According to Corporate Executive Board’s study “Smart Sourcing,” 58 percent of organizations increased their recruiting budget for talent networks in 2011. But unable to shake their old “post and pray” ways, most organizations use technology-enabled talent communities to mass market job openings to an email list of subscribers. A handful of organizations such as McAfee, a global security technology company, are finding innovative ways to capitalize on proprietary online talent networks not just as a new way to post jobs, but as a scalable tool for prospect engagement.

Finding it difficult and costly to selectively engage and nurture pre-screened top talent in its pipelines, McAfee created an exclusive online prospect community in Europe in 2010 to improve engagement for targeted individuals in several business-critical talent groups.

McAfee’s high-tech, high-touch approach is twofold. First, the talent community membership is selective and focused on enriching connections with pre-filtered top prospects who are interested in the company’s work. They only start with known or high-quality leads such as past employees, silver medalists and known terrain experts, and there is set criteria to determine who is invited to participate such as position-specific skills and fit for future roles. McAfee reaches out with a targeted personal invitation. It is not a self-selection or automatic registration process.

Second, McAfee engages these premium prospects by providing a talent community experience with customized content and executive-led community nurturing, not just periodic job postings. The company provides its community members with access to premium content that is not widely available such as emerging company news, senior executive profiles and testimonials on working for McAfee through newsletters, discussion forums and multimedia forums within the community. The content is customized to share information relevant to each community, but is not only — or even usually — generated by the recruiting team. For example, the discussion forums are moderated by McAfee senior executives, giving prospects premium access to the top leaders in the organization, and likewise providing senior leaders visibility into specific technical skills or perspectives from premium prospects in the community.