In today’s webcast, Ed Newman, President of the Newman Group, unveiled his new vision of affecting employee quality and creating a talent mindset.  It’s a doozie- what a great idea.  I’ll encourage you to check out the whole webcast here when you get a chance.

A new role for talent acquisition? 

Ed suggests that for organizations to take their recruiting abilities to the next level, they shift focus from recruiters as administrators to network collaborators.  How?

• Become a Talent Coach - Leading, nurturing and sustaining networking practices amongst the hiring team.  (And don’t charge them with administrative tasks like entering a req in the system.)
• Assist the Hiring Manager in developing and maintaining a network of enough people to hire from (20 – 35)
• Identify prospects to be introduced to the Manager’s network (avoid the old boy network)
• Provide the tools for managing the Network (e.g. LinkedIn, Salesforce.com, etc.)
• Attend industry events with the Manager and organize social events
• Assist the manager maintain periodic, systematic communication with network members
• Create a Talent minded culture.  This synergy happens when everyone at a company- regardless of position- has the same thought when they meet someone new at a restaurant, at a party or on a plane:  Could this person work for us?

Network Theory

Additionally, he presented the radical idea of using network theory as a way to measure success.  Network theory is essentially a science that measures, through graphs, the strength of said network.  Its application here is through a relatively new concept of social media analysis, and there are some amazing tools out there assisting in this… Ed mentioned www.touchgraph.com- so I quickly made my way over there.  Using my name and HCI, this is a pictorial representation of the power of my network.  Pretty cool, huh?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 29th, 2008 at 11:43 am and is filed under Employee Referral, Performance And Metrics, Sourcing, Web 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.