Navigating the Future of Talent Acquisition: Strategies for Attracting, Assessing, and Retaining Top Talent in a Rapidly Changing Work Landscape (Article 02)

In an era of technological advancements, changing work dynamics, and evolving employee expectations, the field of talent acquisition is undergoing significant transformation. This topic would delve into the challenges and opportunities organizations face in attracting, assessing, and retaining top talent in the face of these changes. It could cover aspects such as the impact of remote work, the role of artificial intelligence in recruitment, the importance of employer branding, diversity and inclusion in talent acquisition, and strategies for creating a seamless candidate experience. Additionally, the topic could explore how talent acquisition professionals are adapting their practices to cater to the needs of different generations in the workforce and how data analytics are influencing decision-making in recruitment processes. Ultimately, the goal would be to provide insights and best practices that can help organizations build a resilient and agile talent acquisition strategy for the future.

Talent is an individual's natural ability aptitude or capacity; it is a "human capital" for the organization. In general there are various types of talent namely, directly productive talent, academic talent and talent in social and cultural sectors. In the coming decades, the demand for talented people will far exceed the availability of skilled workers - at all levels, and in all industries. Getting the best talent, and keeping the talent we have is becoming intensely competitive. Most corporate sectors say that the biggest constraint to pursuing growth opportunities is talent. Therefore, the human resource professionals are adopting talent acquisition approach. The core concept of talent Acquisition is to tap into the 'top performers'. Taking the long term strategic approach to talent Acquisition will have a huge impact on how an approach is made to a candidate, if approach is strategic in nature the intent of the call is to go much further, and the conversation becomes more relationship building. Talent Acquisition is similar to the Acquisition of Customers. Thus by doing proper staffing, Recruiting, managing talent within organization and identification of top performers for further development will help in meeting the challenge of acquiring talent.. Hence the key to talent acquisition is not finding talent but also increasingly, about developing it.

Oxford English Dictionary (eleventh edition) defines talent as a noun, means nature aptitude or skill. People possessing aptitude or skill in their work and show their ability to the company. 

The term "gifted and talented" when used in respect to students, children, or youth means students, children, or youth who give evidence of high performance capability in areas such as intellectual, creative, artistic, or leadership capacity, or in specific academic fields, and who require services or activities not ordinarily provided by the school in order to fully develop such capabilities but for organizations there are various types of Talents. 

Most of the treatments of brain drain and talent mobility in the literature consider an aggregate of “human capital”. This analytical simplification masks a reality in which there is a variety of different types of talent with different motivations to move and with varied development impact. 

(i) Directly productive talent: This includes the mobility of entrepreneurs, engineers and other technical talent, technology innovators and business creators. These are people who engaged directly in activities that lead to the actual production of goods and services. 

(ii) Academic talent: This includes the mobility of scientists, scholars and international students. These are individuals that often work or study in universities, research centers and think-tanks and are devoted to the production and/or Acquisition of scientific and scholarly knowledge that may be eventually translated in commercially valuable products and inputs. 

(iii) Talent in social and cultural sectors: This encompasses the mobility of medical doctors and nurses in the health sectors. This talent is engaged directly in the provision of critical social service such as health. In turn, “cultural workers” such as writers, painters, musicians and other people are engaged in artistic and cultural creative activities that have a value of aesthetic enjoyment and personal development. These are people who write books, produce movies, paintings, handicraft and other cultural goods.  

Now a days the traditional recruitment is re-emerging as a broader 'talent acquisition' concept - An approach that is becoming more and more critical in the 'War for Talent'. Talent Acquisition forms a part of a much broader strategic approach in the corporate quest to gain and sustain a competitive advantage in today's marketplace. Other aspects include talent development, retention and transition, these are primarily inward facing, while the former is outward looking.

The core concept of talent Acquisition is to get away from the 'fill in the box' thinking to one that is more pro-active and much closer to building the skill sets required to achieve business success. Traditionally, a recruitment need occurs when an individual either leaves or is promoted to another function. That's when panic can set in, especially if no suitable internal solution is found, a situation that is becoming known as - "under the bus syndrome". Strong relationship building or networking skills are important here. The key to success in talent Acquisition is the unique way that we are able to tap into the 'top performers' who are not really looking for another job. They never read the traditional job ads or go to the job boards on the Internet.

Educating line managers that talent Acquisition must also be an everyday duty is also a success criterion. Most managers, rightly so, look at hiring only when there is a 'box' vacant on a purely transactional basis. Today's top talent has a very short shelf life; therefore we must have a sense of urgency in bringing them aboard, a job opening. This tactic is considered very risky by some managers, but at the end of the day not making an offer of the day a 'top' performer comes to the job market, we will most certainly loose them.  

Money is of course essential in the talent acquisition quest, but it's not the only element. Many corporations are using traditional job classification and job grading systems in order to remain competitive in the 'cash compensation' side. Being able to mould an opportunity and make it exciting will also attract top performers, the notion of "a la carte" job descriptions is becoming more and more adopted as a way of finding the "hot button", and excite people enough to make the move. Benefits and perks are at the fore here with long-term incentives such as stock options, being widely used. The work/life concept will also have an impact, a lot of corporations talk about this element but not many have fully embraced it. Some may even look at it from an investment banker perspective and view potential 'top performers' as they would any targeted acquisition. 

STRATEGIC TALENT ACQUISITION 

“Strategic Talent Acquisition takes a long-term view of not only filling positions today, but also using the candidates that come out of a recruiting campaign as a means to fill similar positions in the future.” 

