Companies fight tooth and nail to hire new employees, only to discover that more than half their existing workforce is open to leaving them at the drop of a hat. So how can you break free from this never-ending loop of onboarding and offboarding talent? Talent acquisition.

Even your arsenal’s most advanced recruiting technologies will fall short without an agile strategy. It would be best if you launched your recruiting efforts with the right trajectory and momentum to hit the target. This article will give you all the information about how to strategically acquire and keep top talent in your company strategically.

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Here’s the cheat sheet:

• What Is Talent Acquisition?
• Top Benefits
• Does Your Company Need It?
• The Process
• How To Create a Strategy
• The Wrap-up

What Is Talent Acquisition?

Talent acquisition is a human resource function that includes tactics and strategies to recruit and keep talent in an organization. An acquisition strategy involves developing and implementing programs to source, interview and onboard employees who will integrate into the company’s culture and remain a part of the team for the long haul.

Recruiting vs. Talent Acquisition

Before we get into why and how to implement a talent acquisition strategy, let’s start with the basics. Is it the same as the recruitment process?

While the two terms seem interchangeable, there’s a subtle difference between them: the respective timelines.

Recruitment aims to fill a vacant position as soon as possible. The recruitment process kicks off as soon as there’s a vacant role in the organization. On the other hand, talent acquisition is an ongoing process that focuses on finding people for vacant positions and future roles. By extension, the goal is to develop your company in the long run.

The endgame of both processes is to find top talent. But recruiting uses tactical solutions to hire people for vacant positions. At the same time, talent acquisition monitors prospective hires while anticipating future vacancies.

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Primary Benefits

According to SHRM, the average cost per hire can be as expensive as $4,700. Expect recruiting costs to escalate the longer a position remains vacant. Improving your ROI is a direct benefit of hiring for the long term. Yet some advantages can’t be measured in dollars and cents.

Here’s how talent acquisition benefits your company and finances:

Focuses on the Future

The effects of successful recruitment appear down the line after your new hires integrate well into the role, team and company culture.

Deploying appropriate career development paths ensures that your new hires eventually develop into future leaders and executives. You can provide new and existing employees with the necessary training and opportunities via talent acquisition initiatives.

Enhances Candidate Pools

One bad apple spoils the bunch. Similarly, it can take one bad hire to negatively impact business operations, team morale and company reputation. Recruiters and HR people need to be sharp in spotting quality applications.

Talent acquisition helps you hire people who are suitable for your business — and who are also good at what they do. You can tap into a curated list of potential hires from diverse backgrounds and evaluate them based on what matters most: capabilities, qualifications and attitudes.

Addresses the Skill Gap

Not only are there fewer people for millions of job openings, but also fewer people with the right skills. This talent shortage can amount to $8.5 trillion in unrealized annual revenues if left unchecked.

With talent acquisition, you can rethink how to recruit and retain talent. You’ll be able to develop post-recruitment initiatives to keep employees engaged while ensuring professional development.

Does Your Company Need It?

If you already have a strategy to recruit candidates and hiring technologies to manage recruitment workflows, it’s natural to wonder if switching to talent acquisition is necessary.

The short answer is yes. Yes, you require talent acquisition to survive in this evolving world of recruitment. But you don’t need to only rely on our word. We analyzed the talent market and compiled all the facts.

Here’s what the numbers say:

• McKinsey uncovered that 48% of the employees resigned to change career lines.
• The same study also found that limited career advancement drove 41% of the respondents to resign.
• About 64% of workers have already or will consider finding a new job if their employer wants them back in the office full-time.
• Toxic work culture is about 10 times more likely to increase attrition. Lack of DEI initiatives, unethical behavior and uncaring leaders contribute to toxic work culture.

Job seekers reevaluate their priorities, careers and what their jobs mean to them while HR teams keep picking up the pieces. It’s no wonder three out of four companies have difficulties finding the ideal candidate.

According to HR thought leader Josh Bersin, now is the time to think about all forms of employee movement as one strategic area for recruiting in the modern labor market.

Talent movement, or talent mobility, is not just moving an employee from one department to another. It also includes:

• Hiring new employees into the company.
• Promoting top performers within the company.
• Leaving the door open for former employees to return to the company.

Talent acquisition brings together these three functions to create a broad strategy that addresses the pitfalls of your recruitment and talent management processes by:

1. Including the most valuable asset in your hunt for top talent: your existing workforce.
2. Focusing on long-term viability by hiring and retaining those who can eventually take top-level positions within your organization.
3. Measuring employee motivation, satisfaction and performance, and analyzing talent insights to forecast workforce needs.
4. Providing opportunities for employees to advance in their careers by emphasizing skill development.
5. Replacing reactive recruiting with a proactive approach by developing talent pools, nurturing candidate relationships and building a strong employer brand that attracts top talent.

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The Process

Talent acquisition is an ongoing process. Its long-horizon objective of acquiring and retaining top performers depends on attracting, identifying, recruiting and developing talent with strong employer branding, workforce planning and networking.

