By Caroline Forsey

It can be difficult to find the ideal candidate for a specific position — in fact, in 2021, 69% of companies have reported talent shortages and difficulty hiring – a 15-year high.

Regardless of the state of the economy and your talent pool, to succeed long-term, your business should be able to hire and retain the best, most talented employees.

But hiring can be a daunting task, which is why you need a talent acquisition strategy.

To succeed long-term, it’s critical you attract and retain talented employees regardless of vacant roles. Talent acquisition can help you do this, while solving for long-term organizational needs.

Now that you understand what talent acquisition is and how it differs from recruitment, let’s dive into the most effective talent acquisition strategies.

Here are eleven critical talent acquisition strategies to ensure you’re finding the best people.

1. Align with your business goals.

Consider your business goals for the next one to five years, and use those objectives to tailor your acquisition strategy to meet those needs. While recruitment tends to focus on filling vacancies within departments, talent acquisition is more about considering how your company is going to expand long term and then finding employees who can help take you there.

For instance, are you planning on expanding into Latin America? If so, perhaps your HR department should focus on attracting candidates with international or regional experience. Or, maybe you’re planning on creating a new product, in which case, your HR efforts should focus on attracting talented software developers and coders.

Certain roles might not even exist yet, but you’ll want to consider what type of talent you’ll need to hit your business’s long-term goals. Remember, investing in the right candidates will pay off for your company, long-term.

2. Use data and marketing to create better acquisition material.

You wouldn’t create a marketing campaign without data, so why should you recruit without it?

Talent acquisition should be treated with just as much importance as any of your marketing campaigns. Convincing people to join your company is just as necessary as incentivizing people to buy your products.

There are plenty of different opportunities to use data to strengthen your talent acquisition strategy. For instance, you might use data to figure out where your top talent came from, and use that information to focus your talent acquisition efforts on certain academic programs or professional networking sites.

Additionally, your HR team should partner with your marketing department to refine job descriptions, career pages, emails, and more.

Using data, you can figure out if certain questions are deterring candidates from filling out job applications, and eliminate those questions. Alternatively, perhaps you’ll find adding images or videos to highlight company culture incentivizes more candidates to fill out job forms. Or, maybe more candidates apply for a job with description A over description B.

By using analytics and data, you’re able to ensure your job descriptions and career pages aren’t deterring qualified people from applying.

…read more

Source:: HubSpot Blog

Author: Aaron