How recruiters and organisations can boost talent acquisition in 2018

With intelligent strategising, HR managers can attract the best talent in 2018. Here are a few useful strategies that will enable them to drive a successful talent acquisition campaign in their organisation.

We are today in the midst of what is being termed as the Fourth Revolution. It is a phenomenon of epic proportions, which can be described in the simplest manner as a massive digital disruption. Industries across the world are finding themselves in the midst of a revolution, to survive which they must adapt to new technologies that are emerging at breakneck speed. Age-old systems and legacies can do little to help businesses survive in a hyper-connected digital environment where being behind the times is simply not acceptable.

Businesses across the world, therefore, are being forced to reinvent themselves to become more agile and adaptable to change. However, the most important way that businesses can keep up is by taking a vastly different approach from what they have been doing so far when hiring new employees.

Every company in the world wants to hire the top talent. But not all of them seem to know how to go about tapping the vast talent pool and finding the right people to help them further their organisational objectives.

According to Mettl’s ‘State of Talent Acquisition in India’ report, 85.7 percent organisations surveyed perceive acquiring good talent as one of the top three challenges faced by them. The report also states that 87.6 percent of these organisations, are even willing to raise their hiring budget substantially in 2018, an increase by 67.8 percent from last year. In addition, 89.4 percent of the organisations surveyed revealed that there is a massive shortage of high skilled, mid-level talent in metro and Tier I cities. The challenge, therefore, is identifying where to source high quality employees from, especially when your competition is trying just as hard to acquire the best talent for itself. However, with a little intelligent strategising, human resource managers can attract the best talent in 2018. Here are a few useful strategies that will enable recruiters and HR managers to drive a successful talent acquisition campaign in their organisation:

• Define what you’re looking for in candidates

The first and foremost thing to do before undertaking a recruitment drive in your organisation is to be clear about what your organisation needs in a new hire, i.e. what specific qualities or skills must candidates possess. Without this basic groundwork, it would be extremely difficult to sort through the bad hires and get to the good quality talent.

• Look for candidates at the right place

The job market is extremely competitive, and there is a lot of talent out there that is untapped by organisations. But in the current environment of digitisation across the globe, finding the right talent through technology and digital tools is replacing old and inefficient methods of sourcing candidates. Social media, therefore, is among the major channels for organisations to source new hires from, a trend that’s expected to grow massively in 2018. The State of Talent Acquisition report reveals that 36.17 percent organisations are using social media channels for recruitment, more than any external recruiting channels or internal referrals. There are currently 75 million millennials, while more continue enter the job market, and a large majority of them connected digital almost all the time. Hence, organisations should look for right talent where they are, i.e. social media channels such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

• Create a compelling job description

The aim of providing a job description on sourcing channels is not just to amass the maximum number of resumes. It is, in fact, about creating an impact on the minds of candidates and convincing the right talent that your organisation is somewhere they will thrive with their skills. A conventional job description just lists the required skills, while an effective description should not only explain the responsibilities that the role comes with, but also the outcomes of those tasks and how the employee will benefit from it.

• Assess and upskill candidates/employees

Once you have a sizeable talent pool to choose from, conduct assessments for candidates before interviewing them to identify the best from others. Skill-based, behavioural, and cognitive assessments help understand each candidate significantly better than just through interviews or spending hours to evaluate resumes. These assessments are extremely time and cost effective and help avoid any possible hit and miss situations when hiring. Furthermore, psychometric assessments can help save a lot of time by helping recruiters identify whether a candidate is the right fit for the company culture.

• Retain more talent

Companies often insist on using external acquisitions channels to find new skilled hires and overlook the talent that they presently have. What the management and HR managers should do is identify those employees who can fill a gap with some amount of skilling and create a good employee enhancement program in the organisation. Employee upskilling and skill enhancements are proven to boost employee and organisational productivity, as well as the company’s retention rate. Invest heavily in the learning and development of your employees to make them feel valuable. Once businesses align talent acquisition with organisational strategies, they will be much better positioned to win the battle for talent acquisition. Moreover, potential candidates will be greatly motivated to work for such organisations where the growth trajectory is better and where they have access to skilling opportunities.

The future is here, and new opportunities are emerging for businesses each day and armed with the right talent, they can effectively capitalise on these opportunities.

However, doing so would require them to espouse technology across all organisational processes, including recruitment. Moreover, organisations must keep a close watch on the trends in recruitment and how they can be applied to enhance their own talent acquisition. To reiterate, technology-driven tools and solutions are the key to finding top talent today. The sooner businesses realise this, faster will be their growth.

(Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of YourStory.)