ZHANG Yiming, MBA Alumnus of Tongji University

President’s Assistant of Sino-Australian International Trust Co., Ltd.

Liu Bei’s three visits to Zhuge Liang’s thatched cottage is a household story. For thousands of years, we have regarded this allusion as a classic of seeking talents with eagerness. Liu’s “sincere talent attraction” has also become a common practice for talent recruiters. If we further analyze the story, in the circumstance of “Longzhong Plan”, what we see on the surface is Zhuge Liang’s presentation to Liu Bei of his military strategy in “knowing the world to an extent though farming in Nanyang”. However, from a deeper point of view, Zhuge Liang had already comprehensively evaluated Liu Bei, and Liu Bei had also set up his own employer brand among the rising warlords of the Three Kingdoms period.

First of all, Liu Bei’s identity as the “imperial relative of the Han Dynasty” conformed to Zhuge Liang’s political stand. Secondly, Liu Bei was extremely good at tolerance and use of personnel in spite of his ordinary personal ability, treating his subordinates as brothers with extreme trust. Thirdly, Liu Bei realized that Zhuge Liang was a comprehensive strategic talent. Although having valiant generals, Liu’s team was short of strategists. That is to say, Zhuge Liang’s all-round talent would make him the top strategist soon in Liu Bei’s team while in another warlord Cao Cao’s team, young Zhuge was hardly supposed to quickly stand out among the galaxy of counselors including Guo Jia, Xun Yu and so on. Fourthly, Liu Bei’s career started at a low point but with great potential. His team had high tactical attainment and yet poor strategic ability. With the trust and authorization of Liu Bei, Zhuge Liang’s strategic opinions could play a significant role, which greatly stimulated the potential of Liu Bei’s group. Fifthly, Liu Bei’s vision of “restoration of the Han Dynasty” was highly consistent with that of Zhuge Liang, which also could become a flag of gathering the talents “loyal to the Han Dynasty” afterwards. Therefore, Zhuge Liang commented: among the Three Kingdoms, Cao Cao has the good timing, Sun Quan enjoys the graphical convenience, and Liu Bei possesses the support of the people.

Zhuge Liang successfully sold himself to Liu Bei using a “Longzhong Plan”. However, as the old saying goes, “Fine birds choose their perches, and wise men choose their masters.” From this point of view, isn’t Liu Bei a “super salesperson”? He succeeded in attracting Zhuge Liang to join his group, which was still “dependent on others” and “poor and blank” at that time.

Facing the talent market with many candidates, each HR personnel is actually doing the work of “salesperson”. What we market are the vacancies in our company. Our selection of talents is also a buying behavior. The price they pay is the time cost (youth time) and opportunity cost (missed opportunity).

Since we’re comparing “recruiting” to “marketing,” let’s analyze it using The Marketing Theory of 4Ps. The first is the Product strategy: the product we want to market is the vacancy we want to recruit for and the job content of the position, so our first step in attracting talents must be fully exploring the selling points of our company and the position. What is the greatest attraction for candidates? The second is Price, the salary of the position, namely the market pricing of the position. This pricing must be differentiated based on our employer brand and  talent strategy. The third is Place. To find suitable candidates, we must find suitable and efficient recruitment channels. A good recruitment channel (such as headhunters) can help us do a good job in attracting talents. Meanwhile, we should also manage these recruitment channels well to prevent them from over-promising or blocking information in terms of talent attraction. The fourth is Promotion, which includes all kinds of employer brand publicity work. We should set up the company’s business vision, brand image, talent concept and cultural atmosphere in the talent market.

We can also refer to The Marketing Theory of 4Cs. 4Cs refer to Customer, Cost, Convenience and Communication respectively.

The first C prompts us to explore the candidate’s appeal points. What does he/she want most from job-hopping? Does the work of our position meet his/her appeals? Fame and fortune are what candidates want normally. “Fame” includes factors such as position title, power space, and brand influence etc. Besides salary, “fortune” also includes learning opportunities, growth channels and life balance. On one hand, we have to constantly “scratch the itch” for candidates. On the other hand, we need to “package and present” our selling points to the candidates properly.

The second C indicates that we should pay attention to the candidates’ pain points. What pain would he most want to escape if he were to leave his current job? What will he give up or pay for leaving his present position? Could the position we are offering help him avoid that pain? How shall we get him to rationally weigh what he has to pay or give up is worthywhile? We need to hold on to the pain points accurately and continuously reinforce the candidate’s willingness to leave his current position.

The third C advises us to provide convenience points to candidates, making it easier for them to get to know us and integrate with us. Every interview arrangement and each step of employment process is just like what the famous advertisement says: “Sense and Simplicity”, letting the candidates go through the whole interview and employment process smoothly and naturally. Every close contact with the candidates is a process of building our employer brand, reflecting the company’s desire and respect for talents. The smooth process is not only a reflection of the overall operating efficiency of the company, but also represent the control means to continuously understand the change of candidates’ mentality and timely follow up for error correction.

The fourth C suggests that we should form sympathy points with the candidates. We need to have deep communication with the candidates, and bring the company and the candidates into a community of common interests and even a community of common destiny with our business vision. The first goal of communication with candidates is information symmetry, second is trust, and then the process of reaching agreement and even sympathy.

The above is mainly about the thinking dimension and work perspective of talent attraction. Considering the space limitation, the patterns, methods and techniques that effectively attract talents cannot be herein demonstrated. We can see that it is a huge systematic project to attract candidates with either remuneration, personal affection and career, or the emphasis on “four points” such as appeal point, pain point, convenience point and sympathy point. The effective attraction to talents is not only a reflection of the company’s overall ability and talent concept, but also an embodiment of the company’s cultural value.