Often considered as being precisely the same thing, talent acquisition and recruitment refer to different things. For starters, recruitment is a subset of talent acquisition, which makes the latter a broader subject.
The competition for top talent keeps fierce and is getting intensified by skills shortages. Given how crucial hiring the right talent is for any organisation’s success, today we’ll explore the key differences between recruiting and acquiring talent. We’ll also reflect on which one is the right option for your business when looking to fill an open position.
The Main Differences Between Talent Acquisition & Recruitment
Basically, talent acquisition can be described as the process of continuously looking in to find and hire talent to fill critical roles in your company, such as specialists, leaders, and future executives. It’s an ongoing strategy that focuses on workforce planning long-term. It allows anticipating future hiring needs and building relationships with potential candidates.
Recruitment, on the other hand, focuses on the short term. It is about quickly filling the open positions within your company in a reactive, brief way. Hence, talent acquisition and recruitment are meant to satisfy completely different strategical needs.
How to Choose Between Talent Acquisition & Recruitment
Finding and hiring the best talent for your organisation it’s always the goal. However, some positions are easier to fill than others. That can happen because some roles consist of simpler tasks and have fewer requirements, whereas leadership or technical roles demand more competencies.
To make the best decision on which process to deploy, you first need to ask yourself which positions will be harder to fill. If you’re just looking fill your immediate vacancies, recruitment is the right approach. However, if you’re looking to grow and innovate your business, then you certainly need a talent acquisition strategy.
Talent acquisition will help you to raise awareness for your company among the right talent, attracting the best candidates with the potential to become motivated and engaged employees.
Scenarios where you should consider using a talent acquisition strategy:
When You’re Looking for Niche Talent
When You’re Looking for Growth
When You Need to Create Awareness to Your Employer Brand
Developing an Effective Talent Acquisition Process
An effective talent acquisition strategy is a growth enabler. It allows your organisation to expand at its own pace by providing a consistent pipeline of readily available talent. Yet, it is often a long and complex process. It generally involves the following stages:
- Sourcing & Lead Generation
- Recruiting and Attracting
- Interviewing and Assessing
- References checking
- Making a Final Selection
- Hiring and Onboarding
Here are some essential tips to improve it:
Plan workforce needs ahead: more than simply forecasting which roles you will need to fill and aligning with your organisation’s growth plans, you also need to assess your TA process to account for possible roadblocks and find solutions. For instance, using data to figure out where your company’s top talent came from, and then focus your talent acquisition efforts on the most successful sources it’s crucial for hiring success.
Build Qualified Talent Pipelines: having a pool of high-quality candidates ready to be engaged is indispensable to quickly fill roles. Talent pipelines are also especially useful for hard-to-fill roles that translate into high revenue loss while vacant, such as executive roles. As such, it’s important to continually network and build relationships with candidates who are at the top of their fields.
Leverage Collaboration: collaborating allows people to share skills, expertise and creativity which often results in the most innovative ideas that can profoundly change and improve processes. When it comes to recruiting, the HR department can, for instance, benefit from the insights that the marketing department can offer regarding how to attract potential candidates with digital marketing techniques such as inbound recruiting.
Use Talent Acquisition Software - using HR tech is no longer optional. Automating repetitive and time-consuming tasks allows you to be more productive and focus on engaging with the most qualified candidates, which is crucial to secure the best talent for your company.
Skeeled offers you the perfect opportunity to bring innovation and digitalisation to your hiring. Check our website or our LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook pages for further information.
Thanks for reading and see you next time!
Your team here at skeeled
