traditional’ recruitment methods to build up our knowledge of the data market and the talent that sits within it.
We have discovered that…
- Data professionals prefer dealing with a recruiter who knows their stuff and is entrenched in the industry that surrounds them;
- Credibility is earnt through having the knowledge of what is going on in the market and our deep understanding of the key roles in Data;
- What the job description or a job advert, and even the job title, says very rarely articulates exactly what the hiring manager is looking for;
- Matching a role requires understanding the organisations short term, long goals and opportunities as well as aligning them with potential applicants’ short term and long goals and opportunities;
- It is important to be able to understand the technical and soft skills that an organisation requires and evaluating whether prospective applicants have this, not just assessing this on a surface level or through a cv;
- Investing the time upfront to understand the motivations behind why someone would move roles and ensuring we present them with the right opportunities to ensure that time is saved down the track;
- The important of continuously investing time in building our knowledge of all the data roles and how they are evolving;
- Managing expectations on remuneration versus the scope and opportunities for both parties is imperative.
We make it our business to have those upfront (sometimes difficult) conversations and work with you to ensure there is a great outcome.
Data is a growing, and evolving area that will only continue to develop as organisations build and understand the value that data can have on their short, medium, and long-term strategic objectives.
Rina Gami / Konnexus
