The many hats of Talent Acquisition in an SMB.

Company culture is created by the leaders/founders in an organization, through their behaviors, values, mission and vision. This culture is then sculpted and developed further by the employees who join the leaders in helping them achieve their objectives.

A wise man, Gavin O'Brien, once told me that the Recruitment or Talent Acquisition (TA) teams are the gatekeepers of a company's culture. I.e. The people that TA put forward for positions in their organization either fit with the vision and will row behind the company to help them achieve their goals or disrupt the culture in a company and drive cracks in a company's culture. It's not quite as black and white as this, but you get the picture. Culture is key to maintaining an organization's momentum and competitive advantage as well as being key to employee engagement and retention.

Sometimes, Talent Acquisition is viewed as the unwanted responsibility of the Human Resources department - there are more favorable elements to the role such as Talent Management, Employee Engagement, Learning and Development, Comp and Bens, and maybe even Employee Relations! ??

In this article, I want to outline the different areas involved in the life of an in-house recruiter in an SMB viewed through the lens of various business functions. My objective is for the reader (that's you!) to view TA from a different perspective.

Marketing

Marketing creates potential leads for an organization through content writing, product marketing, social media promotion, email marketing, SEO and general demand generation activities which drive interest in a product. Let's look at this through lens of recruitment.

All of the above are also responsibilities of your organization's TA team/individual. Prospective employees need to know about you (Read here about Employer Branding!). TA not only writes job descriptions but they also promote roles and relevant articles that outline your organizations' USPs (Did somebody say content writing?) on social media and utilize email marketing campaigns to usher traffic (aka inbound leads) to your careers page (See what I did there?) and simply generate interest in your company. Inbound leads (in this scenario, applicants who get to you before you reach out to them) are the result of hard work and (believe me!) bring a big smile to the face of your TA team.

You will also hear marketers speak about the importance of data-driven decision making, competitor analysis, product positioning and pricing.

Data Driven Decision Making

Taking a data driven approach to hiring is now a necessity. Organization's don't have time to make mistakes and TA teams should be responsible for taking a scientific approach to their recruitment process. Using metrics such as these will help your team avoid hiring mistakes in the future:

• Applicants per hire - are you getting zero applicants? Get louder on social media - see my point above on content writing.
• Direct source - how many people are you reaching out to?
• Time to hire - How long is it going to take for your TA to get a new employee in their seat.
• Cost per hire -How much time and money did you spend on getting this role?
• Hire source - Where did your new hire come from - Direct source, jobs board, referral etc. This will indicate where you spend your time and money on in your next role.
• Length of an interview process - TA need to empower their hiring managers to make decisions quickly - otherwise you are driving your talent away with pointless multiple interview rounds.
• Time to reply - this ties in with Candidate Experience - don't leave candidates waiting around for weeks, it's not fair and reflects poorly on your organization.

Competitor Analysis

TA needs to understand the competition - whether that be in the industry (your organization's competitors) or geography (The locality in which you are recruiting). When speaking with your candidates, it is key to understand what you are competing with - what do your competitors offer (Think benefits and scope of work - what is their USP and why is yours better?)

Product Positioning

Why is your company more attractive than your competitors - you need to grasp your USP and employee value proposition - if your TA teams do not have the answer to these, you are in trouble. How can you expect to attract the best talent available if you cannot convince them to join your organization. This is not all about the compensation and benefits - pay attention to the core values of your company and the mission statement and vision of your leadership team. Maybe your organization offers autonomy, flexibility, career growth etc. Your TA team needs to zone in on it's EVP (product positioning) and own it.

Pricing

Cash is king! Compensation is still a key qualifier for all candidates - particularly those who are passive and come from an outbound reach. Don't shy away from it and address it early in the recruitment process - some companies like to publish salary ranges and Gitlab even have a compensation calculator. TA needs to understand the market salary and compare their offering to competitors. If you are not paying the same or more as your competitors you better have a hell of a USP.

Sales

Many will argue that the key skill set of TA is sales. If your TA team require candidates with niche skills you need to focus on an outbound reach. If you are using agencies or focusing on inbound only, your TA is being lazy - pick up the phone or type this into google: www.dhirubhai.net ?? 

Your TA team should have template messages ready to reach out to their target audience. If they have a Recruiter Licence on LinkedIn, you can save lots of time but many small businesses can't afford this luxury. This is where a little bit of elbow grease comes in. I suggest that your TA team spends a month (or two) on LinkedIn adding as many people as possible (but not all at the same time so you don't upset the LinkedIn overlords) in their network that have a link to your organizations' open roles/required skill sets. TA have a limit of 30K connections - make sure this is used wisely. Once the network is built up, there are as many free messages as needed in the huge (and relevant) 1st connections pool. Pro-tip for anybody following this approach - adding people on mobile is much faster than using the web app! The good folks at Sprout Social also outlined the best times of the week to post on LinkedIn. Follow their scientific advice for the best return on investment of your time spent on an outreach.

At most organizations, an SDR team will qualify all inbound leads (Aka Marketing Qualified Leads) and outbound leads in order to nurture or convert these leads into Sales Qualified Leads. These qualification calls should usually focus on the pain point of potential customers and what your solution could offer to solve these issues - aka value add selling.

The first call a TA has with a candidate is similar to this qualification call. They are selling to the candidate (The USPs and EVP) and figuring out why a candidate may want to leave their current role (address those pain points with solutions that your company has!). These initial calls should last at least 30 minutes and the TA will normally have built up a bank of notes from the conversation. As it is with an SDR team, TA are also trying to find the balance between quantity and quality. There is no value in sending every candidate to a Hiring Manager for review - a general guide would be to speak with 10 candidates per job and send 3/4 of a shortlist over. (I know these numbers are generous - the ratio will vary depending on the skill set required). Sales teams will often have weekly pipeline reviews, weekly forecasting meetings and it is no different for TA. They will need to evaluate progress on every open position as well as guesstimate the likely closing time of an open role as the interviews progress.

Once you get to the final stages of an offer (Think the contract or closing stage for Inside Sales Reps), the TA team may prepare a contract (and check it 800 times to ensure you have the right salary written down) and send it over to their selected candidate for their signature. Their negotiating skills will be called into action at this point. However, if they are doing their jobs correctly, they will have pre-qualified all of the expected or potential roadblocks ahead of this time. This is the most intense period of the hiring process, I feel you sales people.

Customer Success

Onboarding - in a small org, your TA team may also be responsible for onboarding your new employees. At Teamwork - we use our own products (Hat tip to the wonderfully talented, Anna Murphy) to get employees set up quickly.

Teamwork's Director of Customer Engagement, Eleonoara Guagnino has often spoken about the importance of driving adoption early in a customer's life-cycle. This is something your TA team should evaluate within the first couple of weeks of a new employee's start date. See a previous article on the Socialization process of new starters here at Teamwork. Retention is also considered one of Customer Success's key KPIs. Comparing employee retention and customer retention is a little like comparing apples and oranges but TA should have some responsibility for employee attrition within the first 6-12 months.

Along with everything I've just mentioned, TA look after scheduling, negotiations, manage the relationships and expectations of candidates and hiring managers (Consider this your NPS - Net Promoter Score), Diversity and Inclusion initiatives, events and fairs, university recruitment etc. Always remember, TA are selling people to people (sounds a bit creepy) - it's never going to go exactly to plan but resilience is key after every disappointment.

FYI, if you are reading this and interested in a new position, Teamwork are hiring and want to hear from you. If you are interested in chatting about TA, I'm always up for a conversation - you can reach me on [email protected]

Slán!