Talent acquisition is the process of identifying, attracting, selecting, and retaining highly qualified people. It involves a key part of the employee journey and is arguably one of the most important drivers of organizational success.
Finding the right candidate for a specific position can be challenging. 77% of companies report talent shortages, which is a 17-year high. Therefore, to ensure long-term success, attracting and retaining top talent is essential, and that’s where talent acquisition can help you.
In this guide, you’ll find everything you need to know about talent acquisition, why it’s important, how to build a talent acquisition strategy, and more.
Talent Acquisition
The core of talent acquisition is to attract employees to an organization and hire the ones that fit with the organization and role.
Talent acquisition responsibilities include developing a strong candidate pipeline, developing employer branding, identifying, assessing, and hiring candidates to fill open positions, future resource planning, and diversifying the labor force. Doing this well leads to lower turnover, higher productivity, and increased engagement.
The talent acquisition strategy should align with the people strategy (or HR strategy). In turn, this strategy aligns with the broader organizational strategy.
Over time, the talent acquisition function has developed. In most organizations, it is now a separate team or a part of the HR department and has become an essential part of people strategies.
These three forces are the fundamental pillars of talent acquisition.
The terms talent acquisition, recruitment, strategic recruitment, and corporate recruitment are often used interchangeably. While talent acquisition and recruitment share the same primary goal of filling open positions in an organization, there are some notable differences.
Talent acquisition is a more strategic, long-term process aimed at finding highly qualified employees for hard-to-fill roles and anticipating future staffing needs.
In contrast, recruitment tends to be the short-term, operational task of filling vacancies. Recruiters generally hire for positions that are always needed or are not expected to be difficult to fill. Conversely, talent acquisition requires more time and planning to understand the different roles and departments, as well as the unique set of skills and experience required to succeed in each position.
Talent acquisition also includes strategic recruitment, employer branding, recruitment process optimization, recruitment process outsourcing, and much more.
Strategic talent acquisition refers to an organization’s unique approach to sourcing, identifying, assessing, hiring, and retaining aligned candidates to help the business achieve its short and long-term goals.
This strategy will vary depending on the nature of the company, the industry, and the specific positions in question. Organizational goals also play a major role. This is why an integral part of creating a talent acquisition strategy is to first assess the needs of the organization and its goals and consider the future.
Many employers make the mistake of trying to fill vacancies as quickly as possible. However, thinking beyond the organization’s immediate needs is crucial for long-term success.
Many employers make the mistake of trying to fill vacancies as quickly as possible. However, thinking beyond the organization’s immediate needs is crucial for long-term success.
For example, if a company is looking to expand abroad in the near future, it might need their employees to have specific skills and knowledge. On the other hand, if a company experiences growing demand for their products or services, they may need to increase their workforce to cope with this.
In general, strategic talent acquisition is part of a broader talent management strategy.
In the video below, Erik van Vulpen, the Founder of AIHR, takes a deep dive into all you need to know about talent acquisition:
The third strategy is to borrow talent. In practice, this means working with part-time, freelance, contract, contingent, and temporary workers who complement the skills of your existing workforce.
This strategy is suitable for smaller companies that need to fill very unique job requirements or only need someone to undertake a project for a short period, and don’t want to invest in these skills long-term, or aren’t sure how to utilize them (yet).
Businesses can use talent analytics to determine which of these employees may be suitable for future opportunities and promotions based on the new skills they’re acquiring. Bridging also acts as a strong retention strategy. It helps employees develop professionally, increases their career progression prospects, and helps them feel valued by their organization.
The final talent acquisition strategy in the 4 B model is to Bridge. In this strategy, organizations leverage learning and development programs to increase existing employees’ range of competencies and potentially offer training in adjacent areas.
The Bridge strategy is most suitable for stable organizations that are ready (and able) to invest in their people.
By having a well-planned talent acquisition strategy, businesses can ensure they have the right people in place to drive growth, innovation, and overall business success.
Once you have your strategy in place, you can start executing it through a streamlined talent acquisition process. This process typically consists of nine steps.
Let’s explore each step below.
The organizational needs analysis is the foundation of your recruitment strategy and selection choices.
In this step, the organization’s mission, vision, goals, and values are translated into a number of core competencies and values. These help determine the profile that you are looking for and influence your selection criteria to assess the fit between the candidate, organization, and role.
