The talent acquisition process we once relied on has evolved, and developing a talent acquisition strategy is a necessary step to stay competitive. While increased profits, innovations in tech, and several other parameters can define great companies, people are at the core of anything noteworthy a company accomplishes. It can be difficult to find excellent talent, especially while many organizations are still trying to recover from The Great Resignation. In November 2021, 4.5 million Americans voluntarily left their positions.
Companies that have the best, most streamlined talent acquisition strategies haven't struggled nearly as much with obtaining and retaining top talent, which allows them to place more focus on sales, product development, marketing, and other important business functions. If your company needs a better way to recruit employees, developing a talent acquisition strategy can be one of the most impactful actions you take.
What Is Talent Management and Why Does it Matter?
Talent management is the process of recruiting, onboarding, and retaining employees in a given company. It may also involve promotions, networking, and other such methods of attracting new talent and keeping current employees engaged. Talent management is best described as a comprehensive human resources strategy that gets new employees in your doors and keeps your current employees thriving. That doesn't mean it's the same thing as HR, however.
According to Michigan State University, the four key components of talent management include:
- Recruitment
- Performance management
- Learning and development
- Retention
Meanwhile, human resources management involves talent management, but it also encompasses the actual administration of benefits, data management, complaints from employees, compliance with safety policies, and so much more. Talent management is absolutely an aspect of human resources, but the terms are not interchangeable.
Talent management is not just about hiring the right people, it's also important for current employees to feel valued and have opportunities to grow with the company. Organizations that lack a comprehensive talent management strategy often see high turnover rates, which are incredibly costly. In fact, Forbes reports that the cost of hiring a replacement is, on average, about a third of that position's salary, per person. Constantly trying to recruit new employees, and send them through a training program, only to have them quit in a year or less is definitely not good for business.
Developing Your Talent Acquisition Strategy
When it comes to developing your talent acquisition sourcing strategy, it's best to take a systematic approach. Talent acquisition encompasses numerous facets, and it's imperative to address them all to make your strategy an effective one. Below is a talent acquisition strategy template that can help you narrow down the most important areas to focus on:
Employer brand
Companies spend plenty of time, effort, and dollars on marketing an attractive brand, but many fail to invest resources into making their employer brand inviting and appealing to prospective employees. An employer brand is what steers people toward or away from applying to your company, and it should allude to the fact that your organization is a great place to work.
Companies that don't focus time or energy into fostering a welcoming, fun, or engaging employer brand often struggle to recruit talent. A sample talent acquisition strategy regarding employer brand is to use social media to connect with a wider audience. This can not only help you promote your products or services, but it can also tell a story of who your company is as an employer.
Corporate culture
Corporate culture plays a major role in defining your employer brand, as corporate culture can make employees feel engaged, cared for, and motivated, or it can make them feel disposable, unvalued, and unmotivated. While employer brand deals with how the public views your company, corporate culture refers to how your employees and internal personnel view the company.
Workforce planning
Workforce planning is the process of analyzing where a company's workforce currently stands, while also planning ahead to ensure the workforce will be prepared for the challenges of tomorrow.
Anticipating the needs of the company can help recruiters figure out where they are, and where they need to go in order to succeed. If you haven't performed a detailed workplace planning analysis lately, it might be time to do so in order to get a better idea of where your workforce currently stands.
Sourcing and recruiting
Sourcing and recruiting are the actions of finding places to advertise open jobs and sending people to your website to submit an application. Companies can spend thousands of dollars a year marketing their jobs on various job boards, or even physical billboards and commercials. Large companies that already have a solid employer brand and corporate culture often don't have to.
If you own a small business, or you're currently working on your employer brand and corporate culture, there are several ways you can stand out among the crowd with sourcing and recruiting. One of the actions you can take that will have an immediate impact is to clean up job descriptions. Take some time to review job postings from competitors, and take note of what seems to work and what doesn't. Strive to make your job postings more captivating. One way to make your job descriptions more captivating is by converting them to recruitment videos. Videos are a great way to promote your company in a more engaging and creative way, without the limitations of plain text.
Referrals
Your company's employees already know what it's like to work in your organization. They know the types of skills, attitudes, and experience that make an employee stand out and perform well at a company. For this reason, referrals can be an incredibly powerful way to find new talent. When employees are happy where they work, they are far more likely to recommend applying for a job at your company to qualified family members and friends. Unhappy employees, on the other hand, will recommend everyone they are about to stay far away from the company they work for.
Employees won't recommend family members or friends to a company if they don't truly believe the person will perform the job well. This makes it an ideal way to find candidates, as they are already somewhat vetted when they apply.
Using an ATS
An ATS, or applicant tracking system, is a software that both helps employers and prospective employees stay more organized during the hiring process. For companies, an ATS helps track and store applicant information, and it can keep track of communications between a candidate and the company throughout the entire process. This can significantly improve the recruitment and onboarding process, as no prospective employee will be forgotten about, and detailed records of communication are preserved.
An ATS can also make scheduling interviews easier than ever, and they even allow for spaces for interviewers to leave notes about candidates for others to review. An ATS is an excellent investment for medium to large companies that review hundreds or thousands of applications per year.
Considering candidate experience
When a candidate goes to apply for a job in your company, what is their experience like? Is the process simple and streamlined, or is it clunky and unreliable? One of the best ways you can increase your talent pool is simply by making the application process a much more pleasant one. This might include adding software that pulls information from submitted files automatically, without requiring an applicant to input information they have already listed on their resume.
Or maybe it involves adding videos to your job posts that explain more about company culture, the types of employees that tend to thrive at your company, and other pertinent information. It's important to view the application process with fresh eyes and look for places where it could be improved on a regular basis.
Stay Competitive with a Strong Talent Acquisition Strategy
Lately, competition to attract applicants and hire top talent has been fierce. In order to stay competitive and recruit top talent, you may need to develop a talent acquisition strategy from scratch, or tweak your existing talent acquisition framework. By following the outline above, you can create a strong and compelling talent acquisition strategy in no time at all.
If you want to pack a real punch in your recruitment strategy, Lumina offers high-quality, rapid job postings and more that can make your company stand out from the crowd. We've already helped numerous companies like yours attract top talent. Try Lumina today!