The basic talent acquisition approach of acquiring, hiring, and retaining employees fails to drive optimal levels of success in an uncertain economy where high-performers come at a huge cost. It is estimated that the cost of hiring a single “A” player can be as high as $100,000 per annum, but this “A” player can boost the company’s revenue by 10X for each year that he/she stays with the firm. Whether you require experienced prospects for hard-to-fill vacancies, want a high volume of fresh talent or need to build a pool of high-performers, it is important to make optimum use of available resources at every step of your sourcing funnel.
Implementing the Best Talent Acquisition Plan for Bringing the Best Onboard
The best talent acquisition practices are always closely aligned with the business goals, and goal alignment plays a crucial role in creating a reliable and consistent stream of high-performing talent. This is why HR managers are also business leaders. If you want to drive success, it can be done through staffing activities that entail:
- Leveraging a Fully-loaded Careers Site to Cast a Wider Net
A careers site is a great tool to attract the best-of-breed high-perfomers and also the central aspect of managing your sourcing processes. It helps you access everything from a single place, lets you evaluate the calibre of your prospective candidates, helps you build relationships and finally enables you to store and process information in a structured manner. A feature-rich careers site that is linked to your official website’s home page gives you a competitive edge because it enables hiring managers to:
- To quickly filter qualified candidates from the unqualified ones
- Customize application forms for different openings
- Keep a constant track of candidate progress in a structured format
- Post jobs on popular job boards and social platforms automatically
- Exhibit company culture, mission, and vision to positively influence the candidate’s decision
- Ensures a seamless job-search experience
- Stay focused on urgent and important tasks
- Using Smart Sourcing Technology to Save Time
Talent acquisitions costs crop up every single time – whether you are filling a fresh vacancy, refilling a position due to attrition or rotating employees internally. This sourcing spend is estimated to be around $85 billion annually across the globe. The most reliable way to reduce this cost dramatically is to use smart sourcing technology.
HR managers can save time and effort by automating their job board submissions, reducing their reliance on third-party recruiting agencies, and plugging into social platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter to expand their reach beyond job boards. Social platforms have a massive user base, and so they give you easy access to millions of potentially talented professionals. Team up your social recruiting efforts with technology for faster screening and find high-performers based on their knowledge, skill set, and experience.
- Using Automation for Candidate Management
Hiring no longer happens in silos. It is an ongoing process that requires consistent communication that engages at every step of the sourcing funnel. Building relationships with prospective candidates takes time and effort. While interactions need a human touch, emails and notifications can be easily automated with an applicant tracking system. It enhances the communication process by keeping your prospects updated and involved at every stage with instant messages, notifications and interview reminders.
- Using Reports to Identify Metrics
Hiring efforts need to be aligned with your business goals. Now how can that be achieved? For HR strategies to be in sync with business targets, it is important to have insights into business metrics that indicate everything – vacancies generated, time invested, cost per hire, retention rate, and the efficacy of sourcing platforms including job boards and networking channels. If you have an applicant tracking system, it generates accurate reports to facilitate informed decision making. Use these reports to track performance, make improvisations, improve the quality of hires and cut acquisition costs.
Hiring high-performers does not need a huge capital or complicated organizational silos. All you need is a user-friendly careers site, an influential social presence, and automation to accelerate your sourcing efforts. Leveraging technology is the easiest way HR managers and recruiting professionals can attract A players, engage them, increase work efficiency, improve the quality of candidates, and dramatically lower costs.
Author Bio: Kelly Barcelos is a progressive digital marketing manager specializing in HR and is responsible for leading Jobsoid’s content and social media team. When Kelly is not building campaigns, she is busy creating content and preparing PR topics. She started with Jobsoid as a social media strategist and eventually took over the entire digital marketing team with her innovative approach and technical expertise.