As the initial face of a company, hiring managers and independent recruiters are responsible for screening potential employees and making decisions based on crucial first impressions. It may seem like a simple process from an outside perspective, but there are several strategies these professionals can utilize to find a company’s next employee.
While recruiting and talent acquisition may sound like similar approaches to hiring new employees, the two serve different purposes. Understanding both concepts can help human resource managers better determine which tactic is right for the company’s current hiring needs.
What Is Talent Acquisition?
Rather than starting from scratch as soon as new positions open, talent acquisition is an ongoing strategy to find, attract, and onboard top professionals. The idea is to more effectively fill roles with employees who can meet company needs on day one and well into the future.
Building this kind of recruitment strategy is especially useful when hiring candidates for specialized positions, which are often more difficult to fill. Talent acquisition goes beyond recruiting through the following elements:
- Considering employment branding: Provide candidates with a better understanding of the company’s products and services, as well as the organizational culture, reputation, and perks.
- Understanding candidate audiences: Define the best places to source the ideal applicants by understanding audiences on a deeper, more targeted level.
- Enhancing candidate experiences: Ensure positive interview experiences, plus maintain relationships with past candidates for future opportunities.
- Focusing on diversity: Make sure to source candidates from varied backgrounds.
- Tracking key metrics: Analyze the process to continually improve the strategy and make better recruitment decisions.
Ultimately, talent acquisition is a multi-faceted process that involves optimizing a company’s recruiting, hiring, onboarding, training, and management practices to improve the quality of new hires and enable new employees to excel in their positions
What Is Recruiting?
When there’s a job opening, companies find new employees through a recruitment process. Human resource professionals and hiring managers create job descriptions and then promote them on their own websites as well as job search platforms like Indeed, Glassdoor, and LinkedIn. The next step is sifting through applications, selecting the ones worthy of phone screenings, and then scheduling follow-up interviews with the most promising ones.
Recruiting is simply about filling vacancies, usually following a relatively fast timeline. As such, it’s more of a short-term approach to hiring, especially when compared to the more strategic method of talent acquisition.
Talent Acquisition or Recruitment: Which Is Best for You?
In most cases, many human resource experts believe there’s more value in talent acquisition than traditional recruitment because of its long-term and more targeted nature. For instance, talent acquisition often leads to better results for crucial leadership positions that require distinctive skills and experience. For the same reason, companies in niche markets also benefit from talent acquisition strategies.
Plus, finding and hiring top-performing candidates isn’t a one-time task for any company. As businesses grow, they should be continually networking and scouting for the best talent in their fields. Introducing these high-quality employees to the team can enhance morale, productivity, and long-term outlooks.
With that said, recruiting often becomes an element of talent acquisition through tasks like sourcing, screening, interviewing, evaluating, narrowing, and hiring. Talent acquisition ensures that there’s more thought behind the recruitment process so that finding, attracting, and reaching the right candidates becomes a more strategic and continuous process.
How Can Companies Use Recruiting to Support Their Talent Acquisition Efforts?
The Society for Human Resource Management advises establishing recruitment objectives as the first step to shifting focus to long-term talent acquisition. Some of these goals may fall in line with company-wide objectives, as high-performing employees are among the most important factors in reaching those goals.
Companies should also work on improving their employer brand to make sure their online presence resonates with both consumers and prospective employees. From there, human resource managers can develop the strategy, considering questions such as:
- What type of individual is ideal?
- How does one reach those targeted individuals?
- What’s the recruitment message?
- When should recruitment begin?
When organized and ready to start sourcing talent, human resource managers should take advantage of social networks and industry-specific communities to begin connecting with potential candidates. With a long-term recruitment strategy in place, hiring becomes a much more straightforward and fruitful experience.
Comparing Human Resource Professionals: Talent Acquisition Specialist vs. Recruiting Coordinator
To more fully understand the differences between recruitment and talent acquisition, we can examine the roles and typical day-to-day responsibilities of recruiting coordinators and talent acquisition specialists.
These two human resources roles require some of the same skills and knowledge, but they help their employers in different ways. If you’re considering a career in HR, comparing and contrasting these positions can help you make more informed decisions about your goals and potential next steps.
What Is a Talent Acquisition Specialist?
Talent acquisition specialists are in charge of developing and implementing long-term staffing strategies. They work with companies on every aspect of the hiring process, from developing screening protocols to viewing individual applications. They often work for companies in competitive industries that require specialized types of skilled labor.
Talent acquisition specialists find and evaluate potential candidates that meet their company’s needs. They often work closely with hiring managers and department heads to identify a company’s staffing needs and determine the skill and experience requirements for each position that needs to be filled.
They will also be asked to screen candidates and make recommendations to hiring managers. Once hiring decisions are made, talent acquisition specialists are in charge of helping new employees through the onboarding process and ensuring they are adjusting comfortably to the environment.
The work of talent acquisition specialists is often directly related to a company’s long-term hiring and retention goals. For example, if a company wants to diversify its staff, talent acquisition specialists may work on developing workplace diversity initiatives and expanding outreach efforts to more minority groups.
What Is a Recruiting Coordinator?
Recruiting coordinators can perform some of the same tasks as talent acquisition specialists, but the overall scope of their work is much narrower. While talent acquisition specialists are in charge of developing and implementing a company’s recruitment, hiring, and onboarding procedures, recruiting coordinators focus exclusively on guiding candidates through the hiring process.
Their responsibilities typically involve posting job openings on various channels, planning and scheduling interviews for candidates across departments, creating offer letters, and conducting background checks on new hires.
They may also be asked to deal with any other issues that arise during the hiring process, such as schedule conflicts or incomplete paperwork. Unlike talent acquisition specialists, recruiting coordinators have no role in the onboarding process, and their work is done once a position is filled.
While talent acquisition specialists work with management to develop new and improved hiring strategies based on a company’s long-term goals and values, recruiting coordinators oversee the day-to-day aspects of the hiring process to ensure that everything goes smoothly. They are tasked with getting individual positions filled quickly and efficiently, rather than improving a company’s hiring methods over time.
Human Resource Management Education
While talent acquisition specialists and recruiters have very different roles, these positions often require similar types of human resources skills and knowledge. If you’re interested in either of these careers, pursuing a degree in human resource management can provide you with the foundational training you’ll need. These programs and courses teach students to think strategically about recruiting, hiring, training, and retention practices in the modern workplace.
Understanding various HR concepts, including talent acquisition and recruiting, is a primary objective of the curriculum. The specialized courses that cover such topics include management processes, behavior, and employee selection and development.
Sources:
Indeed, “Organizational Culture: Definition and Why It’s Important”
Society for Human Resource Management, “Recruiting and Attracting Talent”
Society for Human Resource Management, “Managing for Employee Retention”