Talent acquisition is more than just advertising for open vacancies, shortlisting the matching profiles and selecting candidates after an interview. Hiring the right talent is multipronged process with as much as the company’s future at stake. There are plenty of things to watch out for; for instance, is your recruiting strategy biased towards a particular gender? Are you accidentally hiring candidates that are overqualified for the role and hence hard to retain? Is your employer brand reliable enough to attract top class talent? These and many more questions should cross your mind while making the next hire.

1. What is Talent Acquisition?
2. Ways to Improve Talent Acquisition

What is Talent Acquisition?

Talent acquisition is the process of finding and hiring relevant talent for fulfilling an organizational need with an eye on the future.  It is a term used interchangeably with recruiting to a fault.  Recruiting or hiring is more about filling the open positions. Talent acquisition is a strategic investment in creating leadership with the focus on future of your company.

Ways to Improve Talent Acquisition

• Evolve your talent acquisition strategies to attract the right employees
• Adopt data-driven recruitment strategies to attract talent to your organisation
• Reduce turnaround time in recruitment for talent acquisition improvement
• Improve talent sourcing to attract talented employees

Evolve your talent acquisition strategies to attract the right employees

Hiring new talent is arguably one of the hardest tasks for any recruiter. Talent acquisition process can be even trickier as the hiring is done for key positions and will make a greater impact than everyday recruitment.  A simple mistake can cost heavily. Rapid technology advancements have changed the game entirely and therefore as a TA specialist, you need to evolve your strategies with the changing landscape. Using the same interviewing methods and techniques, or same sourcing practices can lead to missing out on the top talent. Candidates have become more tech savvy. They are using different ways to identify the right job opportunity for them. Surveys show that job searching is now predominantly done while on the move, on mobile. As a talent acquisition leader, you need to accept and embrace these changes and adjust the TA strategy to attract talent to your company.

(Also Read: How to Improve Recruitment and Selection Process)

Adopt data-driven recruitment strategies to attract talent to your organisation

With tools and technologies permeating every sphere of life, more data is being created with every passing second. Data analytics can help structure and make sense of this data to predict human behavior, patterns and choices. Using tools that can access, structure and analyze data related to jobseekers can help you get insight into talent demographics, their behavior and choices. Even within an organization, the data related to high performance employees can provide an understanding of which talent will perform better in future thus giving a factual basis to your hiring decision.  (Also read: Recruitment Strategies to Attract and Retain Talent)

To fully embrace a data-driven approach to talent acquisition, adopt a system of recruitment metrics.

Measuring crucial data points is important to know which efforts are paying off and which are not. You should be able to identify the right metrics for your business as per the organization goal and business strategy.  Some of the important recruitment metrics that you should be concerned about include retention rate, cost to acquire, time to fill and offer to acceptance ratio. These metrics are individual to every open requisition.   Measuring these data points should not be difficult if you have a well-structured hiring process in place and you are using well-rounded recruitment software. Analyzing these metrics can provide important missing links in your talent acquisition process.

(Also Read: Top 5 Recruitment Metrics That Matter)

Reduce turnaround time in recruitment for talent acquisition improvement

The top talent will not stay open to job opportunities forever. The brutal competition for talent means you need to work within tight deadlines and shorten the recruitment process. Set a timeline for candidates by emailing them a turnaround time within which they have to respond to the job with their profile or availability for an interview.  Ensure that all internal stakeholders involved in the interview process stick to a 24-hour timeline for all vital steps of the process. When making the offer, make sure to mention a timeline for response. Setting up deadlines shortens the hiring process, makes it more productive and also presents your organization in a more professional light.

(Also Read: Chatbots In Recruitment: How Do They Help?)

Improve talent sourcing to attract talented employees

Social media and employee referrals have become too important sourcing channels to ignore. In addition to job boards and your own career site, make sure to post your requirement on social channels that have a significant audience of job seekers specific to your industry. Leveraging LinkedIn works well in cases where candidates are looking for attractive offers passively. Leadership talent is most likely to refer to their network for new opportunities and less likely to seek employment on job boards. Therefore utilizing the relevant social media channels for sourcing talent is essential to your overall strategy. At the same time, try try making good use of your employee’s referrals as the hiring through your trusted employees has more credibility and is also a time saving process.

(Also Read: How to Improve Talent Sourcing in Your Organization?)

Actively following the above mentioned practices for talent acquisition can leave a marked difference in performance and quality of talent being hired in the organization.