Talent Acquisition Strategy and What You Need To Know

Talent Acquisition is the process of finding and hiring the best talent for a company or organization. It is different from recruitment, which is the process of finding candidates and matching them with jobs, and human resources, which is the management of employees. This can be confusing because, in many companies, the terms are used virtually interchangeably, but in fact, they are not, see below.

The team responsible for Talent Acquisition must also develop the company’s brand and communicate it to prospective candidates. You should ensure that your company’s branding represents its culture, reputation, key differentiators among competitors, and products and services to hire the best candidates.

Additionally, the Talent Acquisition team must manage the candidate life cycle from the initial application to the final job offer. It’s vital to collaborate effectively, communicate clearly, and align goals with the hiring managers and other hiring and recruiting team members to make this kind of collaboration possible.

That said, Talent Acquisition is the finding and keeping of talent. This can mean active applicants, passive candidates, full-time employees, micro employment, freelance workers, seasonal, current employees, boomerang workers, and any other amalgamation of skills (or talents) the organization needs to move forward and meet business objectives. This is why the TA function typically deals with sourcing and recruiting and any outside vendor partners, managed service providers (MSP), talent retention, and much more.

If you’re reading this and your title is “recruiter” but you do most of those things? Don’t fret. The market does see these two as relatively synonymous, even if technically, they are not.

Talent Acquisition leaders are those who have mastered all of the above and, crucially, know how it all comes together. The discipline of Talent Acquisition doesn’t have very many degree programs named after it, but in fact, it’s one of the most important positions in the company.

Never has this been more important than right now, when not only are companies scrambling to fill roles in their workforce but scrambling to hire TA talent to help! The information age was already fully upon us when the pandemic caused many workers to reevaluate where and HOW they wanted to work. Needless to say, the discipline of Talent Acquisition has gotten some well-deserved respect over the last few years.

Some tips for creating a great Talent Acquisition function within your company are:

• A good understanding of the talent you need. Seems obvious? Not really. Learning what talent you need both today and in the future requires careful consideration and more than a few minutes of thought. Consider business objectives, the company roadmap, product or service initiatives, jobs that may soon be automated or out of date, skills and traits your future employees will need, and so much more. A truly GOOD understanding of your talent needs takes time and thought.
• A Talent Acquisition process in place. You can look at what other companies do for inspiration or simply look at what you currently do to attract, find, interview, assess, hire, onboard, train, and promote talent and map it out. If you see holes, work to fill them. If it’s needlessly complex, work with your fellow TA-adjacent team members to fill them or consult an expert in TA services.
• The right tools and technology. TA enabled and supporting software is a must for any mature TA function. We’ll go into more detail on TA technology.

Recruiting Software. Recruiting software can help with job posting, tracking, and communication.

Talent Management Software. Talent management software is for assessing and tracking talent, which can make your job a whole lot easier.

Applicant Tracking System. Tracking candidates by using a good applicant tracking system and seeing where they are in the talent pipeline.
Social Monitoring Software. Tools for monitoring social media to identify talent that would be an excellent fit for your organization.

Talent Community Software. Talent community and talent social network to facilitate connections and promotion of your job posts.

• A great team in place. As we’ve explored thus far, Talent Acquisition consists of many things, and it’s tough to do all of those things at scale without a team. While not every company can have a dedicated employee for all the aspects that need to be covered, a great team will be able to cover the majority of the important tasks.
• A plan to promote talent retention. Retaining talent is a key part of the TA process. Proper career pathing and succession planning make initial recruiting much easier and help keep employees within the organization growing and engaged.
• Communicating with talent, their talent community, and talent social network. A communication plan is key for ensuring constant engagement and filling your talent pipeline.
• Plan Ahead: Talent Acquisition planning should consider your organization’s past experience to better forecast the filling of future roles. It is important to project the number of roles that will need to be filled and the types of roles that will be required. Furthermore, it is crucial to anticipate any difficulties that may arise during the talent acquisition process so that they can be accounted for in your forecast.
• Develop a Strong Talent Pipeline Strategy: It is critical to have procedures to produce and recognize high-quality prospects. Every company sources talent differently, so make sure your recruiting process delivers desirable candidates every time. Furthermore, the method you use to keep track of applicants will differ depending on your business and search size. A simple excel spreadsheet may be enough for a small business or startup, but if you’re working with many applicants for a particular role, it may be beneficial to develop talent management software.
• Support Talent Recruitment: It is important that talent acquisition professionals collaborate closely with hiring managers to determine the most effective way of recruiting talent during the Talent Acquisition process. Furthermore, the type of talent acquisition strategy you employ will largely depend on the talent you intend to attract. If your talent acquisition strategy hinges on recruiting passive talent, then your strategy should reflect this from a very early stage.
• Collaborate Effectively: Aligning your Talent Acquisition goals with those of the organization as a whole will improve your chances of obtaining appropriate people for the long term. While collaboration is critical throughout the talent acquisition process, make sure to communicate with your HR department and other relevant teams.
• Don’t Rush Me: Good Talent Acquisition requires a lot of time. Do not hurry through the interview process, cut corners in your candidate identification, or do anything else to save time. You will save your organization far more money by investing heavily in finding and hiring excellent people in the long run.

