Growing Executive Talent

 

Can you grow executive talent?   A new report by Beamery, a global talent acquisition specialist, would seem to suggest so. In fact, cultivating cabbages or CXOs seems to follow quite similar best-processes.

The executive talent recruiting industry has become very complex. Those eligible are more aware of their value and more concerned about maintaining a career growth curve. Those doing the seeking have increasingly complex needs combining laser-like focus with the broad view of the philosopher.

The smart organizations respond to the challenge by going back to basics. There’s nothing more basic than a garden.

Beamery’s Talent Attraction Index mimics biblical parables of preparing the soil and supplying nourishment in order to nurse growth.  It evaluates the environment of the recruiting challenge  beyond the simple “fit” and zeroes in on the components that will ultimately influence a rewarding outcome versus a merely adequate one.

There are four measurements.

1. Employer Brand presence.

How well does the company articulate its brand to candidates, using the channels available to it?

2. Employee Activation

Do the companies leverage the voice of their current employees to bring in new ones? Do they encourage referrals?

3. Team Specialization

How specialized are the recruiting teams of these companies?

4. Candidate Conversion

Is there a talent community or network to guide candidates to the application point?

Each item contributes 25% of the final score and the Index was applied to the Fortune 500 in the USA.  According to the report, there is a direct correlation between the index and not only recruiting performance – the top firms in the Index engaged seven times as many key players as the lowest group – but also with financial performance, based on their ranking in the Top 500.

The strongest scores among the Index Top 10 are also interesting. Employer Brand Presence (which has been around the longest) was the leading attribute for the top three companies followed by Employee Activation.

You can download the complete report here.