When hiring for any role, it’s essential to have the right processes and tools in place to facilitate effective and appropriate hires. Talent Acquisition is not just business jargon for recruitment, but the clue is in the term itself. It refers to hiring employees with specific talents for specialised positions, rather than simply finding candidates to fill a role.
Talent Acquisition is an integral part of attracting and hiring high quality talent for any organisation. There are many tools and strategies to aid recruiters in the process of talent acquisition. Pre-employment DISC assessments, which profile candidates to ensure the right fit for the business, are an invaluable asset for any organisation.
When we properly utilise Talent Acquisition Tools, they can save time and money, and ensure hiring decisions are based on tangible data rather than subjective assessments or unscientific processes. Knowing which tools to use and how and when to use them is one of the most important tasks in talent acquisition.
What is Talent Acquisition?
Talent Acquisition is the process of identifying, attracting, selecting, and retaining highly qualified specialists for roles within a company. The Talent Acquisition Team is responsible for carrying out this process to develop the very best leaders and teams within an organisation for optimal performance and competitiveness.
Talent Acquisition vs. Recruitment
Although some people assume talent acquisition and recruitment are one and the same, there are crucial differences between the two. Whereas recruitment is a tactical tool to fill vacancies, talent acquisition is an ongoing strategy to find specialists, leaders, and even potential executives for your business.
Talent acquisition strategies are common among niche industries such as medical, law, technology, and even human resources. The areas in need of the best talent acquisition strategies are those with the highest skills shortages. Knowing how to identify, attract, and hire top talent is a skill that will put your business at the top of its game.
Why Talent Acquisition is so Important
It’s important to have a Talent Acquisition process within your company since finding and hiring the right people is crucial for the overall performance of the organisation and directly affects the business’ success. Your workforce is the backbone of your business. By taking the time and resources to find the top talent, you’re investing in improved performance, increased business potential, and a culture of excellence.
Highly skilled positions are harder to fill, particularly due to constant technology, strategy, and market changes. Highly skilled workers are in high demand and competition can be fierce. To anticipate these needs, an ongoing effective talent acquisition strategy is paramount to remain competitive within your industry. Keeping abreast of a pool of desirable candidates can help you stay one step ahead of your counterparts.
Talent Acquisition Process
Identify
As with any recruitment process, identifying the need for talent is the first step. Creating a role to fill this need, drafting a position, and establishing hiring criteria and required skills are necessary before you look for potential candidates.
Attract
To remain competitive, a role has to be appealing to candidates. Meeting or exceeding industry standard compensation and benefits with a strong value proposition will aid in attracting the right candidates for the role. Organisational culture and fit are also key factors when candidates choose to work with you.
Select
There are many tools and strategies that can aid the interviewing and selection process to ensure the right candidate is identified. It is important to establish a minimum standard and appropriate metrics to benchmark candidates. Testing and assessing can be used at this stage to determine if there is appropriate company fit.
Retain
The talent acquisition process does not end at hiring. It is important to implement strategies for retention of high quality employees. Open communication, a structured onboarding process, effective employee relations, room for growth, and training and development are all nurturing strategies to help you retain a high quality workforce.
What Tools Help with the Talent Acquisition Process?
DISC Pre-employment Assessments
DISC Assessments are a valuable tool to implement during the talent acquisition process. They can help screen potential candidates and spot top talent that will fit into the workplace culture.
During the selecting and hiring process, recruiters usually use two types of pre-employment assessments, cognitive/aptitude tests and psychometric assessments. Using a combination of these will inform recruiters regarding less obvious aspects of candidates’ behavioural tendencies, abilities, and personality traits. These can in turn predict their success in the role and provide guidance on how best to deploy them within the existing team environment.
Interview debriefing tools
Interview debriefing is the internal assessment of each candidate. It takes place after an interview between those involved in the process. The purpose of the debriefing is to identify whether this candidate would be a good fit for the role and the organisation. It’s important to be conscious of any possible personal biases when assessing candidates. A post interview checkup can help eliminate bias by inviting interviewers to input ratings and perceptions into a software program which is then collated to produce objective reports on each applicant. These can then be utilised to fairly evaluate or compare multiple candidates in a standardised way.
Automated reference checking
Once you have a good pool of candidates on hand, the next step is a thorough evaluation of each one. Traditionally, each reference from each candidate would be called, but this can be time- and resource-intensive and create unseen biases.
Automated reference checking is an innovative approach that streamlines this process and allows recruiters to check references in minutes. This not only speeds up the process, but it also provides higher quality data. Since automated reference check surveys make answers anonymous, previous employers are much more likely to provide complete and honest feedback.
Utilise data to guide your recruiting process
All of the above tools help to produce factual data about a candidate's skills, interview ratings, and reference checks. Producing clear and comprehensive reports for each candidate streamlines the talent acquisition process and ultimately helps you make better hiring decisions based on facts rather than gut instinct.
Collected data can also be used to measure and analyse factors such as retention rates and the quality and cost of each hire. It can also highlight patterns in the recruitment process that provide unforeseen benefits to the organisation such as improved retention for people with a specific skill set or behavioural attributes, which can then be taken on board for future talent acquisition efforts.
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