Should You Implement A Talent Factory?

November 13, 2012

So after learning what a Talent Factory is and the immense value it can add to your organization, I’m sure you are all thinking “I need one!” But do you? What organizations would benefit from a talent factory? Does building one make sense for you? Let’s find out!

The first question to ask yourself: Is this the right time for my company to implement a talent factory?

Consider the following:

Expansion Stage: Your company should be in the “expansion stage.” This means that you have a product offering and a set of customers, but are also growing at a rapid rate, creating a need to add employees just as rapidly. For more information on what defines expansion stage, read this blog from OpenView’s founder Scott Maxwell. Employee Size: This is a hard number to nail down. Here at OpenView Labs we believe that you should have a medium-size company before implementing a Talent Factory. This means that you should currently have between 75 and 125 employees before taking this step. If you are too small, your ROI will likely not be high enough to justify a talent factory. If you are too big, chances are you are simply coming too late to the game. Hiring Rate: For it to make sense to start hiring in-house recruiters you need to be currently hiring at a certain rate. Otherwise, the money you spend on resources and salary to employ a team will be more than what you are currently spending on talent acquisition. We believe that this number should be around 10 to 20 hires per quarter. That equates to about one hire every one or two weeks. Budget: As with any hire, it is important to ensure that you have room in the budget to add the team. Beyond salary you have to think about resources they may need. This can include upgraded LinkedIn accounts, job postings, etc. Also, be sure to look into compensation benchmarking to ensure you are able to provide a competitive salary. You have to pay to get a great recruiter!

The next question: Where do I start?

You should make your first talent factory hire when your managers are spending too much time recruiting. Recruiting shouldn’t become an impediment to your managers. If that becomes the case any money you’re saving on employing costs is likely being canceled out by lower productivity from your managers. Additionally, there will come a time when you should consider scaling your recruiting team. It would make sense to do this when your current team is at capacity and you have enough open positions to justify employing another team member. You also need to ensure that adding another team member will add value and you have a training process in place so that the new member is able to ramp up quickly without impeding the current team too much. So, let’s say you have decided this all sounds great and you want to implement a talent factory. Now, who should be responsible for managing the team and for the hiring, in general? Should you outsource the recruiting efforts for this person? Should someone internally be responsible? If you have a VP of HR in place then the answer is simple – this team would fall under her. But what if you don’t? You need to decide who would be most effective in hiring and managing this team. Some possibilities are your CEO, CFO, or COO/VP of Operations. It all depends on your company size and the dynamics of the current team. After reading this, hopefully you have a better idea about whether or not a talent factory is right for your company. If not, no worries! There are plenty more tips where these came from. *Note – This could also be relevant if you have someone in a recruiting or HR capacity already but have not yet implemented a full talent factory.

Senior Talent Manager, Engineering

<strong>Meghan Maher</strong> is Senior Talent Manager, Engineering, actively recruiting top talent for OpenView and its Portfolio Companies. Her tech background has helped OpenView hire for nearly 20 IT and engineering positions. Meghan began her career at AVID Technical Resources, where she was a Technical Recruiter for two years.