Do you know who your company would hire (by name) to make key replacements in each of the major departments? Do you know the best sources (not job-boards, but companies, schools, associations, and so on) for the best talent in each of the most important hiring areas? Do you cultivate relationships with the best talent that you can find, knowing that you will try to recruit them when it's appropriate? Do you poll hiring managers for their input on this process? Are hiring managers involved in building relationships with potential hires? 

These are the techniques that are part of our view of employment branding.

HCM Departments can make their most important contribution to the health of the company (and add real bottom line dollars) by positioning the recruiting function to achieve this level of performance. It is, as we have said, the opposite of resume screening or applicant tracking. It is a very proactive outreach into the world of labor supplies with the goal of finding contributors in advance of needing them.

The objective of an employment branding program is to identify and communicate with the best possible candidates for employment in your company. While it may be supplemented with job board style advertising, an employment branding campaign is the concerted effort of the entire organization to imagine and develop relationships with the next generation of employee. It is not a program to become the employer of choice. It is a coherent plan to become the object of desire in a tightly focused and productive demographic (or ten).

At the heart of the question, the best way for an HCM department to create real value for the enterprise is by developing and executing a serious employment branding campaign that consistently delivers just the right people at just the right time.