If your company has yet to develop a formal talent acquisition strategy, now’s the time to do so.
For one thing, an effective hiring strategy will make it easier for you to attract top-tier candidates—and that’s never been more important.
For another, it will ensure that your recruitment process supports your company’s business objectives, allowing HR to contribute more directly to your organization’s growth and success.
What is a Talent Acquisition Strategy?
In a nutshell, talent acquisition strategies are company-specific plans for identifying and hiring the employees needed to meet each organization’s short- and long-term business objectives.
These hiring strategies consist of multiple components, all working together to ensure an effective recruitment process that’s in step with each employer’s overarching goals.
Why Link Talent Acquisition to Organizational Success?
Too often, the recruitment process is reactive—i.e., HR is largely called on to fill vacancies as they arise. But when HR is part of an employer’s strategic planning process, talent acquisition becomes a powerful, proactive business tool.
For example, if a company’s three-year goal is to expand into a new market, leadership shouldn’t wait until Year Three to bring HR on board. Rather, HR is part of the project team from the get-go, engaging in strategic workforce planning to pro-actively staff the expansion.
6 Key Steps to a Successful Talent Acquisition Strategy
Successful talent acquisition strategies optimize the various components of the recruitment process, including:
1. Burnish Your Employer Brand
Your employer brand encompasses your culture, values, and overall image as an employer—i.e., how you’re perceived by current and prospective employees.
You can enhance your employer brand by offering competitive compensation and benefits, building an engaging company culture, and ensuring a positive candidate experience. An appealing employer brand is one of the most compelling recruiting and retention tools in the HR toolbox.
2. Determine Short- and Long-Term Talent Needs
To facilitate the best hires, HR needs to know where its workforce is today, skills-wise…and where it needs to be tomorrow.
Using techniques such as skills gap analysis and competency mapping, HR teams can identify the disparities between the skills current employees possess and those that are/will be needed to achieve the company’s objectives. Then, it can hire (and train) accordingly.
3. Use Multiple Sourcing Channels
Your talent sourcing channels are the different methods and platforms you use to attract candidates—i.e., job boards, social media platforms, employee referrals, recruitment agencies, and the company website.
While you undoubtedly have your go-to channels, the wider the net you cast, the more (and more diverse) candidates you’re likely to attract.
4. Create an Efficient Screening Process
In a competitive job market, speed matters. Not only are top candidates snapped up quickly, but studies show that a slow recruitment process drives them away.
So, seek opportunities to streamline your screening process, identifying and eliminating hold-ups. Whether it’s about arranging interviews or obtaining consensus, find ways to accelerate your workflow without compromising quality.
5. Leverage Technology
It pays to review your HR software’s capabilities periodically, to make sure your team is using it fully. Automated job postings, resume scanning, applicant tracking—all of these tools are designed to enhance the talent acquisition process, but they only work if you’re taking advantage of them.
Sometimes, it’s the simple things. For example, every so often, “test drive” your application. According to SHRM, the average application takes under five minutes to complete—and the fewer clicks, the less likely applicants are to bail midstream.
6. Use Recruitment Data to Improve Your Process
Do you know how long it takes your company to fill an open position? What percentage of candidates accept your job offers? Which of your sourcing channels bring you the best candidates?
Tracking your recruitment metrics (and improving them when indicated) will help you fulfill your talent acquisition strategy—which is why it’s important to leverage basic hiring analytics.
Enhance Your Talent Acquisition and Recruitment Strategies
One of the best moves you can make this year is to develop a formal talent acquisition strategy, one that’s synced with your company’s business objectives. Learn more about strategic HR planning—and how Namely’s talent acquisition software can help.
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