Talent Acquisition- The more excellent way of partnering with the business!

Success of filling any position always depends on the kind of partnership that you establish with your business. Talent Acquisition is not just about your usual templates, processes, policies, job codes or salary tables but it is something which is beyond than this- It is about establishing the great connect with your business & ensuring that the hiring managers trusts you enough with this that you are truly interested in helping them achieve their goals by adding great Value/Talent in the team.

How do you achieve that? Being in this industry since 5 years, Building most of the tech teams from scratch for startups & After having to work with different clients/dozens of their hiring managers in software industry & now working with HP as a TA Partner with our business, I learnt that the first & foremost thing which you need to believe is that you possess a great talent of connecting with the people/ the ability to read them & to read your instincts to help business whenever they are stuck at any point in making hiring decisions & also by eliminating the thought that hiring is just a TA’s responsibility alone by involving the hiring managers in the process, when in fact they are equally responsible in bringing great talent & building smart teams in any organization.

Instead of just starting with usual Req engagement meetings to understand about the position & to tell them what they need to do as part of their responsibility & what is that which you will be taking care of, The most important thing to do is to share with your hiring manager that the process is mutual, built on trust & also how you are going to partner together straight from the stage of sourcing to onboarding the candidate, Ensure them about how you are going to bring value to the table, how you can reduce the hiring time for them, use your recruiting knowledge to help the hiring managers with the market insights about the position that they are looking to hire for, Help them understand how competitors are considering this position in the industry, How an ideal candidate would look into this role, Also help them understand how to use different sourcing tools, how they can generate the referrals from their network in the industry or from their own team, while you are sourcing at your end too

You need to ask as many questions as possible to understand what they are expecting from you, How you can be that ideal partner for them, What kind of project that their team is working on, How this role is going to create the difference for the team/as well as for the individual & how this will relate to the organization's major goals. Try to look at the bigger picture of it, use your ability to segregate between good & excellent then raise the quality standards to deliver the best results. Try engaging the whole team in the process by making it interesting for them to gather their ideas & attention towards it as nobody else can help you define the role better than the team who is already into it.

Share your opinions, knowledge without having to wait for it to be invited, its completely fine to disagree on certain things & arrive at a mutual decision by educating them about the reasons for the particular disagreement whenever its needed, Also give freedom to your hiring managers to hire what & who they want to hire, As the saying goes- With freedom comes the great responsibility

On the other hand- Hunt for the ideal candidate using different sourcing tools or open source platforms, understand the candidates preferences along with their short & long term goals, Try to gauge if this is what they are looking for, if they can really fit into your culture & values, attract the top talent with your convincing/influencing skills, Show them what kind of projects & teams that they will be working with & how he/she would grow with the company, Engage with the candidates along with the hiring managers, Make them understand that it is not the job that you offer but the career which in turn will increase both your joining & the retention ratio, Make offer strategies with the hiring managers to create the win win situation for both the business & the ideal candidate.

At the end your approach to recruiting is what matters, and collaboration of different ideas, strategies & opinions through partnership is what contributes towards the successful hire.

We all can be the great TA Partners just by channelizing our efforts in the right direction. Cheers!

Ghousiya Banu/Sama-Talent Acquisition, HP Inc