Gone are the days when talent acquisition was a small part of the HR department and there was no talent specialist in the department. Earlier, it was a straightforward task to perform. Talent acquisition life cycle was easy to define. The organisation often used the hiring or talent acquisition department as a support function and was not most of the organisation never took it seriously either. After the first decade of the century, companies have realized the value of a good talent acquisition department and strategize the hiring just like the sales process. With the involvement of modern technology of AI and other niche software and tools, talent acquisition has transformed itself as vital as sales. 

Let us consider the responsibilities of a sales department below and replace sales with talent acquisition. You will find that there are a lot of similarities in the workflow and functioning of both departments now. Organisation expect the recruiters to have similar skills as that of a sales professional. Let us try to look for similarities of responsibilities of both sales and talent acquisition teams.

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Growth strategy based cost, quality and time

Similar to sales strategy, hiring teams undergo brainstorming sessions to build their hiring plans in line to the organisation’s growth strategy. The hiring strategy is a vital part of the companies’ expansion plans. They build strategies to answer the questions such that when, where and how to target the talent. All the plannings of talent acquisition should coincide with the sales business and expansion plans.

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Conduct research and trend analysis of the market

Similar to prospecting in sales, research by talent acquisition teams is to be done to find the trend in the market. This help the hiring professionals to target the talent of specific:

Location

Age group

Competitors

Similar Industries

Many more..

If your talent team is not doing the detailed research and trend analysis, your competitors will easily grab the best talent from the market and you are left with….you know. This research will help your talent acquisition professional to start their hiring process for the future positions and will be way ahead of the competition with a big margin.

Generate leads and cold calling/messaging

Similar to the sales process, lead generation is important nowadays. If you know the positions you need to hire, you know which potential talent to target. Your leads can be converted to candidates. Cold calling and cold messaging(social media connect) can give you an opportunity to know the needs and wants of your talent before pitching them your offer. This is similar to client questioning and understanding.

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Bringing in potential business and pipeline

As similar to client acquisition, hiring the best talent from the market ensures the revenue for the company. The talent brings in their experience and contacts through which they can achieve what is expected from them. The talent which a company cannot hire in the current scenario, talent acquisition teams can keep them in pipeline and stay in touch with them for future. When terms are met mutually between the talent and organisation, time and cost per hire is reduced significantly.

Promote the company’s culture, benefits

When you know your organisation, its culture and the benefits, it is easy to engage candidates with a positive pull. This is like marketing and promotion in sales. If you know your product well, your targets will always get hooked to your offerings. The talent acquisition teams are promoters of the organisation among the candidates. They should know the art of sales and marketing.

Negotiation

Possess this one skill in your life, negotiation. If you are a good negotiator, you bring everyone to mutual agreement. Negotiation is not always making the person agree all your points, but to make them agree with most of them. We should discuss this in detail soon. Talent acquisition team has to negotiate a lot of things with the candidates; location, salary, notice period. Not only the candidates but they need to convince and negotiate with the hiring managers. A lot of need to tell but let us settle right now with this. 

Please comment below if you want more insight of the value of negotiation for the talent acquisition team. 

Engagement and Customer Satisfaction

For talent acquisition teams, the clients are the hiring managers and stakeholders. They need to engage and work for the client’s satisfaction. Actually, for talent acquisition teams, the client and product keeps changing when you

 choose the perspective of candidate and hiring manager  

Attending Events, training and Development

To remain updated with the industry trends and knowledge, talent acquisition teams have to be more involved these days with professionals outside the organisation. It becomes a need to attend events and webinars so that talent teams are not left behind by the market. They need to stay at par or ahead with the competition.

The knowledge of the industry, technical and function skills of the job description is important for the talent acquisition teams to know. This helps the talent team to screen the candidates and understand the jobs when talking with hiring managers.

Conclusion:

The job of a talent acquisition professional has changed so dramatically that they have to be sharp and skills very similar to those of a salesperson. I know some companies who have hired sales professionals in their talent acquisition teams. Organizations have started to acknowledge the value of the talent acquisition process and the talent professionals. If companies want to stay ahead of the competitors to get the best talent from the market, they need to invest a lot of strategies towards their talent acquisition plans and teams.

Please let us know your view in the comments below?

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