Networks That Work: Building Social Capital for Powerful Talent Attraction
credit: Bishara Addison
by Bishara Addison
Effective talent attraction is about creating ecosystems where people want to live, work, and build their lives. After having the opportunity to work in workforce development, public policy, and education reform, I've learned that the most successful talent attraction strategies rely on one critical element: social capital.*
My Cleveland Boomerang Story
I grew up in Shaker Heights, Ohio, dreaming of getting out of my bubble and moving to DC. While at The George Washington University, I had a chance to intern at Towards Employment – a community-based workforce development organization in Cleveland. between my Junior and Senior year of college. After graduating in 2010, I had plans to start a fellowship in Boston starting in September. But a call from Jill Rizika, the CEO at Towards Employment, changed everything.
“While workforce development focuses on preparing people for jobs, talent attraction is about drawing the right people to your region.”
The summer after graduation I had a chance to intern again with Towards Employment with my primary scope: synthesizing research, developing a scan of “ban-the-box” policies from best practices from around the country, and serving on an advocacy committee of the Cuyahoga County Reentry Coalition. That summer, I met three people who became lifelong friends as we organized candidate forums that drew strong attendance during a pivotal reform period in Cuyahoga County.
When I arrived in Boston for my fellowship, I was already plotting my return to Cleveland. Why? Three essential elements locked in place: a network of like-minded individuals, meaningful work opportunities with an organization I already felt a sense of belonging with, and hope—the belief that I could be part of exciting reforms happening in my hometown.
This experience taught me that successful talent attraction requires more than jobs or amenities. It demands creating conditions where people can build meaningful relationships, engage in work that matters, and participate in their community's transformation.
Understanding Talent Attraction
Get the report: Where are the Workers Report from Fund for our Economic Future
For employers, both are essential for building talent pipelines for the diverse sets of skills and expertise needed for their operations to be successful. The strategies may be distinct, yet their interconnected nature must be understood.
Research from the Fund’s "Where Are The Workers?" study in 2022 revealed what Northeast Ohio residents were facing the following challenges:
Nearly 20% of workers who quit cited cultural issues like bad management or toxic environments
Over half the workforce is experiencing increased stress
One in four feels they need additional training to advance
Childcare issues remain a significant barrier, especially for women with young children
Despite these sentiments regarding NE Ohio’s labor market, nearly half of those planning to quit believe their employers could have retained them, suggesting that employers have a role to play in attracting and retaining talent.
These insights highlight that talent attraction must address both employer positioning and community ecosystem development.
The Power of Cross-Sector Collaboration
“When we’ve built strong relationships, we can facilitate conversations that bridge communication gaps and help stakeholders see how their individual concerns connect to broader talent attraction goals.”
Noting above a few examples of the challenges workers were facing show that solutions will have to come from more than one sector (for instance higher ed and childcare).
My experience has shown me that different systems speak different languages, even when working toward the same goal. Consider childcare: early childhood professionals discuss quality learning outcomes, employers see attendance and productivity impacts when childcare is inaccessible or affordable, and community planners view childcare as essential infrastructure for attracting young families.
Valuing Support Infrastructure
We must also recognize that organizations providing essential support services—childcare providers, transportation agencies, training centers, and community-based organizations—are critical infrastructure that makes talent attraction possible.
These aren't nice-to-have amenities; they're the foundation upon which successful talent attraction stands. When a childcare center closes, parents face impossible choices between work and family. When public transportation funding is cut, talent faces physical barriers to reaching jobs.
Every time we champion funding for public transportation or support policies making childcare more accessible, we're strengthening our talent attraction capabilities.
Understanding Place Narratives
Celebrate cultural unity and spread good vibes at Fresh Fest Cleveland.
People also make decisions about where to live and work based on both perceptions and realities of the place. Too often, talent attraction strategies rely solely on economic data without acknowledging a community's full narrative.
Take Cleveland's Kinsman neighborhood, where 68.3% of residents live in or near poverty, yet the same area hosts Fresh Fest Cleveland—drawing over 6,000 people to celebrate at RidAll Farm, one of the country's largest urban farms. Both narratives are true: the neighborhood faces significant challenges while also producing innovative urban agriculture and world-class community events.
This complexity can attract or deter talent—people who want to be part of positive change, innovation, and authentic community. Our job is to understand and communicate these fuller narratives through our social capital and relationships with community leaders.
Data-Driven Decision Making
Where Matters by the Fund for Our Economic future is a tool allows users to compare labor pool demographics, commute costs and emissions, and transit access across more than 380 US metro areas to aid with site selection.
Relationships are the foundation and essential ingredient for talent attraction success, but you need data too! At the Fund, we've developed tools like "Where Matters" that help employers and economic developers expand their decision-making beyond traditional factors. The tool analyzes potential locations based on where existing talent lives, transportation requirements, environmental impact, cost to workers, and diversity demographics. The combination of social capital and data are two tools for talent attraction professionals to use when connecting these different stakeholder groups.
When employers choose locations that align with where talent already lives or that are easily accessible via public transit, your attraction efforts become more effective. Data from tools like wherematters.us help provide credibility when building social capital with both employers and community planners because it will improve the quality of their decisions and help talent developers to influence these decisions early in the process such that workforce development is considered when selecting business locations.
Building Trust Through Consistent Engagement
If you have read this far, you might be wondering – what does it take to build social capital? Well, I’ll tell you the first step is building trust. And building trust with communities and potential talent pools requires intentional relationship development. This means showing up consistently in the communities we hope to attract talent from, attending meetings, touring neighborhoods, and participating in events.
Trust-building also means seeing people's full potential. For example, the Fund is supporting a pilot to empower 17 Black women operating home-based childcare businesses. Society views them as babysitters, but they're small business owners, community developers, and educators. By recognizing their true value, they built social capital that enabled more authentic talent attraction messaging.
The Path Forward
“By focusing on relationship building across sectors, we transform talent attraction from a transactional recruitment process to a transformational community development effort. ”
The future of talent attraction hinges on our ability to build and leverage relationship networks that connect people to opportunities. This requires:
Cross-sector collaboration where relationships span employers, community organizations, educational institutions, and potential talent pools
Data-driven tools to shape decisions that make attraction efforts more effective
Advocacy for support infrastructure that makes talent attraction possible
Genuine trust-building with communities to create authentic connections
By focusing on relationship building across sectors, we transform talent attraction from a transactional recruitment process to a transformational community development effort. Our social capital becomes the bridge that connects talent to opportunity and creates more inclusive economic growth that truly benefits everyone.
The most successful talent attraction strategies don't just fill immediate openings—they create robust talent ecosystems where people want to live, work, and stay – and it’s our charge to help people see the opportunities and assets we have grown to love!
By Bishara Addison, Director of Workforce Innovation at the Fund for our Economic Future
* Boat, A., 2020. Defining and Measuring Social Capital for Young People, Search Institute. United States of America. Retrieved from https://coilink.org/20.500.12592/m3rvcf on 08 Aug 2025. COI: 20.500.12592/m3rvcf.
