Cleveland Talent Alliance

For the Cleveland region to become one of the fastest growing and most diverse, inclusive and welcoming metro areas in the Midwest by 2030, the region must attract new talent and retain current residents in a distinct and coordinated way.

To achieve this goal, several public, private and nonprofit organizations have formed the Cleveland Talent Alliance. This consortium is focused on developing a seamless and coordinated system that:

• Attracts
• Navigates
• Engages
• Welcomes and
• Retains

the best talent in Cleveland, with an initial focus on the fast growth sectors of IT/technology (including financial services), healthcare and smart manufacturing. Collaboration is vital to ensuring success. Destination Cleveland, Cuyahoga County’s destination marketing and management organization, will lead the Alliance coordination as attracting talent is tied to its mission and expertise in attracting visitors to Cleveland through out-of-market advertising and communications and in-region ambassador building. To be successful, collaboration is essential. Destination Cleveland will depend on current and new Alliance partners to support consumers through the journey to choose and remain in Cleveland.

Whether considering Cleveland to start or advance a career, it’s difficult to know where to find all the information needed to make a decision. The Cleveland Talent Alliance collaborates across organizations, utilizing each group's capabilities & expertise, to provide information during multiple points in the decision-making cycle. Initial efforts to attract talent to Cleveland will begin in 2023 and concentrate on those most open to our message: people who have experienced Cleveland through visitation, college experience or as former residents. This focus is grounded in 2019 research from Development Counsellors International (DCI) that showed:

• Those who have visited the region at least once rate Cleveland 32% higher as a place to live and work than those who have never visited.
• 40% of survey respondents were unsure they would be willing to relocate to Cleveland if a job opportunity that matched their skill and salary requirement was offered to them – illustrating the challenge to overcome to attract new talent.

By comparison, in DCI’s ongoing Talent Wars research, only 28% of survey participants indicate uncertainty when asked if they would be willing to relocate to a place that is more than 100 miles from their current home.

By building a system that encompasses and addresses the talent attraction/retention cycle, the region is likely to be better positioned for success and can illustrate to both current and future residents that the Cleveland region is a community with shared goals and a commitment to collaborative success.

Objective:

• Grow the Cleveland region’s population

Goals:

• Generate interest in Cleveland as a place to live and work
• Increase consideration of Cleveland as a place to live and work, with a focus on the regional growth sectors of healthcare, manufacturing and IT
• Welcome newcomers and increase the retention rate of current residents

The focus of the Alliance’s work in year one (2022) will be to:

• Develop the Alliance’s operating model and processes
• Identify and conduct research needed to inform key performance indicators (KPIs), future strategies and programming
• Establish KPI benchmarks for each facet of the Alliance’s work
• Develop engagement and communications launch plan

If you have questions about contributing to the Alliance’s mission, please contact Sara Greicius, director, Cleveland Talent Alliance at sgreicius@destinationcle.org.