Recruitment is when you find people to work for your company. Talent Acquisition is when you find talent for your company. Talent Acquisition is defined as “the process by which talent is successfully identified, acquired and retained in order to enable an organization to achieve its desired business goals.”

Recruitment vs. Talent Acquisition is similar to the relationship between housekeeping and janitorial staff, where the former focuses on maintaining staff levels. In contrast, the latter specializes in bringing staff up or down as necessary. Talent Acquisition involves filling vacancies by looking for talent that fits into appropriate roles within an organization, not just hiring anyone who applies for a job.

Talent Acquisition is a lot more than just recruiting talent- it’s about nurturing these relationships with talent throughout their career.

The Talent Acquisition process may include many components, such as creating a talent pool, attracting talent, and making the right hire. Although TA is different from recruitment, Talent Acquisition can include elements of recruitment. Talent Acquisition includes talent sourcing, talent assessment, talent management, and talent retention. It does not typically include talent evaluation or talent negotiation.

The Talent Acquisition role is important and requires someone who possesses the right skills, experience, and knowledge. It can be argued that Talent Acquisition requires more training than any other function within a business, with talent managers requiring TA talent and talent development to identify top talent and understand the talent marketplace.

There are a few key factors that make up effective Talent Acquisition.

1. Understand what talent you need and document that. Start with the skills and experience you’re looking for in order to identify talent early on in the process. Ensure your team is well-versed on what good talent looks like for YOUR organization and where crucial skill gaps are. Many companies do this by building out candidate personas to hire, interview, and assess against.
2. Create and solidify your talent plan. This means knowing and documenting how you’re going to find talent, how you’re going to assess talent, and how you’re going to make an offer. Marketing and sales organizations do this all the time when they build out prospect funnels. Talent funnels or plans should be no different. What questions will you ask and when? How often will you contact candidates? What channels will you use to advertise? What metrics are you using to assess hiring, retention, and candidate engagement?
3. Build and train your tools and technology. There are a number of great tools out there that can help you identify talent, assess talent, and make offers. Your technology stack is a crucial piece of the puzzle and should be great technology that meets your needs and should be a tech on which your team is comfortable and around which you have established processes that encourage clean data collection.
4. Develop your TA team. You need people knowledgeable about Talent Acquisition and who have great communication skills. In TA, you need to have good relationships with talent and having a strong team helps create those relationships.

Finally, promoting talent retention is something that effective Talent Acquisition should be involved in. Talent Acquisition knows talent best and promotes talent retention by having conversations with talent about what it’s like to work for your company one-on-one.

The Talent Acquisition process focuses on the right talent for roles within an organization. Effective Talent Acquisition is all about effectively creating talent pools, attracting talent, and making the right hire. So…how to do that?

LEAD GENERATION

Recruitment marketing, employer branding, candidate attraction- call it what you will, but it all boils down to creating leads you can then turn into something more. Your candidate and applicant flow depend on a steady drip of leads who are qualified to work for your company.

Generating these leads involves passive sourcing, job advertisements, communication and relationship management, and more. Other channels involve leveraging your consumer brand, in-person events, and using educational avenues to keep your pipeline full.

RECRUITING AND ATTRACTING TOP CANDIDATES

Leads are great, but the value is negligible until you’ve got them interested in your unique opportunities. Recruitment and attraction generally fall into three main categories:

Making the company attractive: This includes general culture, general working style, public perception, and industry. Employer Brand and reputation are a big part of this category.

Making the job attractive: This is more about matching the candidate’s skills to the job requirements, showing the department’s growth potential, and making the future team attractive. Compensation can be a large part of this category.

Aligning the candidate to both: This includes the office environment, the benefits, and how they impact the candidate’s lifestyle and needs, whether the job allows for hybrid, remote, or office work. They  may look at potential colleagues online or study the FAQs.

INTERVIEW AND ASSESSMENT

Interviewing is not as well-thought-out as many of us would like to believe. If interviewing at your company is standardized, offers automation to move the process along, and has rubrics to hire against, you’re likely doing better than many of your peers. But interviewing and the processes surrounding it are in the purview of Talent Acquisition. This includes training hiring managers and ensuring the process is as seamless and free from bias as possible.

