A well-planned and executed talent acquisition strategy helps you attract the best talent, and brings you closer to business success.
In a previous post we discussed the difference between recruitment and talent acquisition and explained when you might want to focus on talent acquisition instead of recruitment. In this post, we go into the details of how you should set up your talent acquisition strategy.
A talent acquisition strategy, like any other strategy in your company, should have clear goals, set KPIs and ways to measure and improve your processes. Your goals are most likely something along the lines of attracting the best talent in order to drive growth and market success. So, how do you get there?
1. Focus on Employee Retention
In order to grow and gain new talent, you need to keep your current employees happy. If your employees keep leaving the company, you cannot grow by retaining new talent, but instead, you need to keep filling the vacancies left empty. Happy employees also make for a more innovative, more productive company - a place where new people will be excited to step into. So, when searching for new talent, make sure your current employees are happy as well.
Read More: Employee Retention: Here's How to Keep Your Talent
2. Maintain Your Employer Brand
Your employer brand must be rooted in reality, and you should showcase what your company is, not (only) what you would want it to be. That being said, an employer branding strategy is still that - a strategy. Think about your social media efforts and how and where you want to share your employer branding message. Should you make a video showcasing your employees or add pictures of daily working life to Instagram? An employer branding strategy differs from your product or company branding strategy, and as the audience and the goals are different, the message and distribution channels should be different as well.
Read Also: The New Meaning of Employer Branding
Once you have company content your employees would like to share, make sure you advertise this content internally, either by word-of-mouth or by adding the content to a handy content platform which allows your employees to easily share the content forward (hey, that would be us, for example!).
3. Polish Your Employer Value Proposition
Your employer value proposition is a part of your employer brand strategy, which again, should be a part of your talent acquisition strategy. Employer value proposition is essentially the reason (or reasons) why employees should choose your company and then stay with it. What are you able to offer to the employee in return for their skills and experience?
Make sure your value position is clear and understandable, as well as true and accurate. Research your competition to make sure you aren't falling behind in what you offer, and interview your current workforce to make sure what you offer is clear and relevant to them. By doing this you ensure that what you offer is relevant to your future employees as well.
4. Align With Business and Growth Objectives
As your talent acquisition strategy is a part of your growth strategy and overall business strategy, make sure it stays aligned with your changing business needs. Whenever you notice a skill gap in your organization, make a conscious effort to vocalize it in your talent acquisition strategy as well. In order to do this, you need very good lines of communication between HR, management, and different departments.
5. Look From the Right Places
Make your presence in those social networks and forums where your talent prospects are likely to spend time in. Follow discussions, trends, and influencers to find new prospects. Use your employees’ networks as well and ask them to refer your company to their friends and acquaintances.
Read Also: Social Media Best Practices for Social Recruiting and Employer Branding
6. Utilize Employee Advocacy
If you want your employees to spread the good word of your company and share your company messages online, you should set up an Employee Advocacy program. There are a bunch of ways in which you can encourage your employees in taking initiative and being active as your advocates, as well as ways in which they can benefit from it. Remember to make it as easy as possible for your employees to share your brand messages. A content sharing platform with a feature allowing for easy external distribution could be excellent, for example.
To find out how to get started with an Employee Advocacy program, enjoy this and this post.
7. Source In-House As Well
When making decisions about workforce needs, make sure you fully understand what your employees’ current skill and knowledge levels are. Whenever you start to think about needing new talent, always do an internal scout and consider if you could promote in-house instead. This not only improves employee retention, it also cuts down onboarding time and reduces the number of mistakes in hiring. Talent acquisition can happen in-house as well! Your best talent is likely to always be hungry for new challenges, so internal, even cross-departmental promotions are a good way to keep your top talent happy.
To read more tips on succeeding in talent acquisition, feel free to download our handy guide!
