Talent acquisition management is more than just recruiting. It is a strategic approach that aligns business needs to hiring qualified candidates. It must be planned with the human resources department and top management as today’s business needs become more dynamic.
While recruiting is part of talent acquisition, the activities such as sourcing, interviewing and hiring can be improved. The best practices that business and information technology utilize highlight on developing the overall process making it easier and more effective.
Primarily, they first develop a talent acquisition planning and strategy. This involves having a workforce plan and understanding the future needs of the business. It also includes having insight on the labor market wherein there is a business alignment. In this way, they can hire candidates that have skills needed to accomplish the job vacancy.
Secondly, workforce segmentation is developed which includes identifying the skills and competencies needed in order for the employee to succeed. A business should be able to determine the position and all the requirements needed to complete the profession. Human resource can conduct a job analysis on each position so that the company has a clear picture of who they need to hire.
Another best practice is employment branding. It involves developing the company’s corporate culture and what makes it different from other organizations. It improves the company’s image wherein it is able to attract quality candidates. It increases the company’s brand equity in terms of its products and services wherein through its employees they illustrate the positive aspects of working in the organization.
Furthermore, human resources today are pro-active in finding candidate audiences. They develop different sourcing strategies such as recruiting in schools or in job fairs. In this manner, they are able to gather a pool of candidates immediately and shorten the hiring process. Significantly, it is necessary to have a candidate relationship management wherein the company focuses on having a positive experience for applicants. It also means building relationships with candidate communities in order to have a steady stream of possible employees.
A metrics and analytics should always be implemented in order to track recruitment decisions. This helps improve the quality system as there is a clear benchmark for applicants selected. It also streamlines the hiring workflow wherein managers are in sync with human resource managers.
This has led to tools and technology used in talent acquisition management wherein some key activities have also been outsourced. For example, initial interviews and sourcing are some activities that have been outsourced to other companies. This is because the human resource management has identified that these activities can be accomplished better by another organization. The final decision to hire remains with the company after they have conducted their own interviews and tests.
As such, businesses who want to practice the best in talent management acquisition have to have a leadership development strategy in place. They should have programs that develop internally the labor pool to become effective future leaders of the organization. With a leadership program, top management can develop the talent acquisition strategy better as they work with human resource management. The underlying goal is to add value to the chain of activities and reduce wastages. For example, online application has helped ease the paperwork of human resource managers. It has become a convenient way of identifying qualified personnel wherein the computer program identifies desired traits in each applicant.
Computers today are also being used in the test aspect of the talent acquisition. This makes it easier to compute for test scores and determine passing applicants. The best practices of talent acquisition management involve the integration of people and technology to quicken the process yet still is of high quality.
