Both talent acquisition and recruitment are procedures undertaken by all companies and organizations to hire employees. Although both procedures aim at hiring candidates, there are major differences between the two in terms of their goals and approaches.
Recruitment: It is basically a process through which talented candidates are hired to fill employee vacancies in a company. Recruitment processes take place in layers. The first step of recruitment involves attracting candidates, then comes screening and evaluating. The last step is the selection of the right candidates who will suit the employee criteria perfectly. Its main motive is to fulfil the current need of the company. It is a short-term goal.
Talent acquisition: Talent acquisition or talent recruitment is a process of hiring and attracting the best talent, for example, finding executives, leaders, and managers for a company. These positions will have a huge role in securing the business as well as expanding it in the long run. It’s not just about filling the current vacancy; it goes one step deeper. Talent acquisition is about finding the right talent who will fit in perfectly within the company and stay there for longer periods of time. In this way, it ensures employee retention.
|
Recruitment |
Talent acquisition |
| It has a short-term goal of filling immediate vacancies. | It is an ongoing process of finding the right talent who will take care of the company in the future. |
| It is a reactive approach | It is a proactive approach |
| It usually looks for entry level employees. | It’s a strategic and systematic process for hard-to-fill positions. |
| Its metrics are- time taken-to-hire and cost-per-employee. | Its metric are retention and quality-of-hire. |
| This is an aggressive process | This one is a more thoughtful process |
| It seeks employees. | It seeks leaders and experts |
How to build a solid talent recruitment strategy?
- Branding- Right branding is essential to ensure growth in business. The more you spread brand awareness, the more your company will attract candidates. Hence, through the right branding you can increase your chance of finding quality employees.
- Recruitment Marketing- Marketing means promoting and advertising your company to potential employees. Recruitment marketing is a strategy made to entice skilled candidates. It promotes the company’s values, brand, and work culture with the goal of attracting more and more talented employees.
- Talent sourcing- Talent sourcing is a proactive process of searching for suitable candidates for the company. Talent sourcing is performed in order to identify and interact with potential candidates through social media, corporate events, and professional associations. It takes time to build relationships. It requires full time interaction through emails, social media DMs, and newsletters to build relationships with people who will hopefully convert into job applicants in the near future.
- Succession- succession planning is a way of focusing on employee promotion instead of hiring new candidates to fill vacancies. It’s a smart move to save recruitment money as well as a way of providing career growth opportunities to existing employees.
- Talent pipeline- it’s a new concept that’s based on building and nurturing relationships with talented professionals who can fill your company’s future positions. Therefore, instead of simply recruiting candidates, it aims that maintaining a strong relationship with potential candidates for future opportunities that might open up, thus creating a pipeline of potential employees.
What is the role of HR in talent acquisition?
- Evaluation- through proper consultation and research, HR can identify the company’s long-term goals and needs. For example, the company could be planning to start a new branch of business that would require a certain number of employees.
- Talent gap analysis- it requires examining potential of current employees to find out whether they are lacking any skills. This process aims at figuring out what skills are needed to achieve business objectives.
- Talent acquisition strategy- it involves writing job descriptions, doing marketing, creating brand awareness, and building employee referral programs to hire the ideal candidates based on skill requirements.
- Talent management programs- regular talent management programs with proper coaching need to be implemented to help candidates develop the required skills to ensure improved performance.
What is the role of HR in recruitment?
- Analyzing and understanding job requirements
- Creating job profile by writing a clear and to-the-point job description and then posting it on various platforms.
- Reviewing all removes of applied candidates and then screening and shortlisting the most suitable ones. HRs should also perform background checking of potential employees.
- Conduct interviews with the help of hiring managers to find the desired candidate.
- Offering job and negotiating salary with the applicant.
- And lastly onboarding the selected candidate. Making sure the new employee has settled in comfortably in the company.
Conclusion: Which one is more beneficial for your business?
For any business to sustain and succeed in the long run, both recruitment and talent acquisition strategies need to be implemented. However, if you are drawing a comparison between these two processes, talent acquisition is no doubt the more valuable one. Talent acquisition is an investment. Its goal is to ensure future growth and security. But it does not in any way take away or reduce the relevance of recruitment.
Talent recruitment can be done for any position, as long as it’s adding value to the company. Different hiring processes are required at different phases of business. When the company lacks manpower, it will require urgent hiring of employees. This is when you focus more on recruitment. While talent acquisition focuses more on a company’s long-term goals.
