Empowering Your Talent Acquisition Team

Summary: There is no question about the importance of getting talent acquisition right – the question is how. Empowering the talent acquisition team to collaborate better, complete tasks faster, and establish an effective process will help.

In organizations, talent acquisition is one of the most important tasks. Indeed, it is not an exaggeration to say that when organizations get their talent acquisition practices right, many of their subsequent problems are solved. By attracting and recruiting the right talent, organizations can grow and flourish, and eliminate many of the risks and issues associated with bad hires. We extend the  This post talks about empowering the talent acquisition team using technology while we extend the discussion in this post to include more information and tips on empowering talent acquisition teams in organizations.

It starts with strategy

In many organizations, hiring often happens in an ad hoc manner without any coherent thought or strategy. Whenever a department has a requisition for a resource, there is no thought as to whether this hire would fit in with the larger strategy of the organization, whether there is even the need for a hire, and so on. There is more the mentality of just getting it done instead of taking a step back to understand how this hire is going to help. Also, having a strategy helps plan for the long term, and acquire the right talent in the right time to meet business needs and goals.

Structured process

Structure often follows strategy – once you have your strategy to deal with your talent acquisition needs, you can implement the structure you need to implement this strategy. You need to define the process, the resources, the stakeholders, and the tools that will be used to acquire talent. Often in organizations, this is fast-tracked, and more usually, done using ad hoc practices. As a result, every interview, every hire will take its own time, and there will be no uniformity in the process, giving rise to the scope for bad talent to seep in. Therefore, it is of utmost importance that there a defined process to handle all aspects of the process, and this process is periodically reviewed and improved.

Give attention to culture

If there is one thing that many organizations consistently do wrong, it is not paying attention to their workplace culture. However, culture is nothing trivial – it might be intangible but it a very intrinsic part of the organization, and one that defines the interactions among employees and teams. In fact, culture is one of the ways senior management can influence and motivate employees to perform their tasks and reach their goals. Culture plays an important role in talent acquisition since it is one of the parameters recruiters evaluate candidates on. When you have two candidates with similar qualifications but one fits your culture and one doesn’t, it is a no brainer to go with the one who fits your culture. In fact, we would go to the extent of saying that culture should be the more important parameter in recruitment. You can train employees who lack a few skills, but fit to culture is not something you train on. So, be sure to acquire talent that will enhance your culture, not one that sticks out.

Get Onboarding right

One of the things organizations don’t pay attention to is the onboarding process. Onboarding is usually left to the HR team, with little or no participation from the functional team or senior management. This would of course create a bad impression with employees and make them lose their first impressions. The first month or so is important for both the organization and the employee – both are evaluating one another to see how well they can help one another, and if employees feel that the organization does not care for them, they will quickly look for better workplaces. So, set up an onboarding process that suits the culture of your workplace.

It’s not always about the degrees

Another mistake that recruiters commit is to evaluate candidates solely on the basis of educational qualifications or work experience. Taken individually, these are just parts of the picture, and would not give us a complete understanding of how the candidate really is. The do not tell you whether the candidate is a good fit for the organization or if he or she will work well with other team members. Many of the important things in a job – temperament, teamwork, motivation, etc… — will not come out in the degrees. So, don’t make this mistake of being too taken in by the degrees – try to build a comprehensive picture of each candidate so that you can get the best one possible.

Stakeholder collaboration

Recruitment or talent acquisition involves multiple stakeholders – there are the candidates themselves, the recruiters, the functional managers, and senior management, to say the least. This is a process that involves close collaboration among these stakeholders for tasks to be run on time. With tasks being run in a sequential order, it is imperative that the previous task be completed in time for the next one to start and so on. Therefore, stakeholder collaboration must be of utmost importance in recruitment. Communication flow must be clear and effective.

The stakeholders who must be kept in the loop should be sent periodic updates as to the status of the process. A functional manager might make a resource requirement request, but it might not be able to complete it for a few months. During this period, it is essential to keep the manager informed about the status – whether any profiles have been shortlisted, whether there has been any other movement, or so on. Stakeholder collaboration will eliminate many of the later issues including the classic one of the tussle between the recruiter and the manager regarding the fit of the candidate. The manager says that the candidate does not fit the description, while the recruiter says that he does. Both might be partially correct, since collaboration, or the lack of it, is the culprit in this case.

Communication

Closely following collaboration is communication. Here we mean communication all along the process right from the requisition to onboarding. There are no two ways about it – if communication is ineffective or lacking, recruitment fails. Communication, in fact, could be the most important aspect of recruitment. If either party fails in communicating effectively, recruitment will fail. One of the most important things for organizations to do is to train their recruiters in managing communication with candidates. You might have the best managers and workplace for employees, but if your recruiters are not able to communicate this to the candidate, they will not be able to create any interest in them. Indeed, it is very off-putting to hear from recruiters who cannot communicate properly and leads to an overall bad impression regarding the entire organization. This is not the way you want to go if you want to attract the best talent in the market. So, ensure that both your internal and external communication channels are working effectively.

Increase channels of sourcing

Today, candidates can be sourced through many more channels as compared to traditional methods. Also, technology has made it easier to source candidates quickly and painlessly. Gone are the days when you had to give out advertisements, and hound your employees for referrals. Today, there is much more self-selection, and job boards and social media sites, not to mention websites, are highly useful for sourcing. So, don’t just stick to referrals or depend on job consultants – you can also participate in the process through postings on social media or your websites. You can also have an option of sharing the job description so that viewers and share it with their friends or acquaintances who might fit the profile. This way, you will have a bigger and better pool of candidates to choose from.

Technology

Communication, collaboration, sourcing, culture, and so on – all of these can be more effective if you use technology to back your recruiting process. Online HR software or human resource software is very helpful for organizations in setting u and running the recruitment process efficiently. From providing all the stakeholders a common platform to work together on to improving collaboration, sourcing, and team work to providing all users with analytics and reports to make their jobs easier, technology can do a lot for organizations in acquiring talent.