Finding And Keeping Top Talent In just ten short years digital solutions have revolutionised the way we do business - but have they changed the way you hire and engage staff? Here's how you can use online tech to find and retain top employees.

The world is more connected than ever before. This has opened up endless possibilities for businesses, and allowed companies to understand their markets better, to collaborate more effectively internally and target prospective clients and talent more accurately.

Having said that, I don't believe that human resources as a discipline has been given the necessary attention online, especially alongside other disciplines such as marketing, sales and customer relationship management. Those who work in human resources, particularly within medium to large businesses, know that there are challenges when attracting the best talent and doing so within tight deadlines.

I'd like to share with you a simple model that I've developed that should help you effectively consider how HR management lives within the business and operates online.

The model is called the TOE: Talent, Organisation and Employees. It answers the very simple questions of: How do you attract talent; retain your best employees; and enable your employees to engage with prospective talent — all encompassed by technology?

This model demonstrates how businesses can no longer rely on B2C or B2B communications, but that the key to successful communication is H2H: Human-to-Human. This is where empowering your current employees to attract talent on your behalf becomes powerful.

I break this model down into three steps: Attract, Retain and Engage.

1. Attract: How does your organisation attract talent?

Here you outline the type of talent you're after and you draw up a persona that includes the possible online "watering holes' where this talent may be found. You may want to make use of the four dimensions of audience profiling as well: Motivational (the why behind the career); Demographic (the affluence and life stage); Attitudinal (emotions, preferences or needs states); and Behavioural (what are they doing online?).

From there you evaluate the type of content that would most likely resonate with this talent group. It may be something like an eGuide within their field of interest; a How To guide similar to this one; a video interview with a big player in the industry that speaks positively about your business. You also want to showcase your business as an employer of choice and so this content needs to showcase the inner working of the business, the culture, the people and the "team'.

From there you would use programmatic media buying (or platform marketing) to effectively target this talent group online. With the use of offline and online data, targeting carefully selected channels, the ability to address this talent group personally and at scale is very possible.

Channels that work for attracting talent include:

• LinkedIn: Particularly sponsored stories and inmail
• Programmatic third party: Especially when an effective data management platform is incorporated, such as a tool like Google Double Click as a DSP (demand side platform) and Blue Kai as a DMP (data management platform)
• Facebook: Focusing on dynamic content that can easily be shared.

2. Retain: How does your organisation retain top talent?

If there's one thing that can be said about social media and the Internet, it's that it has opened doors of communication in a new way. Communication between top executives and personnel is what breaks down the barriers of hierarchy and builds the sense of "team'.

This is where you want to enable effective communication through tools like Facebook for business, the Intranet, and smaller huddle groups that can be formed on tools like Slack. This is also where you want to find ambassadors within different business units and clusters that can be catalysts for conversation between the different layers of hierarchy.

Through this process you want to equip your employees and make them believe they're working for the best business in the industry. That's why sharing success stories, sharing tools for career advancement, and competitions, is important.

Channels that work for retaining involve:

• Facebook for business: Chances are your employees are on Facebook already
• Slack: A collaboration tool for task teams
• Intranet: With chat and forum capabilities

3. Engage: Are you Enabling Your Employees To Be Your Voice?

We all know that when a brand talks about itself it's not as believable as when our peers talk about a brand. That's the gist here. You need to develop an online policy that enables your employees to engage with prospective talent online.

From here you want to identify certain passionate employees that you feel most embody your brand values. The next step is to encourage them to connect with and converse with their peers online, thus portraying why working for your organisation is preferable.

You want to equip your ambassadors with great content to share so that they engage as thought leaders. Great content may come in the form of thought leadership blog posts generated by your organisation that can be shared by your ambassadors online.

Channels that work for engaging involve:

• Twitter: This is the foremost tool for easily jumping into conversations online
• LinkedIn: LinkedIn groups which are industry-specific are the best place to get involved in conversations online and to connect with peers
• Forums: Industry-specific forums are a great place to get connected and to share your expertise

The role of employees

Human resources is any business's cornerstone. Even the most machine-heavy businesses need people. And that doesn't mean only people who can do a job, but rather, people who make a difference in an organisation. That's why attracting the best talent is not only a must, it's imperative.

Through the above- mentioned model, I demonstrate how communicating from the organisation to the talent pool is only one piece of the pie. The most important piece is, without a doubt, the human-to-human element; the channel where your current employees become your ambassadors, and in turn start attracting talent on your behalf.