I have been a pilot for nearly 20 years. When I first started flying, it was a very manual and mentally exhausting experience. Today, even in the smaller planes I fly, automation has largely replaced manual controls, and the integration of training procedures like cockpit resource management and principles like human factors have significantly transformed the pilot’s role.
In my current position at a human resources organization, technology and human-centered practices are improving how talent acquisition and talent management teams do their jobs. That’s great news for anyone who wants to bring the human touch back to recruiting.
There’s one key thing missing from most HR teams, though: a talent marketer who can bring the technology to life to better support hiring, development and retention. As an executive in the tech space, I believe it’s just logical to have someone focused on selling the company as a destination employer.
What Qualities Should a Talent Marketer Have?
- A talent marketer excels at engagement and attraction, not promotion.
- They craft the necessary messaging for positions based on the talents candidates need.
- They have their finger on the pulse of the entire organization.
What Do Talent Marketers Do?
Talent marketers are the connective tissue that engage both external and internal talent.
It’s not enough to plug in a new HR tech stack and flip the “on” switch. A talent marketer is necessary to take full advantage of all the features the technology has to offer. Bringing on someone with the right tech-centered mindset is crucial to making the platform work.
Talent marketing is the next evolution of recruiting itself. Talent marketers extend upon the work of recruiters by managing human relationships, not systems.
The role encompasses everything from searching externally for the next hire to helping current employees advance their skills and careers and reengaging alumni employees for future employment opportunities.
Too many HR departments are of the “but I’ve always recruited this way” mentality. They may not see the value of a talent marketer. But there’s a noticeable shift taking place that could herald a new trend.
Talent Marketing Gives You a Competitive Edge
Regions Bank, headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama, has a posting for a newly created role: talent marketing partner.
Regions recognized it had a gap on its recruiting team and needed to find someone with marketing and communications experience to help with employer branding. It wasn’t as if the company had a bad reputation as an employer.
Quite the opposite. Regions has been recognized numerous times as an employer of choice. The difference now is it has another distinctive edge over competitors for talent.
Southwest Airlines recognized the need several years ago, adding a talent marketer years ago before the carrier hit an incredible milestone in 2022: It hired 10,000 people, becoming the first U.S. airline to reach pre-pandemic staffing levels.
They weren’t anonymous applicants from some job board. 30 percent of those 10,000 hires were already-engaged members of Southwest’s talent community — people who opted into a relationship with Southwest and were being nurtured by the talent team. Thirty percent is impressive.
“In recruitment marketing, instead of selling your product to a consumer or even to another business, we’re selling a role,” Kelby Tansey, Southwest’s talent marketing manager, said in an interview. “We’re selling an entire employee experience to a candidate.”
How AI Is Enhancing the Talent Search
The rise of artificial intelligence and other new technologies is reshaping the entire talent journey — especially recruiting — by automating many repetitive and time-consuming tasks like initial resume screening, interview scheduling and data collection.
Of those who use AI for recruiting, 65 percent use it to generate job descriptions, 42 percent to customize job postings and 33 percent to automate candidate searches, according to a study by the Society for Human Resource Management.
These tools are freeing up recruiters to focus on what matters most: the human aspect.
The best is yet to come. AI tools such as chatbots or candidate screening software will evolve into even more intelligent systems that anticipate the preferences of recruiters.
The tools will use historical hiring data to refine searches and suggest candidates with matching qualifications. This predictive technology is already enabling recruiters to fill roles more quickly and accurately.
There’s also beginning to be much more focus on the experience instead of the process.
With an applicant tracking system, for example, a candidate fills out an application and the company follows up if there’s interest. The ATS moves people through the HR system like products in the supply chain.
Compare that to personalization enabled by AI. It means a richer, more person-focused experience the moment someone lands on a career site.
Job seekers have come to expect the same experience that’s delivered by automation and personalization in other areas of their life such as listening to music or purchasing goods on an app. More organizations see the value of experience over process and are recalibrating accordingly.
This is turning the whole notion of recruiting on its ear.
3 Qualities That Make an Excellent Talent Marketer
Ready to hire a talent marketer? Keep these three things in mind before opening a requisition.
1. Talent Marketing Is Different From Recruiting
A recruiter asks candidates what they value. A talent marketer uses data, research and analysis on their audience and can effectively hypothesize the answer to that question.
The best motto of a talent marketer is attraction and engagement, not promotion. Their job is to tell the right story so job seekers want to work at their organization. They align values and purpose for job seekers.
2. Passion Vs. Talent
Talent marketers understand the difference between passion and talent. The former is impressive, yes, but if a candidate doesn’t have the skills and experience to execute on what they truly love to do, chances are that person won’t work out.
Scott Galloway, a professor of marketing at New York University, has a take on passion versus talent that I just love. He says passion is awesome to have, but not to follow it into a career. Instead, find your talents and pursue them.
Talent marketers know what talents are required for their organization and create the necessary messaging.
3. Storytelling Is an Enterprise
A company’s organization chart should show a dotted line between the talent marketer and the leaders of both talent management and acquisition.
The talent marketer should also have a connection to other parts of the organization to help tell that broader enterprise narrative, such as the decision-making C-suite and any client- or customer-facing teams, since they’re the link between the company’s offering and the end user.
The Natural Evolution of Recruiting
To close where I began, pilots can now be seen as three distinct types of professionals: automation experts, resource managers and aviators. This evolution, driven by technological advancements, mirrors the transformation that recruiters will undergo as they evolve into talent marketers.