This organizational needs analysis, also referred to as a skills gap analysis, may be part of standard HR policies and, therefore, already completed.
With this information, the direct manager and the relevant director or VP can formally approve the job requisition.
Thorough vacancy intake takes time and may delay the recruiting timeline, which is why it’s often an undervalued step.
The table below shows the most common selection methods with their corresponding predictive validity for overall job performance.
Different functions justify different selection methods.
For example, for a CFO position, a high-profile candidate may be headhunted. The selection process would entail a number of unstructured interviews and extensive reference checking, and job knowledge testing to see if there is a fit. However, for a junior accountant, a much more standardized process may suffice, involving a GMA test, highly structured interviews, and work sample tests.
The return on investment (ROI) of selection can be calculated through a utility analysis. This helps determine the most suitable and effective selection methods.
Next is the candidate search – the most visible and recognized part of the talent acquisition process.
In general, candidates can be divided into active and passive. Active candidates are actively searching for jobs and may check your careers page often, while passive candidates are not. They need more of a targeted trigger or outreach in order to become actively interested in your job. Therefore, talent acquisition professionals may use different methods to attract these different groups.
The most effective recruitment channels are based on the candidate persona we mentioned earlier. For instance, if you are hiring for an entry-level position, you may want to try campus recruiting and leverage the advertisement functionality of social media channels like Instagram or TikTok. On the other hand, a senior and experienced candidate is more likely to be on channels like LinkedIn.
Once you’ve selected a candidate you want to hire, a job offer follows. This stage may involve some back-and-forth negotiation before both sides are content with the offer and the candidate formally accepts.
A key metric to track during this phase is the offer acceptance rate, which is the percentage of accepted offers divided by the total number of offers made.
The next phase in the talent acquisition process is the onboarding of new employees.
A great tool is a 30-60-90 day plan for new hires, which is helpful to both employees and managers. It helps the manager clearly communicate their expectations and makes it clear to the candidate what is expected of them at every step, structuring their onboarding process.
You can use the vacancy intake as the base for the plan.
The final stage of the talent acquisition process is the evaluation. Here, the candidate is asked if the job and organization match their expectations. This offers an excellent opportunity to check back in with the candidate.
You’ll need to address mismatched expectations. It could be that communication is unclear or recruiters have promised things that managers are unaware of.
All in all, evaluating the talent acquisition process is an essential step in identifying potential bottlenecks, improving candidate experience, and ensuring the process is effective in attracting and retaining top talent in the organization.
The following best practices are the backbone of your talent acquisition strategy and will be the key drivers for your talent acquisition success.
A strong employer brand helps attract talent and drives employee satisfaction and retention. So, what does your employer brand say about you? What do candidates learn from browsing your website, social media channels, and job postings? How can you work on all of these elements to reframe your employer brand and highlight your company’s mission, values, and culture?
Organizations that invest in their employer branding have a 50% increase in qualified candidates. They also experience a 1-2x faster time to hire. Moreover, companies prioritizing employer branding are 130% more likely to increase employee engagement. Finally, according to LinkedIn research, investments in the employer brand result in an average turnover reduction of 28%.
Your employer brand is much more than the compensation and benefits you offer to employees. It’s your approach to work-life balance, employee wellness, collaboration, DEIB, growth opportunities, workplace atmosphere, and more.
Consider posting employee testimonials on the careers page of your website, encourage employee interaction on your social channels, and make sure your job descriptions convey your employer brand too. YNAB posts job descriptions that are three to four times longer than most so that candidates can get a solid idea of whether it’s a good cultural fit for them.
At AIHR, we include an “On a typical week” section in our job postings to help candidates visualize what it is like to work at the company.
Think about how you can tell a unique story, stand out in a crowded job market, and show candidates why they should work with you.
Implementing recruitment marketing tactics will enable you to attract talented employees. To succeed in this, the TA team should consider partnering with, or at least touching base with, the marketing department to help craft compelling job descriptions, careers pages, emails, and other employer branding materials.
Recruitment focuses on filling vacancies, whereas talent acquisition takes a long-term approach. You should consider how your company will expand or change over the coming years. With this information, you can then source talent to help you on this journey.
Map out your current talent acquisition process in stages, identify the pain points, and assess what you can improve and make more consistent across the board to ensure a fair experience for all. From here, you can sit down with business leaders to discuss how these stages can be more business-oriented and help meet organizational goals over the next one to five years.
