When it comes to finding the right people for your business, you can’t simply hope to stumble upon top talent. You need to actively attract and acquire it. In other words, you need a solid talent acquisition strategy.
With the goal of improving your business’s performance and staying ahead of the competition, talent acquisition involves developing strategies and processes that attract job candidates who can not only fulfill immediate needs but also contribute to the long-term development and success of the company.
Because talent acquisition takes a forward-thinking approach, your strategy should look different from your standard recruitment process (which is generally more focused on the here and now). When creating yours, make sure to follow these best practices and avoid these common mistakes.
Best Practices to Follow for High-Quality Talent Acquisition
Opt for Skills-Based Hiring
Gone are the days of leaning on a candidate’s academic degrees and qualifications when making hiring decisions. As a result of COVID-19, more companies are realizing an impressive college degree doesn’t necessarily translate to the skills needed to succeed in a given role.
According to an Indeed study, only 35% of managers agreed that top performers usually come from top schools. The most important attributes? Working well with others and being a strategic thinker.
Use Data Analytics
Think of your talent acquisition as you would your product or service marketing. When marketing to customers, you likely use data to guide your strategy and decision-making. Your talent acquisition shouldn’t be any different. From source of hire to retention rates, using recruiting metrics can lead to long-term talent acquisition success.
Create a Strong Employer Brand
You’ll have a hard time attracting candidates if your identity as an employer is unclear to job seekers. Even worse, you could end up turning away top talent completely because you’re not actively managing your employer brand. By identifying your organization’s mission, values, and culture, promoting it publicly on social media and job seeker sites, and ensuring all of your processes support them, you’re more likely to find candidates that support them too.
Make Continuous Improvements
Talent acquisition is more than just implementing the latest recruitment software. It requires a lot of trial and error and ongoing improvement initiatives if you want to keep up with a highly competitive industry. To make your talent acquisition scalable, sustainable, and effective, you need to assess your strategy, identify (and address) areas for improvement, and do it all on a continuous basis.
Avoid These Common Mistakes
Not using pre-employment testing
You want the candidate with all the right skills for the job, but you can’t always gather that information from job applications or even interviews. Using pre-employment assessments, such as the Predictive Index, you get standardized insights that can help you predict how a candidate would fit a specific role (or your company culture) in the long term.
Not taking advantage of a career site
Many organizations have a career page on their company website, but these pages often do little to support their talent acquisition efforts. A career page or site should not just be a place to list job vacancies. Instead, it should act as a central hub where job seekers can go to learn more about what working with your company is like. When built strategically, your career site is an added opportunity to show off your employer brand, track key recruiting metrics, and attract top talent.
Not leveraging new technologies
With all of the innovation in today’s industry, you can’t afford to not take advantage of the latest talent acquisition technologies. Rather than shying away from tools like AI-powered applicant tracking systems, it’s time to embrace new technology and use it to build a better employer brand, candidate experience, and overall more efficient and effective talent acquisition process.
Ready for Better Talent Acquisition? You Need Empower Partnerships.
When it comes to talent acquisition, you need someone that can stick with you through the whole lifecycle, from strategy to development. That’s exactly what we do at Empower Partnerships, and we do it with holistic and industry-specific solutions, so you outperform the competition and get the top talent your business needs.
Contact us today to learn more about the value our talent acquisition services can bring to your business.
