Recruitment vs talent acquisition. The two words seem similar, but the reality of deployment and HR search is completely different. Both have the same goal of finding the right person for the business, but the difference lies in the investment of time.
Recruitment vs talent acquisition. Definition
Recruitment
Professional recruitment. Works for a short specified period. The goal is to find candidates to fill vacancies in the company.
What does recruitment include?
Because it is a short-term activity, most recruitment usually includes temporary jobs such as:
- Find the right candidate
- CV check and candidate screening
- Implement procedures related to the interview
- Evaluation of candidate interviews
- Recruiting and guiding job candidates
Talent acquisition
Talent acquisition, on the other hand, is geared toward a long-term strategy. The target audience is often high-level such as experts, and future managers of the business. Talent acquisition requires a long-term plan, with clear portraits of the candidates that the business wants to find and target.
It can be said that Talent acquisition is directed to difficult positions, with high recruitment requirements and specific skills.
With important positions or difficult to recruit. Businesses need to plan in advance about the times when recruitment needs are likely to arise. Because recruiting high-quality workers cannot happen in a short period. These positions require a more thoughtful, long-term approach.
What does talent acquisition include?
As a long-term strategy, talent acquisition includes many long-term constructive development activities such as:
- Planning staff recruitment needs
- Developing recruitment strategies
- Marketing in recruitment
- Employer brand development
- Analysis of talent portraits
- Implement new employee integration
- Develop a career development plan
Recruitment vs talent acquisition. Which option should companies use?
The answer lies in the extent to which enterprises need human resources with scarce levels in the labor market?
If you only do recruit, your recruitment will always be reactive to personnel changes occurring within the business.
The job market is changing and new skills are increasingly needed. The competition to attract talent is increasingly fierce. A strategy to attract talent will help businesses have thoughtful preparation, saving time in the search. Thereby maintaining a competitive advantage over human resources.
The fields that require the most scarce skills are the ones that need the most talent.
For example in programming. In addition to building a strong culture, unique benefits, as well as enhancing the company’s employment brand, talent acquisition plays an important part in maintaining the human resource structure. This is also an area where the requirement for building a talent attraction strategy is higher than in any other industry at the moment.
Another benefit of a talent acquisition strategy is that it promotes teamwork and increases productivity. If a business’s industry is characterized by high rates of turnover, a talent acquisition strategy will reduce the stress of hiring.
Also, if you only make one big hire a year, this talent acquisition process can be easy and effective in attracting candidates.
Special situations should use a talent acquisition strategy
In fast-growing businesses. With great recruiting pressure and the constant growth of the business, the lack of a solid recruiting strategy has the potential to overwhelm any recruiting department. Talent acquisition plays an important role in pulling candidates towards the business, instead of looking for them.
In highly competitive industries. You need to make your image stand out from the crowd. At this time, candidates will not find you, but you need to bring the values from your business so that they can choose the most suitable place.
In very specific industries. Here you need to describe the right candidate. The skills and knowledge required of a candidate. Thereby implementing appropriate talent attraction strategies.
Leadership recruitment. Especially when your business is operating in a complex industry and requires time to grasp. Early planning becomes crucial to reaching candidates.
The benefits of a talent acquisition strategy
As a long-term strategy, talent acquisition needs significant and business-worthy benefits.
Develop candidate data. Maintain and develop relationships. Talent acquisition gives you a large number of potential candidates that are right for your business. This data can absolutely come in handy when recruiting requirements appear. It generates a large number of candidates at a time of recruitment.
Nurturing corporate culture. Talent acquisition helps businesses focus more on building corporate culture. It also helps to outline the current team culture more clearly.
Shorten recruitment time. Adopting a proactive strategy can make finding your candidates quicker and easier.
Make more accurate hiring decisions. By clearly describing the candidate’s portrait. A talent acquisition strategy ensures you select the best individuals for the job.
Going beyond for top talent
Certainly, recruitment is not a one-time event. Especially attracting the best and most suitable candidates to the company. It should be an ongoing process of networking and building relationships with candidates.
