Business leaders are often confronted with the fact that people are what makes a company succeed. Like, for instance, when they see key employees walking away all of a sudden and experience the business impact that can have. Clearly, being aware of people’s importance within an organisation makes business leaders think about ways to retain top talent and also about strategies to keep new talent coming in.
One of the most important things to do, regardless of whether you run a small, medium or big company, is to develop a solid talent acquisition process. In this article, we’ll show you how you can improve your talent acquisition efforts.
While recruiting delivers on a company’s short-term hiring needs, talent acquisition is centred on the organisation’s long-term goals in terms of HR strategy. The talent acquisition task is part of human resources (HR) and involves recruiters, sourcing agencies, HR professionals and hiring managers in the activities of sourcing, attracting, interviewing, hiring, and onboarding employees.
Recruiting is just one aspect of talent acquisition, that has to do with the selection and hiring of a candidate to fit a job vacancy. Instead of simply filling the positions that are open at a given moment, the talent acquisition process goes further and runs continuously to identify the best candidates for future positions that can be harder to fill, such as executive-level positions, leadership roles, or jobs that require specialised training.
To be successful, talent acquisition professionals need to be persistent and resilient in their search for top talent. They have to sell the company's jobs to promising candidates and promising candidates to the company's stakeholders. Although this can be very challenging, having a strong talent acquisition strategy can definitely help to achieve the company’s HR goals.
Here are some tips to develop a winning talent acquisition strategy:
Companies must start by setting their business goals for the next one to five years. The talent acquisition strategy must be designed according to those goals in order to meet the business objectives. As previously seen, while recruitment focuses on filling currently existing open positions, talent acquisition takes into consideration how a company intends to expand in the long run to find the right employees to help it get there.
A data-driven strategy is key to ensure talent acquisition’s efficiency and success. Selling a company’s jobs to candidates is just the same as selling people products. Thus, talent acquisition needs to function in the same way as a marketing campaign does. Using data definitely strengthens the talent acquisition strategy. How? Data can be used to figure out where a company’s top talent came from, and that information can be used to focus talent acquisition efforts on the most successful sources.
Also, using data allows HR teams to check which job descriptions, career pages, and emails perform better, and replicate them. Moreover, data allows understanding if a specific question on a job form is discouraging candidates from completing their application, or whether using company videos attracts more candidates, etc. Ultimately, data allows for talent acquisition process optimisation.
Looking for different professional profiles and skillsets requires talent acquisition professionals to expand their sourcing strategies and use different methods of outreach. Diversifying the sourcing approach requires them to identify the best place to look for specific talents, such as specialised job boards or networking industry events and conferences, rather than just sift through LinkedIn.
HR tech can be a true ally when it comes to sourcing. Using a recruitment software that allows you to automatically multipost your job openings on different job boards and social channels can be key to reach the best talent.
Employer branding is critical for creating A talent acquisition strategy cannot be successful if it’s not backed up by a strong employer brand. According to LinkedIn, 80% of talent leaders agree that employer brand has a significant impact on their ability to hire great talent. Usually, the most skilled candidates receive more than one job offer. To decide which one to accept, they compare companies to see which has the best culture and is overall more appealing. Hence, creating an outstanding employer brand is key to attract top talent and achieve long-term success.
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