No Talent Community Managers... yet!

Joshua blogs why recruiting doesn't see people whose job is to manage talent communities . He makes some interesting points, the key in my view being the following:

The use of the terms “community” and “network” attached to “talent” by and large aren’t really networks or communities in the proper sense of the word.  They’re really just lists of people, with a certain background or common interest.  Thing is, they don’t interact with each other or even know who else is in the “community” as such.  Even on LinkedIN, when you see these “Talent Networks”, they’re often filled with recruiters trying to recruit the talent they thought would be in that network

That may be true, but I hope one day this role becomes an overlap between marketing and HR, becoming the real custodian of the employment brand . They'll typically not be recruiter or sourcers (unless you are a Recruiting firm and recruiting recruiters) but rather people who are experts or aspirational figures for your talent community. Think Jeremy Zawodny at Yahoo or Matt Cutts at Google. They might not be identifying themselves as talent community managers, but that's what they can be.

Brilliantly.