As recruitment is an important tool to fill vacancies that emerge, talent acquisition will be the driving force that leads to more effective recruitment. Potential candidates are attracted to the company as an ideal place to work, and with many growth opportunities.
Recruitment vs talent acquisition. Execution
Hiring seems to be done and results are immediate. Therefore, in many businesses, good recruitment can be seen as meeting the immediate recruitment requirement.
In contrast, talent acquisition is a process that requires a lot of cumulative investment. As a long-term strategy, talent acquisition requires clear planning. And there is coordination to jointly build an effective candidate attraction environment.
In terms of short-term, and cost-effective, hiring seems to be doing very well. It is not too demanding in terms of construction investment.
But in the long term, human resources do not stand still, but always move. Investing in Talent Acquisition is the right strategy to ensure the long-term benefits of recruitment.
You can hire people immediately when many candidates have a good reputation for your business. But to get there, first and in parallel with recruitment, you always need to have the right talent acquisition strategy.
And as a candidate, they don’t always know exactly what business they want to work for. No one can grasp the entire list of businesses in the industry they are interested in.
A sound talent acquisition strategy will get every candidate aware of your business, interested in it, and following it.
Recruiting and talent acquisition are not interchangeable activities. You don’t have to choose either. Those are always parallel works and support each other.
Develop a strategy for talent acquisition
Define business goals
Understand the long-term goals of the business. You need to clearly understand what the business is going to do shortly. Since human resources are only one of the important functions of a business, there will be no activity that goes beyond the company’s vision.
Create a vision of success
Do you know which positions are important and contribute greatly to the success of the business? Let’s learn it. Identify the knowledge, skills, characteristics, and experience required for the position. It is possible to consider factors such as hard skills, soft skills, human outlook (ASK model)
Build employer culture
You need a strong brand to attract candidates. You can start with suggestions like:
- Communicating the mission and values of the business
- Highlight key members
- Introducing cultural values
- Provide evidence of work-life balance
- Interact and manage with direct assessments of the business environment
Diversify outreach strategies
Try out a variety of online and offline channels. Find all the application channels that job seekers are likely to use. The more diverse channels you use the port, the more diverse you will have with your current team. Even look to groups that belong to the minority and are less representative of a given source of employment.
Aim at recruiting passive candidates
Passive candidates may not be actively looking for work. They are full of talent and are enjoying the fruits of their current company. But they absolutely want to work for you if you approach them.
Reaching these passive candidates is important because:
- They rarely look for work elsewhere
- They may be underestimating the skills they already have or enjoying their current achievements
- There are many candidates with the right experience
And reaching out to them requires a lot of effort such as:
- Networking: Through Referral Methods
- Employer Brand: A prominent brand can make candidates know you
- Send the right messages: Create a separate message for each passive candidate. And make sure it’s right for them. Avoid using generic messages intended for candidates who are actively looking for work.
Establish fair recruitment practices
Many things influence candidate bias. Make sure
- Training the recruiting team to avoid bias
- Clearly define the persona of the candidate you are looking for
- Hire people with a cultural fit and further reinforce the culture, not the complete cultural fit
- Pre-employment screening assessment
- Prepare the structure for the interview in advance
Screening candidates
Pre-employment assessment can be conducted to improve the efficiency of candidate recruitment. Through tests of actual capacity, not just what is shown on the CV.
What the candidate writes on the CV and what the candidate can do is sometimes not quite the same.
Notes in recruiting and Talent Acquisition
Recruitment requires clarity and transparency. Candidates need a professional from HR. From recruitment content, how you communicate with candidates, selection and interview processes, and feedback results. An improper hiring process can damage the recruiting image, and affect the long-term talent acquisition strategy.
Strategy to attract talent needs a lot more attention. The messages you transmit to the outside need to be authentic, highly reliable, and must be true. You can’t paint a perfect environment and then the candidate is completely disappointed when they come to work. They will immediately turn against you by looking for a new job.
Talent acquisition has to go from what your business has and actually has. The concept of human resources of your business, and where to focus. Attractive job opportunities, and testimonials from people working at the business play a very important role in the strategy of talent acquisition.
