Talent is a critical issue to maintain business sustainability.
Hiring multigenerational, productive, multicultural, and inclusive-minded employees is not an easy task for human resource (HR) professionals.
The same old traditional method of hiring is not going to work, at least not for modern businesses.
Imagine you’ve updated a job post online, and you wait for hundreds of resumes to flood in, then you start building your hiring strategy on a spreadsheet or email. Do you think you’re doing an excellent job? A simple answer, no. You’re just delaying the hiring process leaving no time for building the powerhouse workforce.
This is not a winning strategy.
“Modern businesses need a modern workforce.”
This is when talent acquisition takes charge.
The success of any organization is closely related to the quality of talent in the organization, and all these can be achieved only through a winning strategy i.e. talent acquisition.
To ease hiring, HR leaders can start making their processes more strategic. They need to change their hiring practices to talent acquisition.
Talent acquisition: the definition
Talent acquisition is a process that helps identify, attract, select, and retain only the qualified talents. To make this strategy more proactive, HR professionals can now use robust software solutions to communicate with individuals. Having a strategic approach can help organizations transition out from their traditional methods of hiring.
To understand this better, we will take the help of “Schneider’s Attraction-Selection-Attrition (ASA) theory.” According to the theory, you will find three interrelated forces that closely determine the type of people working in the organization.
The three forces are:
1.Attraction: A job seeker tends to apply to all organizations but only chooses the organization they wish to work for. Such organizations distinguish themselves on a certain number of factors – i.e. employer brand or value proposition for their employees.
2.Selection: When a candidate applies to companies, they must choose the candidate whose profile matches the job role given by the organization. Such type of candidate selection is done by checking the organization-fit criteria.
3.Attrition: If there’s no match between the candidate and the organization, the individual eventually leaves the company. The company will only retain those candidates who’re in agreement with the system and strategies of the organization.
The above three forces are strong pillars of talent acquisition.
What are the differences between talent acquisition, recruitment, and HR?
Well, they’re often used as synonyms. As an HR professional, you need to understand terms like strategic recruitment, recruitment, and corporate recruitment. They’re almost one in the same thing.
But if we’re pointing out the difference, talent acquisition is aimed toward following a strategic process of recruiting talents. Whereas with recruitment, it is more of an operational responsibility for which HR professionals need to just fill the open vacancies.
Factors such as employer branding, recruitment process optimization, strategic recruitment, and process outsourcing are included in talent acquisition.
Now if we’re talking about HR, most of the talent acquisition falls under the HR department or you can say is a part of the HR department. The reporting is often done to the CHRO, as such where talent acquisition strategy needs to be aligned with people strategy or HR strategy, further which needs to be aligned with the organizational strategy.
The nine-step process in talent acquisition
There’s more than just Schneider’s ASA theory in talent acquisition. Below are the nine-step processes that need to be followed.
1.Analysis of organizational needs
2.Approval of every job requisition
a.Why the job role is required
b.Discuss if it’s a new or existing requirement
c.Name of the department
d.Salary compensation and budgets
e.The hiring manager
f.Starting date
g.Whether the job role is permanent or temporary
h.Is it for full-time or part-time
3.Acceptance of the candidate
4.Determine selection criteria
5.Searching relevant talent
6.Established the selection process
7.Hiring decision
8.Onboarding
9.Evaluation
Talent acquisition strategies HR leaders Need to Develop
To succeed in long-term benefits from the talent, HR leaders need to develop and cultivate the right talent acquisition strategies to ensure the company recruits the best hire.
•Align your strategies with business goals – if you’re planning to expand to different countries, ensure you have a long-term plan. Only then will you be able to tailor your talent acquisition needs with business goals.
•Ensure to use data to build better acquisition strategies – data gives you the right update about factors deterring the candidate from filing out the job vacancies. Using this information, you can determine from which field the talent is coming from.
•Focus more on employer branding – employer branding plays a significant role in talent acquisition. When candidates compare companies, they’ll be willing to choose the one having the best values and work-life balance.
•Try to expand outreach strategies – if you’re looking to hire people with different skill sets, you will need to diversify your hiring strategies.
Optimizing a structured talent acquisition strategy can help avoid recruiting pitfalls.
How prepared are you?