For example, if the business is expanding into Asia soon, the TA team may want to attract candidates with international experience. Or, if you’re creating a new SaaS product, you may need to focus on attracting talented developers and coders. Even if a role doesn’t exist yet, it’s important to consider the type of talent your organization needs to meet its long-term goals.
As technology rapidly advances and becomes more relevant, it’s essential to stay on top of all technological developments in the market that can help the TA team perform at a higher level. The global talent acquisition suites software market is projected to grow 14.3% annually by 2028.
Utilizing technology to boost your talent acquisition strategy from job posting to onboarding will help you achieve better results. 99% of executives say their businesses have generated returns from digital investments.
As a company, you have to market your products or services to your target customer in a way that helps them understand why they need it and how it will help them. But it’s just as essential to convince people why they should join your company. That’s exactly where data can strengthen your talent acquisition process.
For example, data can tell you where the majority of your top talent comes from so that you can focus your efforts on those channels and methods. It can also tell you if certain job descriptions or application questions are preventing candidates from applying to your roles so that you can rectify this.
Since the pandemic, traditional 9-5 in-office working models have been dramatically adapted. Many organizations have taken a more flexible approach to work and adopted a hybrid model.
Research shows that some workers would rather work from home than get a pay raise. What’s more, people with flexible schedules report 29% higher productivity and 53% greater ability to focus than their counterparts with no flexibility.
Workers, particularly Gen-Z and Millennials, are striving for greater work-life balance. Therefore, companies that offer remote working, hybrid work models, and flexible scheduling are likely to be more attractive companies to work for.
Organizational and workforce developments influence talent acquisition decisions, so workforce planning is critical to a successful talent acquisition strategy.
Also, being in permanent contact with your hiring managers helps you better understand the current and expected recruitment workload. The TA team will be able to anticipate what is coming and can be much more successful in hiring the right talent at the right time.
Furthermore, understanding the workforce dynamics, including turnover rates, upcoming retirements, or changes in skill requirements, allows the talent acquisition team to forecast future hiring needs. This forward-thinking approach ensures that the organization is prepared for different scenarios, can better manage recruitment costs, and has a steady pipeline of high-quality candidates.
A key talent acquisition best practice is expanding your sourcing strategies. If you want to find better talent with different skill sets, you will have to implement different methods of outreach, so it’s important to diversify your approach.
LinkedIn is great for general recruitment, but if you’re hiring for a more specialized role or set of skills, consider using specialized job boards, partnering with academic programs, or attending networking events where you might find these people.
Recruitment Process Outsourcing, or RPO, is also a major part of corporate recruiting in many businesses. RPO is a form of process outsourcing where all or part of the recruitment process is transferred to an external service. Maintaining connections with these agencies, even when you are currently not using them, will be helpful as they can be helpful in case of unexpected changes in terms of workforce demand.
Implementing these best practices enables you to build an effective talent acquisition function. The goal here is to bring your talent acquisition capabilities to a level where they drive business objectives.
A well-planned and executed TA strategy provides a strategic roadmap for your workforce for the next three to five years while integrating data and analytics seamlessly with your overall HR practices, ultimately adding clear value to the business.
As we’ve already mentioned, data has become indispensable in building and executing talent acquisition strategies. Talent acquisition analytics has now taken center stage, offering critical insights for informed decision-making, strategic planning, and boosting the overall effectiveness of TA efforts.
Talent acquisition analytics (or TA analytics) involves using technology to analyze a wide range of candidate and recruitment data to gain insights and uncover patterns. This includes analyzing sourcing channel effectiveness, candidate experience survey results, how long each step of the talent acquisition process takes, and more. However, it’s important to note that these analytics are only of benefit when the teams understand the data points and metrics they need to collect and measure and why.
From here, the TA team can make evidence-based recruitment and onboarding decisions that improve the overall hiring journey, make better hires, and help meet organizational goals.
Talent acquisition analytics can also improve candidate experience, address any biases in the current recruitment process, and optimize the entire journey for both candidates and recruiters.
Only 20% of organizations currently have predictive talent analytics capabilities. Yet, Bain & Company found that organizations that invest in talent analytics see a 40% difference in productivity compared to those that don’t.