These future positions may be identifiable today by looking at the succession management plan, or by analyzing the history of attrition for certain positions. This makes it easy to predict that specific openings will occur at a pre-determined period in time. In the most enlightened cases of Strategic Talent Acquisition, clients will recruit today for positions that do not even exist today but are expected to become available in the future. 

Taking the long term strategic approach to talent Acquisition has a huge impact on how an approach is made to a candidate. If the approach is purely tactical in nature, all we ask of the prospective candidate is "Are you qualified and interested?"

However, if the approach is more strategic in nature, the intent of the call is to go much further, and the conversation becomes more relationship building. The candidate has an opportunity to explain his/her future career aspirations, and the recruiter gathers enough information to determine if there is a potential fit in the client organization. If during a strategic recruiting call the candidate declares that they are both qualified and interested, then the tactical nature of the call has been automatically fulfilled. If, however, the candidate lacks sufficient experience, or the timing for a career move is not propitious, then they become candidates for the future, and all the recruiter has to do is keep in touch until either they become available, or a position with the client organization opens up.

Most of the money spent on Strategic Talent Acquisition would have been spent in a tactical recruiting mandate anyway. The only additional cost is in collecting data on high-potential candidates and then keeping in touch with them until hire is made. The additional cost becomes insignificant compared to the value of hiring top competitive talent over time. 

Strategic Talent Acquisition allows us access to a pool of competitive talent that would otherwise have been missed or even worse, ignored. Clearly the business case for acquiring talent strategically is far more compelling than simply paying to fill positions today. What we are doing is adding a small incremental effort, in exchange for a huge potential reward.

TALENT ACQUISITION - AS A STRATEGY 

Historically organizations have not treated the recruitment process as one of strategic importance, but latterly many are now waking up to the reality that the world has changed dramatically. No more can the organization pick and choose between several great candidates for one position. Several changes in our connected world have tipped the scales in favor of the highly talented individual looking for a new opportunity. 

Firstly, of course, there is the Internet. Never before in the history of humankind, has there been such an enabling technology. Candidates can now advertise their desire to change jobs within minutes of making the decision and receive enquires about their talents within hours.

Potentially, it is feasible that a high quality employee of yours, having received the final 'straw which broke the camel’s back' (bad appraisal, inappropriate negative response from boss, extra workload stress etc.) can post their CV/Resume up on a particular jobs board at midday today, receive three interested requests for contact with third party recruiters or headhunters within hours, be interviewed for an outstanding role (at one of your competitors) tomorrow, receive an offer in writing the following day and resign that afternoon (within 2 days). Scary, isn't it? But if the Internet has enabled this process for candidates, it has also brought significant advantages for organizations. 

To meet the challenge here are some of the things we would be doing as Staffing, Recruiting, talent Management and as human resources professionals: 

Work harder at indentifying high performers :

Together with high performers themselves, we could establish some indicators of success or of high performance for each position we recruit for. These could be the number of sales they have made in a month, the number of reports they have written that resulted in consulting assignments, the amount of revenue their group has generated, and so forth. This is hard work though. There aren't a lot of benchmarks to go by, but we all know more or less who contributes the most to our organizations. Our task is to quantify those contributions. 

Work with managers to develop profiles of high performers in each group:

We would try to find commonalities and things we could identify during the screening process that might predict success. These could be competencies, activities high performers engage in, work methods, or processes. There are many firms that can help us determine what these "critical success factors" are and even help us develop tests to identify them in candidates.  

Find out where potential high performers like to go and what they like to do: 

This step allows us to target our advertising toward high performers and decide which events are worth attending so that we can get at the kinds of people we seek. Doing this well requires a focus on competitive intelligence. We can also gather information from competitors and from vendors and suppliers about where good people may be located. We can certainly use our employee referral program for the same purpose. 

We would do a better job of collecting and capturing critical information about candidates: The knowledge we gradually accumulate is valuable and should be put into some sort of database where it can be shared with other recruiters. A BLOG can form the basis on an internal or external community of recruiters where this kind of information can be exchanged. This is a form of knowledge sharing and transfers that, when properly done, can save thousands of hours of work and bunches of money. After all, headhunters rely on their own human knowledge management systems (i.e. their brains) to do this all the time. Our challenge is to make this more broadly accessible and to keep it current.

Recognize the importance of developing people so that they can become high performers:

The recruiting function has to move toward becoming more like a talent agency - something it has not been historically. Talent agencies not only recognize talent but also develop it for strategic purposes. We as recruiters need to take our knowledge of what talent looks like and offer people who have "it" a chance to acquire the skills they need to perform the jobs we have. 

The key to talent acquisition is not only about finding talent, but also, increasingly, about developing it. If we are to move our profession upwards and start making real contributions to the bottom line, we should face the challenge and exquisite talent within the organization.

References

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Capppelli, P. (2008). Talent management for the 21 st cetuary. Harward Business Review, March, 74-81.

Lev, B. (2001). Intangibles: Management, measurements, and reporting. Brookings institution press. 

Polyhart, R. E. (2006). Staffing in the 21st century: New challenges and strategic opportunities. Journal of management, 32(6), 868-897.

Accenture (2007) Skills for future, Accenture high performance work force study, Accenture research report. 

Executive Development Associates (EDA), (2005). The leadership bench strength challenge: Building integrated talent management system. New York.

Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychological (2003). Principles for the validations of personnel selection procedure, 4th edition, 103-106.