Perhaps this question would not have been on the table during the 2008 recession. During that time frame, people were focused on economic indicators; the housing market, unemployment rates, budgets, and companies adopting the mentality of “doing more with less.” It was more about survival with an often reactive approach since companies had little time to plan. Frequently, after an economic or financial crisis hits, businesses take a look at how to do things differently and have time to take a proactive approach to conducting business.

In the past recruiting often had a shortsighted goal in order to generate revenue for the customer. The longer the seat was vacant the greater loss of revenue. Recruiters were given a job description, salary ranges and asked to fill the vacancy often having limited dialogue to discuss the requirements, or understand the business prevue. Recruiting was viewed as a transactional, commodity based business function to fill job openings with qualified people. In contrast, Talent Acquisition is distinct elements of the Talent Management continuum, a proactive, strategic function, procuring talent for the organization’s value add. Talent Acquisition is no longer a silo in the human resource function, but collaboration with specialists from other functional areas within Talent Management to posture a company for talent who will evolve and become strategic partners within the organization. Talent Management/Acquisition asks: do we have a strategy in place to attract and retain qualified employees; do we know what business is in the pipeline, what the staffing needs are for the next six-twelve months, bill rates that determine potential candidate salaries, etc. Recruiting is involved on the front end of the process now we have a seat at the table as a collaborative business partner.

Talent Acquisition strategies are not static, initially job boards, employee referrals, etc. were the way to find and acquire talent; now Social Media has become a go to strategy due to the speed and cost savings associated with it. In order to compete in the global marketplace, companies ask themselves; how we go about talent acquisition, do we have technologies in place to attract, engage and retain qualified workers? Are we prepared for and do we have contingency plans for a retirement surge of baby boomers leaving the workforce? Below are a few Talent Acquisition strategies:

• Social Media

  social media networks has an amazing impact on talent management. LinkedIn has over 100 Million users; a sixty-three percent from last year. Facebook has grown to more than 750 million users worldwide all contributing members of the workforce. In addition to LinkedIn and Facebook, among countless social networks like Twitter, Xing you have a powerful talent acquisition tools. Google+ has joined the game as well.

  Social networks allow recruiters to maintain long term dynamic relationships with an extensive pipeline of passive candidates.

• Search Engine Optimization

  Job boards will continue to play an important role in sourcing, search engine optimization will become a key component in strategic recruiting. Talent hubs will gain popularity, allowing candidates to filter jobs by class, location, and company. Organic search engine optimization is viewed as one of the most cost effective and under-utilized ways to generate applicant traffic to a company’s listed job openings.

  We all know the higher your website or job description appears on the list of search results for a given set of terms, the more web traffic you can expect to receive. Quality content that is search engine optimized will get picked up for a wider range of relevant searches, resulting in a higher number of quality candidates and a more effective recruiting campaign.

• Workforce Planning

  Workforce planning will play a critical role in talent acquisition seventy-seven percent of employers have not analyzed projected employee retirement rates or assessed current employees’ capabilities. Employers are becoming more aware of the impact the baby boomer exodus thirty-seven to forty-five percent of the workforce representing a shortage of 10-15 million workers. There will be positions that need to be backfilled. Talk about a war on talent?

Going forward a Holistic Talent Acquisition will encourage organizations to maximize their talent pool by aligning it with short and long term business objectives; it encourages an organizational culture of engagement and innovation, requiring organizations to view talent acquisition, development, retention, and employee management as an entity rather than distinct parts. Human Capital Management and HR professionals will become catalysts for strategic change when they understand the relationship and interconnectedness of the different components of the end-to-end talent lifecycle. From attracting and selecting talent wisely, retaining and developing tomorrow’s leaders, helping former employees transition out of the company, talent management will streamline the entire talent lifecycle.

In closing, recruiting and talent acquisition are unique, we as consultants are increasingly becoming more aligned with talent acquisition. We can all recruit, yet are we aware of the strategy behind hiring qualified people to augment the clients whom we are supporting? We are TalentFusion’s value add to the client, and are an integral part of the “big picture” as consultants who work strategically to exceed client expectations.

We are all change agents… Happy Talent Acquisition!

—Sandy