Recruiting for high impact roles, both senior and individual contributor levels, in markets where there is already distress about the shrinking talent supply is only going to become more difficult as our economy strengthens. While it s well known that there is a diminishing supply of talent in many industries, effects like the "brain drain," retiring Baby Boomers, and professional disciplines suffering from declining collegiate enrollments, will only aggravate the problem. Successful organizations will need to devise and implement forward thinking plans not only to counteract the effect, but also to gain a competitive advantage.

One such strategy is Peer Regression Analysis. PRA methodology is highly effective in recruiting for roles where reaching passive candidates is key, and finding new or previously untapped talent pools is critical. PRA begins with top performers and industry luminaries, or well-known figures. Sometimes the starting point is a top candidate that "got away" or a recent high impact hire. Sometimes it is internal employees, sometimes just really good people who we haven't yet been able to recruit. This "ideal candidate" can form the starting point where we begin our regression. Borrowing loosely from economic regression, peer regression is about tracking down and isolating influences. We search for connections or clues pointing to a luminary figure until we find the point in time where they either became prominent or were recognized as such. Then we look for people who they influenced, inspired, motivated, coached or who in turn influenced them. This is the part of the analysis where we try to isolate the affecters or influences. Typically, this reveals people, who would be strong hires but are not very visible, leaving little trace and therefore not usually contacted by mainstream recruiters.

We also look at people who turned us down in the past, or who interviewed, but were not selected for that role at that particular time. They may be a much stronger candidate now for a particular position, or they may be a better fit for a different position better aligned with their experience. Interviews and offers fall apart for many reasons. Occasionally we reach out to ex-employees, although in that instance, strict rules must be followed to comply with company policies. For example, right now we are reviewing a strategy for ex-contractors who left more than a year ago, are eligible for hire, and fit our core profiles today. Yet another example is identifying people who worked on a specific product, project, or team in the past and have the appropriate expertise to drive current company initiatives. If those individuals were key players at the time, chances are that wherever they are today, they are of equal or increased influence. Identifying their current location often leads to new talent pools or other previously untapped sources of leads. Sometimes these individuals come from rapidly emerging, but still relatively unknown companies. By reaching that talent first, it enables us to gain an edge over competitors fighting for similar talent from much more visible sources.

This is revolutionary because through peer regression we gain entry into the comparatively unexploited talent markets. Most of the research is conducted using numerous Internet methodologies, but some is done via ethical telephone elicitation that adheres to the SCIP.org code. Chief among our methods are search engine queries and tactics that take full advantage of field commands used in the design of the database and syntax they offer. We also use online databases, social networking tools, etc. Overall, we track about 230 different sources of information and discover new ones every day. We don't always find exactly who influenced whom, but we can make respectable educated guesses. For example, sometimes we find a specific professor who taught a class and ten of the students in that class ended up being very influential in their industry. Call it timing, or good preparation, but regardless of the reasons, for the connection between those successful people, the clue is hard to ignore. Sometimes the best we can do is look at who their colleagues were at the time and that's good enough. Luminaries aren't always well defined. What we are looking for is someone who did something innovative that changed or greatly affected the industry, broke a paradigm or created a new market.