Here’s a rundown of the steps of talent acquisition process with key questions to ask yourself:

1. Internal Analysis

What type of talent does your company require?

Evaluate the present state of your company and where you ideally want to lay the groundwork for the measures you can take to get there.

Next, understand how your recruiting strategy contributes to achieving your company’s vision and mission. Consider key factors such as:

• Type of workforce. The nature of employment like full-time, part-time, temporary or outsourced workers.
• Human capital management goals. Identify the overall goals you want to achieve.
• Key positions. List out the different roles in your organization and organize them based on hierarchy.
• Critical recruiting KPIs. Evaluate how your recruiters measure hiring success.

2. Recruitment Marketing

Where can you find suitable candidates?

Top talent doesn’t come knocking on your door. You’ll have to spread the word by developing and launching job advertising campaigns. Analyze your outreach options like company career sites, external job boards and social media platforms. The goal is to identify suitable talent sourcing channels.

3. Talent Pipelines

How will you categorize and progress potential hires?

A talent pipeline is a list of prospective hires ready to fill an open role. First, glean your applications from different talent sources like:

• Job advertisements
• Employee referral programs
• Talent and candidate databases
• Internal manager nominations
• Active succession plans

Creating talent pipelines streamlines the candidate selection process. We’ll cover more about that below.

4. Talent Selection

How will you identify the ideal candidate?

Once you have a list of applicants, the next step is to screen all the applicants to find the best person for the job. The selection process for external candidates involves the following recruiting activities:

• Reviewing resumes
• Evaluating skills with pre-hire assessment tools
• Developing shortlists
• Interviewing applicants
• Checking references
• Deploying offer letters

With internal hires, you already know the candidate’s attitude and performance levels. All that’s left to do is evaluate them based on their competency for the new position.

Hiring internally involves:

• Developing a suitable job description
• Communicating internal job postings
• Conducting internal audits with frontline managers
• Evaluating candidates
• Providing feedback to every applicant

5. Candidate Relationship Management

How will you engage candidates and nurture future connections?

For every open role, your HR team searches for, screens and interviews plenty of candidates before finding the ideal potential hire. In the process, several exceptional candidates end up not making the cut. Yet, in a dwindled talent market, you’ll want to keep tabs on candidates who made a mark.

Now is the time to rejoice if recruiting CRM software is already a part of your HR tech stack. Leveraging your system’s candidate relationship management capabilities adds a personal touch while connecting or reconnecting with potential hires.

With candidate databases, all it takes is only a few clicks to access key information like applicant profiles, scorecards and contact information. To kick things up a notch, use people analytics tools to uncover deep insights regarding candidate experience and make well-rounded decisions.

Talent acquisition prepares your company for the future. You’ll save time and resources by handpicking past applicants from your candidate pools.

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How To Create a Strategy

Now that you know the benefits and steps of talent acquisition, you can more easily devise a talent acquistion strategy that will work. Consider the following steps to get things going:

1. Involve Key Personnel

Start by including your employees and managers from different departments for an all-hands-on-deck approach. Establishing a bridge between HR and line managers and their teams will help uncover what affects their capabilities. Your findings will guide your search for talent based on the type of candidate that will best fit the mold.

2. Align Business Goals

Consider your business goals for the next one to five years. Those objectives will be the building blocks for creating a suitable talent acquisition strategy. Your human capital management practices can serve as a useful starting point to understanding your long-term goals.

3. Evaluate Talent Programs

Next, focus on your existing talent management initiatives. Assess the initiatives in place that ensure your new hires’ professional growth. Review the current state of your workforce to uncover critical areas for improvement.

Start by evaluating the following factors:

• DEI initiatives
• Flexible work options
• Employee benefits plan

4. Implement the Right Technology

Once you have the blueprint, you need the right tools to execute your plan. Similarly, you’ll need the right technology to set your talent acquisition strategy. Evaluate your existing hiring technologies. Assess the functionalities of your system in terms of what it does best and what needs to improve.

Here’s the good news: talent acquisition solutions are in the market, bringing joy to the lives of HR folks from every industry.

Yet, with an ocean of vendors to choose from, finding the ideal solution becomes a complex process. If that sounds familiar, don’t worry, our article on evaluating software using the lean methodology will guide you every step of the way.

5. Continuous Improvement

In the end, your strategy must evolve as your company grows. Leaving enough room to improve and adapt to changes is vital for the long-term success of your strategy. With incremental steps and tweaks to the plan, you can adjust the strategy to suit your evolving business requirements rather than starting from scratch.

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The Wrap-up

Your company’s most valuable asset is your people. Everyone is essential for your business to succeed, from the top-level C-suite cadre to the associates and entry-level folks. Talent acquisition focuses on long-term success by recruiting the right people and retaining top performers to help your company flourish for years to come.

Have you used a talent acquisition strategy for your organization? How did that work out for you? Let us know in the comments!