Talent Acquisition Process & Steps
By: Ruby Sokol
It’s no secret that we are working in a fiercely competitive hiring landscape. The demand for highly skilled talent is changing the way we approach and retain top talent.
Historically, the recruitment process for clients and brands is expected to last 2-3 months. However, it’s now becoming more common for companies to go from phone screen to offer in a matter of weeks to win this so called “war on talent” and beat their competitors.
What is Talent Acquisition?
Talent acquisition deals with strategies, tactics, and processes for identifying, recruiting & retaining talent that any given organization needs. This covers several different stages and continuous efforts to grow in alignment with the company’s broader goals, regardless of immediate vacancies.
This includes recruitment marketing and employer branding, candidate relationship management, using assessment tools, breaking down talent analytics, onboarding and recruitment. In addition to traditional recruitment activities, talent acquisition is a modern way of strategically approaching hiring.
Talent Acquisition vs. Recruitment?
Talent acquisition is the overall strategy on how an organization plans to source, assess, hire, and onboard that talent, as well as how the company intends to position itself as an attractive option for talent.
Recruitment is the immediate action to fill specific job vacancies. This includes sourcing, screening, interviewing, selecting, and hiring qualified candidates. Recruitment is a component of the holistic talent acquisition strategy.
The Importance of Talent Acquisition
Talent acquisition should be prioritized as recruiting is reactive in most cases (for example someone resigns, or you’re bringing on new clients and need the additional bandwidth across accounts), whereas talent acquisition is a proactive process and looks at anticipating future hiring needs.
This is especially critical to fast-growing companies - without a thoughtful hiring strategy, you run the risk of losing people, hiring the wrong folks, and impacting the culture that you’ve worked hard to build.
Competitive industries - candidates are in high demand across all industries, particularly in niche verticals, such as tech or healthcare. This requires a proactive recruitment approach to have qualified and vetted candidates in the pipeline.
This means when the time comes to make new hires, your growing and nurtured candidate pool will be larger to choose from and you will have a lot more success identifying new candidates quickly and onboarding them with less transition time.
Benefits of Talent Acquisition
Hiring people intentionally who add to your culture. By knowing your existing team and the kinds of qualities that work best with them and align with your company culture, you will be more thoughtful about hiring. By having a well-thought-out plan for talent acquisition, you will increase the chances of hiring those who align with your current team and are culture adds.
Growing and nurturing your candidate pool means that there's a large number of candidates to select from when the time comes to make a hire.
Make better informed hiring decisions that aren’t reactive and guarantee that you will make the best hire for the job.
Because talent acquisition is about developing a strategic, long-term approach to hiring, an impactful hiring strategy starts with understanding your company's long-term objectives and what type of organization you want to become.