High performing talent Acquisition teams get the importance of aligning people, processes, and technology with the culture and overall mission of the business.
As a starting point, the concept of transforming recruiters into recruiting business partners must be adopted. This model requires shifting the primary focus of recruitment efforts from reactive and transactional to proactive and being strategic. Successful Talent Acquisition teams best position themselves to achieve this by simply dedicating time to think strategically.
A commonly used strategic planning method is the S.W.O.T. Analysis. This analysis is a very useful and effective tool that will help identify internal strengths and weaknesses, as well as external opportunities and threats. It’s human nature to want to jump right in and solve the problem. However, the better you understand the situation and really get the root cause, the more likely you are to solve the right problem. You may have heard the saying as a kid, you have two ears and one mouth; they should be used in that ratio. In other words, make sure to listen to the environment around you, gather information to truly understand your current state and industry trends – this awareness should enable clarity on what you need to achieve.
Once you understand the challenges in attracting and hiring sought after talent, it’ll be easier to set priorities and develop an action plan. It’s a project that should become an ongoing process. Remember, for it to be a project it has a definite end. So when the new recruiting initiative project ends, the process and tools are put into place to be sustainable for the one to three year time frame. In your plan, have short, medium, and long –term objectives. The specific lengths of each will depend on your specific situation. But, for example, short term might be Q3/Q4 2018, medium could be 2019, and long-term is what you aspire to in 2020.
Set your priorities for each period of time to include strategies and tasks. The larger talent acquisition initiatives are broken down into more manageable tasks. Then establish recruiting data points and metrics for monitoring and evaluating your efforts. They also come in handy when you’re trying to get approval for an investment, trying to highlight how well the program is working, or even trying to understanding what isn’t working to be able to take corrective action. In all cases, there are lessons learned that can be applied to the next iteration.
Example data points might be: time to fill positions, hiring sources, candidate experience, quality of hire, etc. In the Virtual Open House platform, we recognize the importance of analytics, which is why the dashboard is a feature to simply quickly monitoring various data points. Beside the dashboard, data can be exported in the csv format for loading into your favorite Business intelligence (BI) tool, pdf format, or directly integrated into your ATS or CRM platforms.
Recruiting today is not about finding good candidates; it’s about finding and hiring the “Right” candidate. Talent Acquisition is a vital part of any organization. With the current job markets and low unemployment levels, we all know the war for talent is alive and well. With that, be mindful there’s no time like the present to build a smart and efficient Talent Acquisition function.