What Is Talent Acquisition?

When bringing new employees to your company, you need to ensure that only the best candidates join your workforce. Sometimes, you might need quality over quantity when it comes to recruitment. That is when the talent acquisition approach can help you. 

 

For the organisation’s development, it is crucial to onboard top talent for your workforce. You need to have a process that helps you source and interview the best candidates to choose the right candidate for your open role. Understanding talent acquisition is necessary for the recruiters to make an informed decision about their candidates to help them improve their recruitment process.

 

Talent Acquisition Meaning

Talent acquisition refers to the strategic steps taken in the recruitment process to identify the most suitable candidate for your organisation. This falls under the talent acquisition team’s responsibility to source, assess, and onboard the right candidate for the job.

The talent acquisition team is also responsible for building the proper pipeline to attract more candidates.

In some organisations, the talent acquisition team is part of the HR team. Sometimes based on the needs of an organisation, It can become an individual department of a company.

 

The Roles of a Talent Acquisition Team

The talent acquisition team aligns with the organisation’s recruitment goals.

• The talent acquisition team works with the hiring manager to address the future staffing needs of the company.
• Develop proactive hiring methods to attract more candidates for every open job role.
• Ensure that the recruitment plan is diverse and attracts candidates from various backgrounds.
• Work towards improving the recruitment process by getting feedback from the previous candidates.
• Actively participate in recruitment events to build a network and increase their pool of potential hires.
• Use various channels, such as social media, to source candidates and find the best fit for the company.

 

Recruitment vs. Talent Acquisition

In most cases, recruitment and talent acquisition are used interchangeably. Although they both work toward filling the vacant role in a company, the distinguishing factor is that recruitment is a short-term solution, while talent acquisition is a long-term solution.

Recruitment is about filling the open roles with the most suitable candidate you can find at any given time. 

Talent acquisition is the strategic approach to finding suitable candidates for your company. In this approach, you look for candidates who have the potential to become future executives at the company.

Recruitment specifically works towards hiring more employees for the same role. It focuses on quantity. In comparison, talent acquisition utilises the strategic approach to find quality applicants, especially for tough-to-fill positions.

 

The Talent Acquisition Process

The talent acquisition process involves the following steps to help find the right candidate for the company. These include steps from sourcing to onboarding the candidates.

 

 

1. Sourcing and Lead Generation

Starting with the proper job description and actively participating in various channels, such as events, conferences, and social media groups, will help you find experts in every field.

You can also look into past candidates, passive candidates, and even internal candidates for open roles. 

Once you have found the right audience, you can use this network to promote your hiring needs. This can make it easier to find suitable candidates.

Build relationships with your potential hires and build a pool of candidates to handle all your recruitment needs for the future.

 

2. Attracting and Recruiting

Attracting is the step in the talent acquisition where the candidate finds your company a suitable place to work. There are various ways in which you could attain this.

This is where the employer branding aspect comes into play. You need to build a brand image for your company so that candidates can look forward to becoming a part of your workforce.

Candidate relationship management plays a significant role in attraction and recruitment. Communicating with the candidate and keeping them engaged with the candidate can help recruitment.

Even the candidates who might not be a perfect fit for your company right now may become valuable assets in the future. 

One crucial aspect is that your candidate’s attracting strategies should not stop after becoming your employees. It should extend and also act as the employee retention plan. 

 

3. Interviewing

When interviewing candidates, it is necessary to give them a positive experience. The talent acquisition strategies should handle the interviews in a short span and assess the candidate carefully.

Try using online assessment tools to check the expertise of the candidate. The online tests match the candidate’s personality, attitude, and cognitive skills.

Suppose you need to understand more about the candidate’s role and the skills necessary to carry out their responsibilities. In that case, you can conduct a job analysis and check the candidate for those specific skills.

To avoid bias and ensure that all of your candidates are treated fairly. Try conducting a structured interview. This also makes it easier to assess when many candidates compete for a limited open position.

 

4. Checking References

If the candidate performs well in the interview stage and seems the perfect fit for the role, you need to check the candidate’s references to get more information about them.

Hiring managers need to check the candidate’s references to make the right decision and find any missing details about the candidate. 

The candidate you onboard to your workforce will not only help you with their duties, but also contribute to your company’s culture.

You must use every means to understand more about your candidate to ensure that you make the right decision.

 

5. Finalising the Candidate

Once you have narrowed down the candidates who are qualified to become your employees, it is crucial that you handle the selection process carefully to pick the most suited candidate.

This is the stage where you make the final offer to the candidate and encourage them to take the offer before they are onboarded to the organisation.

This would be a collaborative process involving the hiring manager, talent acquisition, and the HR team. When you pick a candidate among the final list of candidates, ensure that you give the proper reason for choosing them so that it is easier to understand.

Do not rush this process and carefully choose the right candidate. At the same time, do not keep the candidate waiting for a long time and risk losing them to the competitors, especially when the candidate is a top talent in their respective domain.

 

6. Hiring and Onboarding

Onboarding is one of the essential parts of an employee’s life. They will likely remember it for a very long time, so the first few weeks of employment will help them form an opinion about the company.

The talent acquisition team should handle the onboarding process and everything related.

This includes welcome emails, introducing the teams, helping them understand their role, resource sharing, and explaining the policies and benefits of the company.

The onboarding time is when the employee sets their expectations for the company, it is necessary to handle such expectations and keep them engaged with the company to retain them.

 

Which One Should You Choose: Recruitment or Acquisition?

With the changing market trends, it is necessary to look into proactive hiring methods to keep up with the job market and stay ahead of your competition.

You could reskill and upskill your employees to handle the increasing skill requirements. This might work to a certain extent, but, when it comes to a job that requires specialisation, you need to look towards hiring candidates with expertise in the field. 

A talent pool can help you acquire candidates quicker and save time and money in sourcing.

Not every job requires you to look for candidates actively. Based on the nature of the business and the frequency of your hiring, you can look into other recruitment methods for your company.

But without a doubt, a talent acquisition strategy can help you find qualified candidates efficiently.

 

Final thoughts

Understanding talent acquisition strategies can help you think about the big picture and plan accordingly for future recruitment. A process that picks the best candidate for your organisation and plans with them in the long term will help you stay ahead of your competitors and easily hire top talent.

LogicMelon

Award-winning recruitment software that will find, attract, hire and analyse the way you want to work. At LogicMelon, we have experienced software recruitment marketing specialists to help you build effective recruitment solutions supported by the best customer service you’ll find anywhere!

Email: sales@logicmelon.com or call LogicMelon (UK) +44 (0) 203 553 3667 (USA) +1 860 269 3089

This entry was posted in Blog post | Candidate Attraction | Candidate Experience | Employer Brand | Recruitment | Tools & Tips | Top Talent