When most people talk about segmenting the workforce, they are only talking about segmenting for organizational demand…but we’ve always said that competitive advantage in talent is found in segmentation of supply as well, and supply segmentation is key to great workforce planning.  Diversity Executive magazine is the usual place we find people who support this view, and recently the authors of “Workforce of One: Revolutionizing Talent Management Through Customization” published a brief article there on how supply segmentation is being “fair”.  This talks to some of the challenges employers (particularly US employers) face in crafting supply side strategies in a legal and ethical sense…but it also refers to some of the effective strategies:

Companies also are catering to diverse populations within the workforce to find bright and able people off the beaten track, thus getting a leg up in heated talent markets

They cite Jetblue, Eli Lilly and others, and no doubt there are more examples in the book.  It’s good to see the talent market being treated as a market, and “segmentation” being applied in the way it was intended by marketing professionals…but we still don’t see much of it.

What other examples are there of talent advantage through supply segmentation?