High-Tech High-Touch Recruiting: How to Attract and Retain the Best Talent By Improving the Candidate Experience
Barbara Bruno
KoganPage Limited (September 2020)

How to master the high-tech/high-touch approach to recruiting

I cannot recall a prior time when organizations had a greater need to attract, hire, onboard, and then retain the talent they need at all levels and in all areas of the given enterprise. Over the years, by helping several major executive search firms to increase demand for their services, I have learned several key points. Here are three. First, recruiting is a never-ending process. Next, if properly cultivated, prospective candidates sometimes help to identify other possible candidates. Finally, both the hiring firm and the candidate are being rigorously evaluated during each interview, for better or worse.

In this book, Bruno explains how and why the high-tech/high-touch approach is essential to the success of the entire recruiting process. The material he provides can help recruiters in/for almost any organization to achieve objectives such as these:

o Establish or improve a hiring practice that will help recruiting efforts
o Effectively identify and communicate with the best talent, using high tech/high touch methods
o Interview to hire or place the best possible talent
o Effectively manage time and talent during the ongoing recruiting process
o Extend offers that will be accepted
o Avoid or eliminate surprises and obstacles that can limit or preclude success
o Nurture candidates and referral sources with ongoing cultivation/communication
o Develop the mindset and skills that success requires
o Selling services as a third-party recruiter

Whether or not an organization’s leaders embrace Barbara Bruno’s system is less important than having her system or another that consistently achieves strategic objectives such as these.  Here are two other points with which I now conclude this brief commentary. First, in the final analysis, there really aren’t any HR or personnel issues; rather, there are only [begin italics] business [end italics] issues.

Also, it is no coincidence that companies annually ranked among those most highly admired and best to work for are also annually ranked among those that are most profitable and have the greatest cap value in their industry segment. Some form of the the high-tech/high-touch approach to recruiting works for them but it can’t for an organization whose workplace culture resembles a mausoleum.