Changes to jobs and the workforce continue to elevate the importance of having great talent. To attract great talent, organizations must leverage tools, methods, and best practices from disciplines in consumer marketing, data science, and industrial-organizational psychology in new and different ways. Targeted efforts to increase the quality and size of the talent pool will create a more diverse and capable group of people from whom to select for the more critical roles in your organization.

Organizations with superior brand relevance and positive reputations will attract higher-quality talent pools. Effective talent acquisition teams focus on building the quality of their talent pools, not the size of the pool. They also understand the importance of ensuring that the employment brand is closely aligned with the organizational brand in terms of messaging and that it supports the rational and emotional aspects of the overall brand identity.

Due to the simplicity of submitting job applications online, less than one-third of applicants are considered high quality, and no differences were detected in quality between those organizations with well-known brands. This points to the importance of robust selection tools and processes with clear measurement criteria that accurately predict future job performance, all while creating a favorable candidate experience. Perhaps the greatest change and challenge many employers face is the loss of control that they once had in managing their reputation.

Research suggests that nearly two-thirds of candidates are more skeptical of what employers say about themselves than they were three years ago. But we still can influence candidate impressions through the organizational brand, the messages we project into the labor market, and how we design the candidate and employee experience. Employment branding campaigns that leverage a company’s reputation and reinforce what type of people will and will not thrive are essential.

Leveraging employee networks and social media are now table stakes to compete for top talent. Designing a fun and efficient selection process that is also effective at selecting the talent with the best fit will continue to be a different balance made easier by new digital technologies.