Candidate Segment Knowledge - Are You 'Synthesizing' It?

Working in the Talent Acquisition arena, I remain in awe about how we march on with circa-1930s marketing processes despite the fact that if there is any business function that knows so much about their given 'customers', it's us.

I often ask the following question of Recruiters, Recruiting Managers, and even Directors of Talent Acquisition:

"What kind of information do you observe and store on the attitudes and behaviors of your Pivotal Talent Pools?"  OR . . . "What do you know about how this particular Pivotal Talent Pool thinks and feels?"

Upon asking the above question(s), I'm often informed of how "Our Recruiting Department doesn't store that kind of information because our careers site and ATS doesn't have that kind of component built in."

So let's think about this for a moment -- There is no other business function that gets as deep into 1-on-1 conversations with customers (in this case, candidates) as us . . . not even Marketing (and this includes their heavy investments in primary and secondary research).  Yet we don't store any of this information and use it to refine our ability to hire more great people in less time for less cost than our competitors?

Remember: There is significant economic gain to be realized (in addition to many others) when you implement a Strategic Sourcing Framework, but we're not going to be ready for tomorrow's challenges if we continue to move forward with yesterday's thinking.