For many VC firms, recruitment strategy involves a “one-size-fits-all” approach. In the interest of supposed fairness or even for the sake of expediency, it is easy to fall into a one-note pattern of recruitment that plays out time and again across your entire VC eco-system and ends in lackluster results. Here is the question, though. Is this the right approach? Do all your current employees fit into one talent bucket? Not likely. That being the case, does it make sense to believe that all your candidates will fit into one talent bucket? No. This fundamental understanding that current employees and prospective candidates simply do not fit into one pigeonhole is the basic idea behind the recruitment strategy known as talent segmentation. What Talent Segmentation Is Talent segmentation in the context of VC recruitment is about differentiating your recruitment strategies according to various candidate groups. This strategy is based on the same premise as marketing segmentation. Marketers have long understood that segmenting their audience into different categories enables them to more closely match their marketing campaigns to the specific needs of each segment of their audience. What is the result? More focused marketing campaigns, more conversions, and more revenue. Just as marketing segmentation eliminates the largely ineffective scatter gun approach to marketing, talent segmentation eliminates the one-size-fits-all method of recruiting. The result is a more focused recruiting method that more fully engages candidates and nurtures your talent pool. Template: Creating Ideal Candidate Personas – Our free persona template will help you improve your talent acquisition by identifying who your ideal candidates are and how best to reach them. Why Talent Segmentation is Valuable Mercer’s “The Effective Global Workforce: Driving Business Performance Through Talent Segmentation” makes the business case for talent segmentation, noting: “Talent segmentation is a means to differentiate talent management practices to meet the requirements and realities of specific profit models, different employee needs and workforce dynamics, and diverse external talent markets.” The goal of talent segmentation, then, is to enable your VC firm to allocate talent resources wisely to optimize business performance. Adjusting your recruiting strategies to more closely match the needs of your VC firm to the interests, skill sets, and talents of potential candidates creates a win-win scenario. On one hand, it ensures that your recruiters are allocating the right time and resources to attract and nurture top candidates. On the other hand, it ensures that the candidates will receive employer brand messaging that is relevant and engaging for them personally. StackOverflow’s “Getting Started with Talent Segmentation” notes that talent segmentation just makes sense in view of the way in which job search and recruitment practices have evolved in recent years. Now more than ever before, candidates are searching for companies and opportunities based on criteria that is personally relevant. If you do not know what is important to your candidates, how can you hope to appeal to them? Talent segmentation allows you to identify subgroups within your candidate pool, each of which has special interests, motivations, and skill sets. Armed with this differentiated knowledge, you can tailor your recruiting strategy to engage with your candidates in a more meaningful and relevant way. Using Hiring Software for Talent Segmentation Just as candidate methods of evaluating job opportunities have evolved, so too hiring software has evolved. Cutting-edge hiring software facilitates talent segmentation and enables your VC firm to cultivate and nurture a deep pool of talent based, not on a uniform approach, but on a person-centric recruitment model. ThriveTRM is more than simply hiring software. It is a robust talent management solution that enables your VC firm to attract and retain top talent across your entire portfolio. Take the first step to strengthening your recruitment strategies. Discover ThriveTRM’s solutions for VC / PE firms today.