Talent acquisition metrics are integral to talent acquisition analytics and are typically tracked through an applicant tracking system, assessment suite, or, more simply, in an Excel sheet.
Here are some common talent acquisition metrics that you may want to track:
Time to fill measures how many days it takes to source and hire a new candidate, which is typically the period between a job requisition approval and a candidate accepting their offer of employment.
Many factors affect this metric, such as the speed of your TA team and the supply and demand for the role in question.
Time to hire is slightly different from time to fill. It measures the days between a candidate applying for a role or being approached by one of your recruiters and accepting the job offer.
This metric tells you how long it takes a candidate to move through your hiring process and how efficient your recruiters are. It can also pinpoint any bottlenecks and areas for improvement in your hiring journey.
The shorter your time to hire, the more positive the candidate experience will be. You’re also significantly reducing the chances of your candidates being poached by a competitor.
The offer acceptance rate metric tells you how many candidates have accepted an offer compared to the total number who have received an offer.
A low offer acceptance rate could indicate that you aren’t competitive enough in terms of your compensation and benefits packages. To remedy this, you could list salary expectations in your job description or ask your candidates about their salary expectations earlier in the hiring journey.
Yield ratio tracks the movement of candidates between each stage in the entire recruitment process. This means you will have a yield ratio for the candidates who move from the application process to the screening stage, another ratio for those who move from the screening stage to the video interview stage, and a ratio for the number of applications to the final number of hires.
This metric is helpful in determining whether your current sourcing and recruitment strategy brings the results you expect. You can also pinpoint any bottlenecks, biases, or adverse impact in the journey.
Sourcing channel effectiveness describes the number (or share) of potential candidates that each of your recruitment channels is bringing you, as well as a conversion rate. Comparing these rates tells you how effective each channel is so that you can move away from ineffective sources and invest more resources in the most effective ones.
Talent acquisition dashboard is useful in visualizing and monitoring your TA metrics. It helps in understanding trends and potential issues fast. You can literally “see” patterns and problems, making them easier to spot and saving time creating charts and tables.
It also gives you a solid view of your entire hiring funnel and how many candidates move from each stage to the next. With this information at hand, you can determine which stage needs the most attention so that you can improve the effectiveness of your recruitment funnel and refine your strategy.
Moreover, a dashboard enables you to convey information to other team members, managers, and business leaders quickly and effectively.
There are many different talent acquisition jobs and potential career paths within the field. Let’s explore some of the typical roles in the talent acquisition department and their responsibilities below.
Talent Acquisition Specialists work alongside line management and HR to create hiring, succession, and onboarding plans.
They will typically have industry experience (in a line role or HR/recruiting capacity), a solid working knowledge of current employment laws, and experience with applicant tracking systems.
Salaries vary depending on the industry, location, experience, and responsibilities. According to Payscale, the average US salary for a Talent Acquisition Specialist is $60,616/year, while someone in New York can expect an average salary of $72,610/year.
A Talent Acquisition Coordinator will usually already have some experience in the role, either within this exact position or as an HR assistant. Familiarity with ATS and databases and basic knowledge of labor laws are important. Experience using social networks such as LinkedIn and organizational skills are essential.
The average talent acquisition coordinator salary in the US is $55,194, and the typical range is between $49,144 and $62,549.
A Talent Acquisition Manager is typically responsible for planning, developing, and implementing a TA strategy for the entire organization, including building a strong employer brand. Their main role is to ensure that the business is sourcing, hiring, and retaining the best candidates that align with the organization’s values and culture.
Day-to-day tasks include performing analysis of hiring needs, using tools such as ATS and other talent acquisition platforms, planning ways to improve the candidate experience, analyzing candidate satisfaction survey results, visiting career and job fairs, and more.
In smaller companies, the Talent Acquisition Manager will usually be a recruiter with a lot of experience who handles all recruitment needs, whereas, in a larger company, this will be more of a management position where they manage a team of TA professionals.
A Talent Acquisition Manager will usually have previous experience working in talent acquisition (or a similar HR role) in a management capacity. They require excellent interpersonal, communication, and multitasking skills and knowledge of interviewing methods, employment laws, job posting sites, and professional social media platforms.
According to PayScale, the average salary for a Talent Acquisition Manager in the US is $85,690. The pay differs based on location, company size, and level of experience.
There are many different career paths open to talent acquisition professionals. They can move into higher roles within talent acquisition, such as Talent Manager and Head of Talent.
