Successful Talent Acquisition can be broken down into three parts; Attract, Recruit and Retain. In this piece I’ll present the first step – Attract. This article is meant to be a brief conceptual orientation on the subject for someone not already deeply involved in talent acquisition.
Not every business leader needs to grow their organizations drastically through organic growth. However, understanding the fundamentals of Talent Acquisition is something that more and more modern leaders realize will be pivotal to their success. If you’re looking to grow your organization organically, I urge you to take five minutes out of your busy schedule to consider my thoughts on the subject.
First, let's define the prerequisites for my argumentation in this piece.
You need to continuously recruit people that can perform well in their respective roles, be successful in developing your business and thrive in your organization.
You want control and ownership of your recruitment.
The majority of your recruiting needs are predominantly concentrated on one or several well-defined business or competence areas.
If your stage is set according to the parameters above, I think that there is a case to be made for focusing and investing in establishing a solid process (and possibly a specific function) dedicated to Talent Acquisition.
Ok, where does one start?
First off, you set the stage with Attraction
Attraction is a summary of two parts – the Employee Value Proposition (EVP) and an Employer Brand strategy (EB). The EVP is a summary of what you, as an employer, offer your employees. This could be summarized by (but not limited to) the following five parameters - financial rewards, additional benefits, career opportunities, work environment, and culture.
To attract the people you need, you'll need to define what you have to offer and match this to the needs of your target talent pool. If there’s a gap between what you’re offering and the needs of the people you want to recruit, you'll have a hard time attracting them.
This possible gap is easier to bridge when you have defined your EVP and can work from there. How do you find out what your preferred target pool wants? I won’t go into all the details, but the simple answer is that you ask. For instance, in the recruitment process or when you meet potential candidates, ask them what they value in a potential workplace. There’s also lots of information around this that could be found by using your favorite search engine and looking into companies that provide this information, to get a general feeling.
A great way to be sure that you are attracting the right people is to continuously work with your EB. This is very similar to traditional marketing and Consumer Brand work. Decide who your target group is, understand where they are, what channels to use to reach them and decide what and how you want to communicate.
To me, the bottom line is this - to build a solid Employer Brand you need to find a way to communicate what you have, in an authentic way, to the people you want to reach. To attract people, your EVP needs to be well defined and relevant to your target group.
From the perspective of a potential employee - I want to know what’s in it for me (EVP), communicated in a way that I can relate to in a relevant forum which I’m exposed to (EB).
The Attraction is an imperative part of your ability to acquire talent. Stay tuned for my thoughts on Recruitment and Retention.
Hakim Rudels
Senior Consultant
hakim.rudels@recpro.se
