Find Hidden Talent Based On Their Work – Just Like You’d Find An Unknown Artist

A growing source for discovering hidden talent is scanning through online work in a given field. This sourcing approach mirrors the way you’d find a little-known artist: not through a resume (which may have been written by AI) or past job titles, but by reviewing their actual work on the internet.

This emerging “finding hidden talent through their work” source has recently become more viable. First, because the flood of AI agent-sent resumes makes it more advantageous to now “find your own talent” (versus them finding you). Next, because recently, AI-generated resumes have become less honest indicators of a person’s real capabilities. Finally, because it is now much easier to find the actual work of many professionals online.

What Is “Finding Hidden Talent Through Their Work” Sourcing? (FHTTTW)

This “Finding Hidden Talent Through Their Work” (or FHTTTW) approach is a sourcing method designed specifically to discover hidden talent in a professional field.

With the urging of their hiring manager, professionals on the team proactively identify little-known individuals who have produced exceptional work. This discovery happens naturally during their normal workflow, benchmarking, and both planned and casual online learning activities. Proactively identify any little-known professionals that the team member feels have produced exceptional work in the team’s function areas.

Then, periodically, the team’s recruiter and/or the hiring manager adds these FHTTTW names to the team’s talent pipeline list. Initially, this is for relationship building and further assessment, but later, it allows for direct employment consideration when a relevant job opens up.

Why “Finding Hidden Talent Through Their Work” Sourcing Is Effective

Although this sourcing channel has been around since the Internet, finding top talent through their work will soon become more common.

First, top talent can’t always be found through their resumes because they seldom have the time to write compelling ones. Also, because so many resumes now contain a number of untruths, more accurate assessment alternatives are now required.

Finally, and most importantly, reviewing a professional’s work reveals significantly more than any two-sentence resume bullet point possibly could. For example, reviewing a prospect’s work not only reveals the breadth of their capabilities. But examining their work also provides in-depth evidence and real examples of the quality of a prospect’s work outputs. 

Just as you would never expect undiscovered artists, musicians, poets, or even chefs to have well-crafted resumes, it’s time to realize that extremely talented engineers, marketers, and supply chain experts often don’t know how to put together resumes that get noticed. So when your hiring is limited, you must get your top talent identification and candidate assessment right 100% of the time. Make it a required component of the hiring process to thoroughly review each prospect’s online work, writings, presentations, and comments.

The Benefits Of Finding Hidden Talent Under The FHTTTW Program

In addition to the benefits already mentioned, the remaining high-impact advantages include:

• You will receive a higher number of quality hidden candidates that you wouldn’t have found by relying solely on traditional sourcing.
• Your new hires will deliver measurably superior on-the-job performance. 
• You will experience a lower new-hire failure rate because the assessment of each identified candidate is more in-depth and accurate.
• You will face less recruiting competition. These FHTTTW candidates will remain hidden from your competitor’s recruiters.
• The new-hires under this approach are likely to stay longer because their assessment was spot on. 
• This sourcing approach won’t require any additional out-of-pocket sourcing costs. 
• Encouraging this search for excellent work may also boost overall team learning.

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The Best Online Locations To Find Examples Of A Prospect’s Work

Of course, every team will have its own unique list of ideal sources to find work. Over time, as you gain experience with this FHTTTW sourcing approach, you will become better at educating your team’s employees about the best places where you will likely find the work of hidden talent that could work in your group. But until you compile that “look here first list,” here are some tips and locations that you should consider.

• Don’t do it alone, solicit the help of your team members – realize up front that recruiters and hiring managers don’t always have the time or the technical knowledge necessary to assess great work. So, it’s critical for your manager to encourage each of your team’s professional employees to help discover hidden talent through their visible work, by proactively assessing and rating the work of hidden talent during their normal work, benchmarking, and learning activities. 

• Find their work in instructional videos – top professionals often reveal their knowledge and the results of their work on instructional videos that they develop. These relatively short videos are often posted on sites like YouTube, WonderHowTo, MonkeySee, and yes, even TikTok.

• Use AI boosted searches to find great work – a simple AI-assisted Google search on a leading-edge topic will quickly reveal the names of both top and hidden professionals who have written or spoken on current hot topics. Once a hidden talent is discovered, encourage the teammate who found them to set up Google Alerts for their name to continually surface new examples of their work.

• Finding their work on technical sites – some technical fields have Internet sites where professionals can routinely post their work (e.g., GitHub). So, ask your team members to educate other team members about the best technical sites.

• Search Google Scholar for niche expertise – because true experts often publish academic research, working papers, or technical articles in their field. Google Scholar serves as a goldmine for finding this in-depth work. So, encourage your team to routinely scan this platform to uncover highly capable, yet little-known professionals in your specialized functional areas.

• Consider authors/bloggers – those who write articles and blogs that cover their work. Often, it can be found on professional communications platforms like LinkedIn, Substack, and WordPress. Others will also post their work or their writings on the websites of their relevant professional associations. Encourage your teammates who regularly use them to also scan through the Internet sites that publish working papers and academic articles.

• Consider podcast participants – encourage your team members who frequently listen to professionally themed podcasts to look out for hidden talent. Ask them to look at both the podcast leader and its range of participants. And then encourage your team members to subscribe to the podcasts that often involve hidden talent.

• Find their work on presentation sites – professionals often post their professional presentations on public slideshow sites like SlideShare.net. 

• Consider conference speakers – in order to develop them, often, hidden talent is given minor speaking roles at professional conferences. So, encourage those who attend these conferences to look for hidden talent who speak or ask great questions. Also, ask individual professional association officers for their help in identifying both up-and-coming and hidden talent.

• Examine public sector award winners – government agencies proudly publish the details behind their public sector awards, providing an excellent portfolio of a winner’s work. Ask your team to use these civic recognitions to identify hidden professionals who produce exceptional results.

• Conduct a patent search – professionals in many technical fields can apply for patents. So, use patent applications to find examples of their work that they found important enough to try for a patent.

• Encourage FHTTTW referrals – because your employee referral process is already operational. Encourage your team members to turn your hidden talent prospects into formal employee referrals. 

• Follow-up with LinkedIn profiles – a heavily populated LinkedIn profile will include multiple links to any person’s work. So, encourage your employees and recruiters to further explore the profiles of those that they have already identified as possible hidden prospects.

• Have your own top team members write and speak – because your own top team members who frequently write or speak will likely be contacted by hidden talent. You should encourage your writers and speakers to respond to the professional’s insightful comments and powerful questions that come from lesser-known prospects.

• Finally, ask your finalists to bring a work sample – and don’t forget to request additional examples of a candidate’s work if you still need them. Ask each of your finalists to bring at least one example of their best work to their finalist interview.

Final Thought

It’s time for recruiters to realize that the time has long since passed. The best way to identify hidden (or any) talent is exclusively through a job posting, a job board, or your own careers website. And in the same light, it’s time to stop relying exclusively on an unvalidated ATS resume screen or interviews to rank your top candidates (because interviews only select the best candidate only 9% of the time). 

The internet now contains countless examples of each prospect’s work. Because reviewing actual work is often the most accurate way to assess capabilities and predict future job success, both hiring managers and recruiters must begin insisting that this review becomes a required element of every hiring process!

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Notes for the reader

This is the latest article from Dr. Sullivan, who was called “the Michael Jordan of Hiring” by Fast Company.
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