Shared talent pools the way of the future: PageUp

Shortlist, March 30 2007

Employers will be forced to form co-operative groups to share their talent pools and candidate information in the future, according to PageUp chief executive Karen Cariss.

Cariss, who has been at the forefront of talent acquisition strategies in Australia for nearly 10 years, says a more co-operative approach to human capital is inevitable in skills-short sectors in the future.

She predicts that by 2010, large employers will be recycling their pre-screened candidate database intelligence and sharing it with their industry peers.

Commenting on some of the themes addressed at the first Australasian Talent Conference recently, Cariss predicted employers would move to co-operate with other companies to better co-ordinate their talent supply.

She told Shortlist that it was inevitable with shortening employee tenure that employers would face high levels of turnover.

"Like it or lump it, the new generations have a different philosophy on employment and they are not staying long periods of time," said Carris.

"People will move to other opportunities, so better to facilitate this with companies that can provide reciprocal talent in return,���?s�� she said.

Employers could co-operate with other companies that didn't directly compete for talent in their mission-critical roles, she said.

For instance a law firm could share talent with an IT company and a bank or insurance company. This would allow their employees to change jobs and cultures, gain experience and possibly work internationally, but ensure reciprocal talent was available.

"Tapping into networks to find or be recommended for jobs is not a new concept, but talking about it openly will be, and will have to be, if companies want to remain competitive."

Cariss said "talent pool inter-industry sharing" would underpin future recruitment processes in talent-short sectors such as resources, IT and banking and finance.

She said leading companies had been building their own independent talent databases for a number of years.

"This means people have already been classified into their areas of specialisations, pre-screened through psychometric tests and in some cases already background checked."

This would greatly reduce the cost and time involved, she said.

Carris said any privacy considerations could be addressed by ensuring candidates were happy for their information to be shared.