Candidate Pipelines: More Proactive than Traditional Search

One of the things that gets me up in the morning is the promise of invention, of finding a better way to do something.  Innovation doesn't always happen, but when it does, it occurs at the margins, which is where I've positioned my firm.  (We do retained search, but we're not a traditional retained search firm. We offer human capital intelligence, which powers all of our search engagements, but we're not a traditional research firm. ) And if the reactions of my clients are any indication, I think may have stumbled upon something big: candidate pipelines.

Candidate pipelines are fast becoming my firm's most popular offering. They are proactive and enjoy economies of scale, which make them more cost-effective than retained or contingency. Instead of working on on-off searches, which is hugely inefficient, we deliver a stream of candidates across multiple current and/or future openings.

Companies trying to reduce their dependency on retained search tell us they see candidate pipelines as a means to that end. Moreover, because we deliver the candidates and all of the expert research along with it, each pipeline builds out a company's internal search capability.  Quite simply, the research can be used to make additional hires at no additional cost. Companies unable to fill the positons with contingency or unable to afford that option also find pipelines effective and affordable. And it is certainly preferable to openings languishing unfilled.  In additional, companies that have tried turning to research only to end up with a list of names and no candidates find pipelining a preferable alternative. 

Moreover, all of our research and granular documentation -- we are proud to show our work -- is far more transparent than traditional search and serves as a better platform upon which to build trust and collaboration with each one of our clients. Management consultant Gautam Ghosh found my earlier posting on trust interesting. Says Ghosh, "In my opinion, there are certain things that are taken to be the 'norms of operating' in an industry. I wonder how the growth of jobsites and increase in transparency is changing the way executive search firms conduct their business? Is trust increasing or decreasing?"

How do you know if you're ready to try a candidate pipeline? If you have more than one related opening (similar roles:different locations; different roles: similar target comopanies; similar roles: different levels), you may be ready.  If you've found it hard to fill all your openings, you may be ready.  If you have positions that regularly open up like clockwork, you may be ready.  And if you've ever stopped to wonder whether there must be a better way, at least, it is worth a shot.

Comments

[Jeremy Langhans]

What's under the hood?

Here's 1 idea on how to setup the guts behind your use of the word "pipeline"

http://executivesourcer.blogspot.com/2008/02/oped-1-by-jeremy-langhans.html

Your thoughts Krista....?

Thanks,
Jeremy Langhans

PS. Enjoyed your SourceCon speech.

[Alison Rezabek]

Question -- when you provide a client with a pipeline grid, are these all individuals who are interested in that company? Or do you also provide a list of the individuals that you called and tried to source, and what the outcome of that contact was?

[Krista Bradford]

We identify and profile potential candidates, writing biographies from available data we've aggregated. We then contact each of those candidates to market the opportunity to them. We provide status reports and an end-of-project report detailing outcome as well as comments from candidates. For industry sources that we contact that are not candidates, we often summarize our findings in intelligence reports that we provide as needed to inform search strategy. We've found the more we show our work, the more informed the process, the better the oucome, and the happier the client.