Recently, I shared three strategies that indicate whether or not your community is serious about growing an innovation economy, one of which was the importance of focusing on talent as the primary target for economic development activities. Communities that understand today’s changing economy are elevating talent attraction and retention relative to the business-first approach of decades past. Today, I want to dive deeper into how communities can implement this idea effectively.
The best place to begin is to help early-stage, high-growth companies attract talented employees. After all, businesses can’t grow without a capable workforce. Young, high-growth ventures are critical for creating jobs and wealth in a community but are inexperienced with finding the team members they need to succeed. When communities help them attract talent, they address the top issue facing these important businesses.
There’s an added benefit to taking this approach. By helping young companies attract future team members, communities are, in essence, recruiting their future pool of high-impact entrepreneurs. We’ve discussed examples of this phenomena before with the PayPal and Datastream “mafias” who were early team members of those organizations that subsequently went on to found other growth companies. Thus, by helping early-stage companies with their No. 1 need, attracting talent, we are killing two economic development birds with one stone.
So what must communities do to attract and retain talent? They must:
- Understand what’s important to innovators when selecting a place to live and present their “quality of life” in a way that’s authentic and meaningful to the target market.
- Show the density of local career opportunities that would allow innovative talent to change jobs without having to leave the area, an important attribute today.
- Make it easy for talent to find their specific jobs of interest by creating user-friendly, always accurate job boards that aggregate innovator opportunities in one place.
- Generate awareness by taking the message to the target market at college hiring events, innovation conferences and social media.
Every community talks about the importance of talent to their economic competitiveness. Only leading communities recognize its preeminence and are willing to commit resources and political capital to making attracting and retaining innovative people their top priority.
– John Moore is a principal with Momenteum Strategies, an Upstate-based consulting firm specializing in helping communities and their economic development organizations build thriving, impactful innovation ecosystems.
