Difference Between Talent Acquisition and Recruitment

Employees are the real treasure of any organisation. In the words of Stephen Covey, a company must treat its employees just like it treats its customers. But it is a fact: Employees are not easy to hire.

And for this reason, the following question becomes pertinent: When you are trying to bring top talent onboard, are you willing to compromise on time? Sometimes the answer is yes, especially if you are taking a strategic approach. You have just opted for Talent Acquisition over Recruitment.

So is that all that sets talent acquisition apart from recruitment. Pretty much, and everything else that comes with such an approach to hiring. Let us now look at the differences between talent acquisition and recruitment.

Talent acquisition is in fact so sought after today that in some companies they have both a talent acquisition team as well as an HR team. That’s the best of both worlds. While HR team focuses on recruitment with a more reactive approach to managing talent, the talent acquisition team takes a more proactive approach. Let us now look at the differences between talent acquisition and recruitment.

Differences Between Talent Acquisition and Recruitment

The business goals of the company will impact your talent acquisition efforts. You will need to focus as much on workforce planning as you would on sourcing, screening and finally hiring candidates for your company.

Recruitment will take you a lot less time than talent acquisition and could be preferable in scenarios where you have a tight deadline and you do not have a high-quality talent pipeline to tap into. In general, a lot more stakeholders are involved in talent acquisition as opposed to recruitment and needs careful management.

How does it look like in more detail?

1. Recruitment is an integral part of talent acquisition. Talent acquisition is a lengthy process that begins with a lot of strategic planning, setting goals for each department etc. and recruitment is just a part of it, where sourcing, assessment, and onboarding etc. happens.
2. Recruitment happens linearly, talent acquisition is cyclic. Talent acquisition is an ongoing cycle of managing talent in the company, whereas recruitment happens in short stints, on a per-need basis and therefore is linear in nature.
3. Recruitment could be resume based, talent acquisition looks beyond. Talent acquisition considers so much more than the resume, it looks at mapping the skills in the resume to the current role, with future goals in mind.
4. Recruitment gets you employees; talent acquisition helps find specialists. Recruitment usually happens in short stints and is reactive in nature. It addresses immediate goals and requirements and therefore finds the best possible asset in the given time frame. Talent acquisition is a longer game and therefore helps find niche specialists.
5. Recruitment addresses immediate needs, talent acquisition forms bonds. Talent acquisition takes everything into consideration, including how great a cultural fit the person would be, the peer-to-peer relationships that will exist in the workplace post recruitment etc. This helps establish longer bonds and a very strong relationship with each new hire.

3 Tips for Effective Talent Acquisition

Make accurate forecasts. You can of course project the roles that need to be filled but also look at the experience in the past when hiring for those roles. Some roles just need more hiring time, and you can compensate by hiring for roles that do not require niche skills in much lesser time. Time and other resource allocation must be done with job demands and business goals in mind. Then you can make accurate predictions for the future.

Build strong employer branding. Brands with power rule the world by get a seat in the heart of their consumers. Talent acquisition is no different. Because talent acquisition is a long-term strategy, you must ensure that you have a crowd of enthusiastic followers who would be happy to work with you, recommend you to others, and defend your values. This extends to people who work for you as well.

Have a high-quality talent pipeline ready. Have processes in place that help to attract and identify high-quality candidates. There must be a ready process in place for generating such high-quality leads. Also, the mechanism through which you search through the talent pipeline will depend on the size of your organisation. For a small company, a simple Excel spreadsheet will suffice. For others, software can help organisations sort and move through large data sets.

Are you looking for a talent acquisition partner?

That was a look at how talent acquisition is different from recruitment. But talent acquisition is a vast ocean and there are so many things you must do, and it can be an overwhelming exercise because of the sheer number of steps in a talent acquisition cycle. It would be great to have a talent acquisition partner who would be with you every step of the way and guide you with everything (and recruitment is just a part of it).

With over 25 years of experience in Staffing & Recruitment, Alp Consulting is your partner of choice when it comes to talent acquisition. We will collaborate with your teams or work separately with our team of highly qualified talent acquisition experts here to solve every talent requirement you may have. Talk to us today to know more. We are waiting to hear from you.