The concept of a ‘talent assessment’ as part of the hiring process is not new, but it’s still relevant. An annual LinkedIn report says 57% of recruiters use soft skills assessments, and 60% of them believe they will have a big impact within the next five years.

The reason is that talent assessments provide insight into whether candidates are well suited for the job they are applying for, as well as if they fit into your company’s culture and team. You can reduce the number of candidates to a small, qualified group by using pre-employment assessment tools. Then, you’ll get a better understanding of the candidates’ skills, which will make your process much more efficient.

Tools and technology are essential for talent acquisition professionals. The right tools can help identify talent, assess talent, and make offers. Technology can also help with communication and tracking. Here are some essential tools and technology for talent acquisition professionals:

☐ Invest in a great recruiting software that can help with job postings, tracking, and communication
☐ A talent management system to help with talent assessment and tracking
☐ Good applicant tracking system to help with tracking candidates
☐ Social media monitoring tools to help with identifying talent on social media platforms
☐ Talent communities and talent social networks to help with connections and promotion

Talent acquisition is important in today’s talent market because it is essential to have the right talent to succeed. In order to have a strong talent acquisition process, you need the right tools, technology, and team in place. You also need to be able to promote talent retention to keep your talent happy and engaged.

Having a great talent acquisition process will help you find the best talent for your company and help you retain the talent you already have. This article has defined talent acquisition, discussed how talent acquisition differs from recruitment and human resources, showed what effective talent acquisition looks like in detail, described the talent acquisition process in-depth, offered tips for effective talent acquisition, and finally why talent acquisition is important.

DYK? Companies actively investing in employer brands can reduce turnover by as much as 28%.

Talent acquisition is not only central to an organization’s ability to attract talent; it also impacts the organization’s bottom line directly by fueling product innovation and high-quality service delivery.

The future of talent acquisition is unknown, but a few things can be expected. One trend is that talent acquisition will become more automated. This means that the process will become more efficient and streamlined.

Recruiters will also need to be more technologically savvy in order to keep up with the changes. Another trend is that talent acquisition will become more global. This means that recruiters will need to be able to assess talent from all around the world. They will also need to be able to find talent in different languages. The future of talent acquisition is exciting and full of possibilities. It will be interesting to see how it evolves over time.

PREDICTIVEHR has customized approaches to help you build out and strengthen your Talent Acquisition function and processes. They include:

• Managed Talent Acquisition Services
• Consulting with your TA Team
• Recruitment On-Demand
• RPO (Recruitment Process Outsourcing)
• Custom Solutions

Recruitment process outsourcing, also known as RPO, is when a company allows a third party to handle all its recruitment needs. We know that teams of all sizes depend on internal teams to source, recruit, and hire high-quality candidates.

RPO isn’t about having a new company come in to take everything over. RPO is about having a new perspective come and work with your current team to achieve your talent acquisition goals. Even the best teams need hiring support from time to time.

You need real, measurable results that focus on flexible solutions for every step in the hiring process. Stop accepting any solution and get a customized solution with RPO implementation. Extend your candidate experience and scale up and down depending on your business needs without sacrificing quality candidates in the process.

Today’s talent market is highly competitive, and companies need to manage their acquisition services. Employers are asking for more efficiency and transparency than ever before. Talent advisors need to work in various areas of the industry and get the talent their firms deserve.

Just because you or your company want new hires as efficiently as possible does not mean you have to sacrifice quality quickly to get a new hire. You can get the best quality talent to the table as quickly as possible while making sure they are right for your company.

In recent years, there has been a push for talent acquisition services to be more transparent. Companies want to know what is going on in their talent pipeline and what phases each applicant is at. They want to be as hands-on as possible with their talent.

We understand how time-sensitive hiring is. We also know that you may have needed a quality candidate, like yesterday. We know you cannot sacrifice quality for speed, nor do we expect you to.

Hiring is a time-sensitive process, and you may need a quality candidate like yesterday. However, it can be challenging predicting when you need more hiring help and when you don’t. That is why many people use recruiters on-demand.

Recruitment on-demand allows you to hire recruiters when you need that extra help for hire. The recruitment cycle will have challenging periods that may require a more hands-on deck. You can get focused support with a recruiter on-demand when you need it most. Get the help you need to attract, recruit, and hire top talent for your organization.

Talent acquisition is not the same as recruiting. Recruiting is used to fill a specific role and focuses on a short-term strategy. Talent acquisition is a long-term strategy that does not consider vacant roles. In contrast, talent acquisition attracts the most high-qualified candidates to add to the organization.

Your talent acquisition strategy should have your business objectives in mind. This is a long-term strategy to guide your business to success. Your talent acquisition strategy should include an outline of your ideal candidates, such as their educational background, their work history, and skills they can bring to the table.

