Introduction
Historically, big employers have found it challenging to utilise talent marketing sustainably as part of their contingent workforce solution. It was difficult to engage with an ever-changing talent pool and far easier to let your recruitment suppliers do the search, selection and relationship-management for you. Now, all that could be about to change.
Why the existing contingent workforce recruitment model needs to change
By using an MSP to manage your contingent workforce, it is likely that you are heavily reliant on recruitment agencies to identify, source and engage talent. There are three reasons why this recruitment model needs to change.
1. Cost and Quality Control – There is often no incentive for your MSP to explore more cost-effective ways of identifying talent. They stick with the formula, even when there could be alternative routes that can reduce costs and improve quality.
2. Transparency – Heavy use of agencies reduces transparency of the talent supply chain. Because of this employers are left open to issues around contingent worker classification, umbrella companies, tax issues and compliance.
3. Brand awareness – Recruiting solely though agencies means that contingent talent build relationships with agencies, as opposed to employers.
The opportunity to utilise contingent talent marketing
Post-pandemic, there is global growth in contingent working. Because of this growth, people have more flexibility to manage their work-life balance, work remotely and build global client lists. This means that there are more contingent workers on the market than ever before. Furthermore, the contingent workforce is forecast to grow by over 50% globally by 2024.
This accelerated growth in contingent working is both an opportunity and a challenge for employers. The opportunity is clear. More available talent makes it easier to find the skills you need to meet the evolving needs of the business. Overall, there is opportunity to build an agile recruitment model for organisations during uncertain times.
When faced with an increase in available talent, employers have the challenge of successfully engaging candidates with the right attributes. In a more crowded marketplace, with more choice and availability, it can be harder to cut through the noise, reach the best people and position yourself effectively as an employer that contingent workers can rely on.
The benefits of contingent talent marketing
Implementing contingent talent marketing is the best way for organisations to engage with the growing contingent worker population. There are many benefits of exploring how recruiters can work within your MSP model to source talent and build relationships. Overall, you can reduce your reliance on agencies, reduce costs and ensure that your talent acquisition teams can focus on supporting the organisation in the right areas.
A contingent talent marketing solution can complement your existing supplier list by broadening your search, increasing the diversity of candidates available and leveraging stronger, internal hiring manager relationships where there are high-volume or hard-to-fill assignments.
The right tools and platforms
There is more than just cost-savings and brand awareness driving the momentum towards contingent talent marketing. As always, new technology is the critical catalyst that accelerates positive change.
New technologies and platforms are disrupting the marketplace as they enable employers to interact more effectively with contingent talent communities. These include:
- Evolving recruitment sites such as LinkedIn and Indeed that offer increased opportunities to engage with contingent workers and advertise different vacancies.
- The emergence of contingent worker platforms and communities, where employers can advertise opportunities, agree contracts and manage payments.
- SaaS solutions that employers can use to build their own talent communities, advertise new vacancies and drive continued retention of their contingent workforce.
- AI/automated advertising platforms that allow organisations to target, attract and engage the right talent through digital marketing and social media campaigns.
Bringing it together into a solution
What do employers need to do to ensure that they can leverage a contingent talent marketing solution as part of their managed service program? There are three critical elements that come together to form the solution:
1. Adopting a skills-based approach to recruitment so that your recruiters can easily identify contingent workers with the required skills to help deliver on specific projects.
2. Using a programmatic attraction platform to build brand awareness and market your vacancies, so that you can support your recruiters with an alternative pipeline of interested talent.
3. Bringing both types of candidates into a single CRM that lets you manage your contingent talent community, circulate new vacancies and provide news updates.
Conclusion
Contingent workers are no longer seen as a dispensable, short-term resource. For many organisations, they are an integrated part of the workforce, providing specialist skills in an agile way that can scale and shrink as the business requires.
Attracting these types of workers – and retaining them for future projects – requires a different kind of recruitment model, with recruiters, relationship building and candidate experience at the heart. At the same time, there are huge benefits available to employers who can work with their MSP to make that kind of adjustment. Access to more diverse talent pools. Savings on agency fees. An overall improvement in contingent worker understanding, experiences and retention for future projects.
Beyond all of those benefits there is the opportunity, like never before, for employers to communicate more clearly and consistently with their contingent workforce – building employer brand awareness, communicating values and purpose, and building a vital bridge between the great opportunities they offer and the great contingent talent that is available.
To learn more about integrating talent marketing with your existing contingent workforce model, reach out to us and we will look to assist!
