A talent acquisition strategy is the cornerstone of great recruitment – here’s why
In the long-run, a focused and clear talent acquisition strategy helps everyone involved in recruitment save time and resources.
"I am a recruiter and I am always running around, doing about a million things. This is not really the ideal time to come up with our…. what was it called… talent acquisition strategy,” said the IT recruiter as they reached for their third cup of coffee before 10 a.m.
It may seem time-consuming, but mapping out a focused and clear talent acquisition strategy helps everyone involved in recruitment save time and resources in the long-run!
So what is a talent acquisition strategy?
In a nutshell, it’s translating an organization’s business plan into talent needs, a.k.a. the people we will need to help achieve our vision.
The need for talent is divided into at least three different sub-categories:
Internal
What talent do we already have internally? What kind of skills can we acquire through (re)training our team?
Outsourced
What kind of skills and expertise do we not necessarily need for our in-house team, but we can easily and reliably outsource?
Recruitment
What kind of skills do we need to extract from the external labor market?
Gotcha...
Now, as a recruiter, you will have a solid idea of what kind of talent is needed to help support the company’s long-term goals, and how you will probably also have a view on how you need to go about recruiting talent.
Become an advocate for recruitment in your organization: as an expert in the job market, share your views on how external recruitment should be done, how recruitment should be resourced, and what other stakeholders and issues should be considered.
And is it actually even physically possible to source 30 cloud developers from the Helsinki area over the next 3 months (as requested by management)?
No one knows the job market like a recruiter
You, a recruiter, are an expert in the vagaries of the external job market. You know what the desired talent thinks about your organization.
Amplify your voice by creating a talent attraction strategy! Explain what is possible and how you want to achieve it.
Time will always be of the essence, but how about optimizing the time you already spend talking to relevant candidates and prospects? (After all, that’s the best part of your role, right?)
For example, given your talent acquisition strategy, what advice could you give your marketing or employer branding teams to help you get more relevant leads into the recruitment pipeline?
Getting recruitment seat at the table
Face it, no is going to beat down your door to get your ideas on how to better integrate talent attraction with overall commercial strategy. You will need to be creative and strategically position yourself to be able to have more of these conversations. Bring out the numbers: share data on the labor market, document recruitment investment, and do a cost-analysis on what will happen if appropriate talent and resources are not recruited in time.
This is the strategic role that both recruiting consultants and the in-house recruiters must take on. We need to our optimize recruitment resources to help support the business vision in the best possible way. And let’s ensure that any external recruiting partners are also aware of our talent strategy!
➡️ Did you have any thoughts on creating a talent strategy? Did you find the process painful? If you’re interested in our holistic recruitment development service, get in touch with me and let’s do a quick download on what’s bothering you. Trust me, I have been there and I am sure we can figure things out together!