Modern Day Talent Acquisitioner: Need of the hour

"Modern Day Talent Acquisitioner" The term seems to be EXCITING enough for one to understand what it means about... Let us understand what it actually means:

Today while i was reading one of the articles published by Aptitude Research Partners related to Complexity in Talent Acquisition, it highlighted on how complex it has become to hire a quality candidate and the areas that need to be looked upon to minimize the complexity. A key mention was about quality of Talent Acquisition Professionals and how it improve it. Every organization plans for success and expansion by focusing on hiring quality candidates and defining strategies which will attract these candidates but very less focus is put on hiring quality Talent Acquisitioners in place of normal orthodox recruiter.

But before moving to it, let us understand who can be considered as a "Modern Day Talent Acquisitioner (MTA)?"

• The MTA must juggle multiple hats and balance very different competencies and skill sets.
• Recruiting is evolving the same way that marketing has evolved and Talent Acquisitioner should treat their candidates with the same attention given to customers.
• The MTA must find ways to engage candidates while being able to respond to business needs.
• Competencies required: relationship skills, influence skills, and networking skills

These skills combined makes what we call a "MTA".

Now coming back to the point, there have been lots of discussions, articles written about Talent Acquisition and how critical it has become to today's competitive world. New strategies are being discussed and implemented by organizations to attract quality Talents, which is really good. But the point to observe and understand is: are the Talent Acquisitioners (TAs) able to properly implement those strategies? Or even after designing new ways of attracting talent, the TAs are still following only the orthodox ways!!! 

Lots of brain storming is being done on how to improve the performance of the profit making employees but never considered are the TAs. An organization also needs to understand that if the TAs are not skilled enough, it will impact their Talent Acquisition Strategy.

A recent survey  according to research conducted by McKinsey & Company, 40% of companies that plan to hire next year said they have had unfilled openings for six months or longer because they cannot find qualified applicants.

One of the reasons for this is lack of the ability of talent acquisition professionals to fill in the position, now its not about blaming them but its about grooming them, providing training on new recruiting methodologies, providing tips on how to do networking and in certain cases by supporting them for the use of unconventional ways of recruiting.

Organizations come out with variety of requirements but the talent acquisition professionals do not have a clear understanding of what they need to do and what technology they need to use in order to identify and attract those talents. The organization needs to ensure that TAs are working in line with the trending ways of recruitment. At the same time, TA themselves need to understand and keep abreast with the modern day trending acquisition methodologies.

For simplifying the Talent Acquisition process and for getting optimal output, following steps should be done:

By the Organization:

• Define and develop the competencies required for today’s Modern Recruiter;
• Utilize next generation technology to create the new talent acquisition platform and dramatically improve all areas of talent acquisition;
• Align the measures of success of your talent acquisition efforts with overall business objectives.

For Talent Acquisition Professionals:

• Enhance all elements of the candidate experience through more effective personal, digital and group communication throughout the entire talent acquisition;
• Keep abreast and implement new trends of recruiting.

Organizations should understand how each of these points contributes to the MTA and how the combination will help them achieve a more effective recruiting function.

The way in which talent acquisition is carried out, certainly creates an image of an organization in the candidate's mind, hence working with the latest trends will act as a branding tool for the company.

Talent acquisition deserves its own integrated suite of solutions. Today’s talent acquisition deserves its own conversation. This report is where that conversation begins.

Courtesy: Aptitude Research Partners