There are many reasons a company should develop a talent acquisition strategy. This goes beyond just filling roles. This is how you will gain the best in-demand talent for your organization.

Here are the top tips on how to invest and develop your Talent Acquisition Strategy:

1. Helping you stay competitive. You can foster diversity in the workplace by creating engagement with potential candidates to ensure low fill times for your open roles. Talent acquisition strategies allow you to stay competitive in a demanding market.
2. Reducing risk. Employees that go through this process tend to be the best fit for your company. This reduces the risk of hiring the wrong fit for your role and helps lower your turnover rate. You want to ensure that candidates are the right fit and that they stay in that role long-term.
3. Boosting productivity. This process ensures your hires are quality performers by hiring those who have the best skill set for your company. Having a highly-skilled employee can boost productivity and lead to a higher return on your investments. 
4. Saving your company time and money. By hiring those who are a great fit and have the right skillet, you can avoid constantly hiring new people. This can lower your hiring costs and endless training, in turn saving your company a lot of time and money.

Your talent acquisition strategy is essential for any business to develop. It goes beyond finding someone to fill your open roles. It consists of reaching out and engaging with top talent to one day be part of your company. This keeps your long-term hiring strategy and company objectives in mind.

Talent acquisition can be very complex. It is not easy to engage with the top talent in the field. However, talent acquisition is not an impossible task.

Here are some tips and tricks to help you develop your talent acquisition strategy:

• Align your goals with Human Resources: Human resources are responsible for defining and communicating the value of talent acquisition to stakeholders. Additionally, they are responsible for implementing a talent acquisition strategy for current and potential employees. With that in mind, they play an essential role and must be on the same page with their hiring goals and talent acquisition procedures.
• Look at your current hiring process: Looking at your current hiring process can give you insight into what you are doing well and what you can improve on. You can create new ways to make your process more efficient. A lot has changed quickly in the past few years, and it doesn’t hurt to evaluate what you could be doing differently.
• Clearly define your ideal candidate: You need to have a clear picture of who you want to work for your company. Once you do so, you will know what qualifications an ideal person should have and how they can best contribute to the company.
• Use the latest talent acquisition software: A hiring platform can make a world of difference for your talent acquisition strategy. This will allow you to screen resumes, organize your pipeline, centralize your communication, and schedule interviews. This will allow you to organize your core processes and solidify your talent acquisition strategy.
• Build healthy talent pipelines: You should be building a healthy talent pipeline that has candidates in it at all times. It is not healthy for your company to look for candidates when you have an open position. You and your team should be out there engaging and building relationships for future roles that may open in your company.
• Get referrals from your employees: Look at your current employees for referrals. Chances are they know someone who is looking for a change and is a qualified lead for your organization. Additionally, they would know their work ethic and a good culture match.
• Build your brand image: Talent acquisition has a lot to do with building and maintaining a strong brand image. Your company should be clear on who they are, your working environment, and what you offer talent when they work there.
• Look through your data and statistics: These are key to your talent acquisition strategy. Data is the best way to assess where you are at and make a plan for where you want to go.With these tips, you can attract the top talent to your organization. Developing your talent acquisition strategy does not have to be an impossible task. With the tips above in mind, you can create a strong talent acquisition strategy.

There are many different solutions to talent acquisition. So, how do you know which solution is best for you? Let’s explore the different options now:

☐ Recruitment Process Outsourcing
Do you need additional help to source, recruit and hire top-quality talent in your field? Even the best talent acquisition teams need hiring support from time to time. With the recruitment process outsourcing, you can get the additional help you need to join your team!

☐ Talent Acquisition Services
Talent advisors will work with everything from career assessments to employer branding. You need solutions to position clients more effectively and gain greater transparency into your hiring process.

☐ On-Demand
You have rolled to fill, and you needed them filled like, yesterday. Stop sacrificing quality for speed and get a solution that will solve for the NOW. It’s recruiting help when you need it. This solution allows you to scale up and down when you need to.

☐ Solutions
It doesn’t matter if you are a small business or a large enterprise business- your business needs are unique to you! Partner with the right people to overcome your biggest obstacles today with customized solutions.

The bottom line is there are multiple solutions for your talent acquisition needs. You need to ensure you pick the solution that works best for your business.

Talent acquisition is a hot topic in today’s recruiting community and is viewed as a very complex process. There is no “one-size-fits-all” solution. There are many different solutions to the talent acquisition process, and companies need to find the right solution for them.

Everyone wants to gain the best talent available in the industry. It goes beyond just filling your open roles. It is a long-term strategy that needs to fit your business objectives.

Ready to learn more? To learn more about talent acquisition and how it can benefit your company, book a demo now!