I recently interviewed Adam Gordon, CEO of Candidate.ID about the challenges of recruiting in-demand talent. In-demand talent has always been a challenge and it’s certainly not becoming any easier to recruit people with skills that have more job openings than people holding them. If you’re recruiting for STEM jobs or nurses & physicians, or enterprise sales, you know exactly what we’re talking about. Too many organizations are treating the hiring of in-demand talent the same way that they handle all other recruiting. They aren’t varying the tactics and they should be. After all, many of these in-demand people aren’t looking for work so they aren’t seeing (or frankly caring) about your job descriptions. You have to find other ways to gain their attention.

It’s time to apply inbound marketing principles to recruiting.

Learn everything you can about your target in-demand talent. What do these people care about? And then consider how you can fill it. Adam says it often falls into three clear areas:

• Information that helps them build their career
• Opportunities or knowledge to develop skills
• Insights to help them do their job better

This means that instead of trumpeting your EVP (which might well be amazing), you need to think about solving a problem this group has. Share relevant and authentic content that fills those needs and subtly shares your employer branding. Nurture the talent to come back for more and look for ways to build community with them. Build goodwill with them and, in turn, they will start turning to you for more.

A talent community exists when you can talk to each other. All you’re really doing is hosting. You’re providing a platform. In other words, an email list is not a community. ~Adam Gordon

What’s one thing about hiring in-demand talent that everyone should know?

As Adam said, “Consider this term: Leading with value. Being useful and relevant. Not asking for things.” In short, leverage the knowledge and stories that you have in your company – because you do have a lot of great stories to tell – to nurture people way before they are ready to look for a job. After all, some in-demand talent may never actively look for a job so you’ve got to find other ways to get in front of them and be an attractive opportunity. Adam also shared some great examples of companies doing talent nurturing well catch that and more in my conversation with Adam Gordon in this eXpert Tease podcast.