Why HR should engage boomerang talent

A prominent leader encourages HR to track those who “plug in and out of work”

BY Nurhuda Syed 29 Mar 2018

Besides recruiting from a fresh pool of candidates, LinkedIn’s senior HR leader shared the importance of considering boomerang talent in an organisation’s talent strategy.

Boomerang talent are former employees who return to the organisation after they’ve left. Nutan Singapuri said HR has the opportunity to engage with “alumni” and gather data from this talent pool to add a new facet to their strategies.

“The old mantra of ‘you have left us and you’ll never come back’ doesn’t apply anymore in many cases. In the new gig economy, people will plug in and plug out of work. As HR practitioners, we will need to figure out how do we incorporate all that. How do we then look at the alumni pool in new ways?”

“At LinkedIn, we love having them back because they learned a new skill or had a new experience and returned – we really enjoy seeing their progression.

“How are you tracking your boomerang talent and the reason why they come back? [This data] can help you drive conversations and decision-making with business leaders on your talent strategy,” she said.

The changing workforce

Workers “plugging in and out of work” will be a mainstay in the future workforce. Nutan uses the term to describe the gig economy in general.

Nutan believes that even though it is not as pervasive in Asia as it is in countries like the US, HR should be “future-forward” and prepare ahead for the changing workforce.

“We’re starting to immerse some of that thinking but we’re still far away in terms of truly embracing the gig economy,” she said.

“I don’t think we can afford to wait, we need to get super smart on how we are going to blend the workforce, particularly on the cohort of millennials coming through. The millennial workforce is requiring us to change some of our old habits.”