Often as a business leader you probably have a good handle on when you’re expecting to recruit into your team, but are you able to act on that intelligence with proactive talent acquisition strategies to map the market in advance, leaving you well prepared before the change happens?
Unless we are talking about the highest levels of IT leadership, often the first sign of intent to recruit happens when a resignation has been offered, someone’s maternity / sabbatical or retirement dates are confirmed, or a restructure is announced. Acting too late leaves gaps in the team whilst the recruitment process takes place in the months to come.
Whether you are talking about a senior appointment or recruiting for a number of senior IT positions in your teams, you should look to establish a proactive strategy. One way of doing this is having market mapping as part of your annual recruitment strategy. It will put you weeks ahead in the recruitment process should change happen quickly.
Here is some advice on why it’s so important to have proactive market mapping and talent pooling as part of your IT recruitment strategy. Whether this is delivered inhouse or through a recruitment partner, having this in place for your critical and repeat senior hires will save you time, money, effort and deliver a higher quality candidate experience should you recruit externally.
The importance of market mapping for IT leadership talent
Market mapping provides business leaders, people teams and CIOs with crucial insights that help them recruit, retain and sustain high performing teams.
Here's why:
Assessing all talent availability: This is key when you are looking to hire quickly but in a qualitative way. By using market mapping to provide a longer list of talent as part of your recruitment strategy, you gain assurance that you are hiring the best talent available and not the fastest to apply.
Identifying IT leadership talent hotspots: Specifically, when it comes to recruiting IT leaders, by taking a proactive approach you will see profiles from all businesses where similar skills, technologies, capabilities and projects exist that are aligned to your brief not simply the candidates who are available or local to where you operate. To some degree we are all guided by what we know and what we believe when it comes to seeking talent, however performing market mapping often surprises business leaders on where talent exists or has been. By starting this process and having it as part of your talent strategy you can refresh it and revisit it – talent that wasn’t ready for a move two years ago could be ready now. Therefore, especially when you recruit into leadership roles that have typically shorter tenures where senior leaders move companies, having a structured proactive approach is smart.
Understanding the talent competition: Linked to talent hotspots, if you are recruiting for multiple roles, it's key to understand your competition because they are a threat as well as a source. If you are looking to recruit proactively because there may be growth in your teams or a change to your structure which means you are hiring for new skills, you can use market mapping to de-risk your approach and validate your strategies. You will need to understand who your competitors for this talent are, how you compare to them and what approaches they are taking to recruit what they need.
Benchmarking compensation and benefits: Analysing the companies where the talent you need exists can provide valuable data on salary trends, benefits packages, and career progression opportunities. Not all companies have access to reward databases and equally the salaries of the most talented IT leaders fluctuate so by having a proactive approach you can gather market data (salary ranges, bonus structures, benefits), develop your own compensation and reward strategies if needed. Finally, you can ensure that if cost is a consideration, you have data to underpin future decisions around salary structures. This information helps CIOs and business leaders stay competitive when attracting and retaining senior IT leadership talent.
Assessing internal talent / identifying emerging talent: If you already have someone identified internally through succession planning, you may want to compare this profile with others in the market. By having a market mapping strategy in place, you can then perform these comparisons without putting internal or external candidates through unfavourable processes. Often if someone is in a succession framework you want to validate the hire not disprove it, so by having a way to understand the talent out there without engaging them you can operate a fair process. If you believe the skills don’t exist internally and you want to compare candidates through assessment, it's simply key to ensure you work with your external recruitment partner to manage the candidate experience effectively. The same process can be used to identity emerging talent that can either come into replace the level you will hire from or pipeline for the future with candidates who are on a leadership trajectory externally.
Building and strengthening employer brand: It's important you have an objective view on where you sit in the market place. Your employer brand as an IT function could be more or less favourable than the brand of your company or competitors. Knowing where you are can be achieved through insights from market mapping. By understanding who you are competing against for leadership talent you can then understand what differentiates you, and how you position yourself in the recruitment process which will ultimately help you attract the top talent you are looking for.
Market mapping is a useful tool from the exec search toolkit that is underused at all levels of an IT recruitment strategy. Whether you are using an external recruitment partner or delivering the process inhouse by conducting thorough market mapping, you can gain a competitive edge in the IT leadership hiring landscape, make informed decisions, and will attract the best talent for your business year after year.
If you are interested in talking about how this could be useful for your business or IT leadership hiring strategies, contact me directly and we will arrange a time to talk.
Mark
07900557982