There’s also scope to move into other roles within HR, including becoming an HR Generalist, HR Manager, or the Head of Employee Experience.
Alternatively, TA professionals can move out of the TA and HR space into other departments, including sales and operations. The skills learned within recruiting lend themselves well to roles like Account Manager, Business Development Manager, Account Executive, or even Project Manager.
According to insights from LinkedIn, the most common job functions that recruiters move into are HR (51%), followed by sales (9%), and business development (6%).
In the evolving landscape of talent acquisition, professionals who want to excel in the field need to have certain skills. So what are the key skills you need to master as a talent acquisition practitioner?
Staying abreast of developments and emerging trends in talent acquisition is essential for innovative organizations. Technology advancements, demographic and societal shifts, and industry changes are all shaping the future of talent acquisition.
Let’s look at talent acquisition trends that are impacting how businesses approach building their human capital.
A notable talent acquisition trend is how more and more companies are embracing the gig economy by hiring freelance or contract workers as opposed to part or full-time employees. These workers possess specialized skills, and this way of working offers greater flexibility to both the worker and the company while reducing fixed labor costs.
With more people looking for flexible ways of working, the gig economy is only set to grow.Instead of relying entirely on traditional qualifications such as degrees and certifications, more companies are shifting toward using skill-based assessments and competency models to identify the best candidate for each role.
This approach allows organizations to take a more holistic view of each candidate. They can hone in on candidates who have the skills, competencies, and characteristics to succeed in the role and the organization.
Building and maintaining relationships with candidates and potential candidates is a way for companies to build robust talent pools which they can access at any point in the future should they need it.
More and more organizations are partnering with universities and colleges to nurture these relationships as early as possible and scout the best talent. Businesses are also finding ways to engage candidates for roles they’ll need in the future. These nurturing programs include internships, mentorships, and company updates communication.
Another trend in talent acquisition is the efforts to make the recruitment process more inclusive by fighting discrimination, reducing bias, and actively seeking to attract and hire a more diverse range of candidates.
This is becoming particularly important as younger generations place more importance on working for a company that visibly supports and encourages diversity and inclusion.
As technology develops rapidly, TA professionals are constantly on the lookout to update their ways of working. For example, they are using generative AI like ChatGPT to craft clear and compelling job posts and communications with candidates, as well as Boolean strings for candidate sourcing.
Staying ahead of the curve and utilizing the latest technology offerings will help TA teams gain a competitive edge and attract top talent.
Completing a talent acquisition certificate program will help you develop the unique set of skills needed to be a successful TA professional. It will set you up for a wide range of different career paths depending on where your interest takes you.
If you want to become a strategic professional who can shape their organization’s approach to talent, AIHR’s Strategic Talent Acquisition Certificate Program can help prepare you to navigate the complexities of talent acquisition and drive business performance.
This certification will teach you the skills you need to make strategic talent acquisition decisions, build a winning employer brand, create outstanding candidate experiences, and use data to continuously improve the recruitment process.
Talent acquisition software is one of the fastest-growing categories of HR technology. There are many different vendors that provide innovative talent acquisition solutions for all stages of the talent acquisition process.
Let’s take a look at some talent acquisition software examples.
More and more companies are using pre-employment assessment tools in the talent acquisition process. They help compare the candidates’ skills, competencies, and behaviors to find the best person for each role and a strong long-term fit for the organization.
Although the terms talent acquisition and recruitment are often used interchangeably and share the same goals of filling vacancies, they do differ.
Talent acquisition is a long-term strategy used to source highly qualified candidates for specialized roles. On the other hand, recruitment is a short-term, operational task that tends to focus on filling entry-level positions.
What is a Talent Acquisition Specialist?A talent acquisition specialist works within the entire recruitment life cycle, from candidate attraction to onboarding. This includes sourcing and screening candidates, working on job descriptions, advising on the interview process, liaising with the compensation department, planning for future hiring needs, and more.
How to become a Talent Acquisition Specialist?A talent acquisition specialist will usually gain experience in an HR or recruitment admin position and work their way up from here. You need skills like data literacy, communication, and networking and relationship building to be successful in the role.
A traditional degree in HR (or another suitable field) can provide a great foundation. At the same time, a talent acquisition certification can help you gain the skills and the working knowledge you need to land a TA role.
