What is the difference between Recruitment and Talent Acquisition

Talent Acquisition means a view of not only filling positions, but also utilization of the candidates and their skills that come out of a rigorous recruiting process as a means to fill similar positions in the future also.

These future positions can be identified 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 few 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.

Recruitment – In this résumés are invited for a vacancy

Selection - Screening of only relevant or best matching candidates.

Hiring process - Time frame from the period of requisition of man power being made till the person actually joining.

Talent Acquisition - Acquiring of “talent” 

Here we focus on talent that the person possess and not just the educational background or the experience / working years one has.

To be simple, it is about attracting, recruiting, inducting and making use of right talent.

Such as if one have a talent for content writing but do not possess any certification or degree in this field. A person who is recruiting might not be interested in my profile. But a talent Acquisition person who is looking for talent might want to try my skills. Recruitment invite the eligible candidates for the existing vacancies available in the organization.

Talent acquisition is an ongoing cycle of process related to attracting, sourcing, recruiting and hiring employees within an organization.

This includes elements of employment branding, outreach, networking and relationship building with potential candidate communities to continually build and enhance the talent pool for an organization.

Talent Acquisition professionals understand that each talent has something of value to offer. They also build relationships with the best of the talent that lead to more successful networking, more referrals, more business and an amazing give and take of expertise, knowledge and information.

Recruiting takes tremendous effort. Talent acquisition takes efficient and productive processes that are easy to use and candidate centric.

The identification, relationship building and selection of people who possess special, creative/technical skills and who can influence, contribute to and/or drive revenue to our business by exerting extraordinary effort, exercising strong relationship management in present or in future could be considered as TA.

Recruitment is a linear process, where employers source candidates for the existing vacancies currently available. This approach is reactive in its nature, thus leads to increased time-to-hire and cost-to-hire. At times organizations compromise even on quality in order to manage cost and time.

As specified above Talent Acquisition is ongoing cycle of process that start by building Employer Brand, communication of Employee Value Proposition and ongoing relationship with targeted Talent segments. This approach leads to the development of talent pools and talent pipelines eventually creating sustainable talent supply chain. This leads to more strategic nature of the approach and significant improvements across all Recruitment KPIs.

The term Talent Acquisition (TA) is often used synonymously with Recruiting. However, these are two very different things. Recruiting is a subset of TA, and includes the activities of sourcing, screening, interviewing, assessing, selecting and hiring. In some organizations this extends to the early stages of onboarding, which then becomes a shared responsibility between HR and the hiring manager, with support from the learning organization.

Talent acquisition includes recruiting, but it is inclusive of other strategic elements as follows.

Talent Acquisition Planning & Strategy – This ensures business alignment, examines workforce plans, requires an understanding of the labor markets, and looks at global considerations.

Workforce Segmentation – It requires an understanding of the different workforce segments and positions within these segments, as well as the skills, competencies, and experiences necessary for success.

Employment Branding – This includes activities that help to uncover, articulate and define a company’s image, organizational culture, key differentiators, reputation, and products and services. Employment branding can help advance the market position of organizations, attract quality candidates and depict what it is truly like to work for that organization.

Candidate Relationship Management – This includes building a positive candidate experience, managing candidate communities, and maintaining relationships for those candidates who are not selected at present against a particular skill set, but have few more skills.

Metrics & Analytics – It is the continuous tracking and use of key metrics to drive continuous improvement and to make better recruitment decisions, to ultimately improve the quality of hire.

Within each of these core elements of TA there are many other sub-activities and best practices. And, of course, the selection of tools, technology and outsourcing partners is a key element of a company’s talent acquisition strategy.

In other words, a leadership program is to leadership development what recruiting is to talent acquisition. Alone, neither will drive their highest value to the business.

Note: A suggestion for the readers who are not HRs. Kindly understand the efforts made by recruiters, technical panel(s) and senior executive(s) in order to close the position. Don’t make fake commitments, backouts, not picking the calls, switching off the cell phones and other lame excuses. If being a candidate you have genuine problem, share it with the recruiters by dropping a professional mail or by texting, giving a call. 

Written by: Hemant Kumaarr, Assistant Manager HR at ESQ Business Services.

Shared by: Beena Sandeep, Iris software solutions llc, Asst.manager HR

PM Narendra Modi's Talent Acquisition Strategy

The selection procedure of the 19 new Ministers was rigorous - PM Modi wanted 'doers' and 'performers' who would deliver on his vision of good governance.

Experience, expertise and energy – combination of these ‘3 Es’ defined how 19 new members were inducted in the Council of Ministers by PM Narendra Modi on Tuesday. Similary, in the recently concluded TA League Annual Conference by People Matters, the HR leaders at the meet spoke at length about the same strategy they wish that companies should apply if they are to disrupt the industry and also be sustainable. 

In this age of talent evolution, organizations are also in a state of flux with new-age talent coming in and working along with the already seasoned experts in the field. The synthesis of these two talent groups is essential for the success of any organization. Experts in the TA League pointed out that for scale and sustainability, hiring the matured or the experienced talent is the key, while for creating disruption, it is necessary to recruit the new-age or the Millennials – talent who are more agile and adapting to newer things. Combination of maturity and agility will what defines growth. 

PM Modi combined this strategy well when he appointed P P Chaudhary who is a senior Supreme Court advocate with over four decades of experience in constitutional litigation, Subhash Ram Rao Bhamre who is a well-known doctor with a super specialisation in cancer surgery and M J Akbar who is a veteran editor and internationally acclaimed journalist. And the PM is just not satisfied with the experienced ones; he wants energetic Ministers in the Council as well. For fresh and newer perspectives, Modi has appointed Anupriya Patel and Mansukh Mandaviya. 

Selection process was rigorous. PM Narendra Modi laid down the selection procedure “to bring in doers and performers who would deliver on his vision of development and good governance, and further his central priority of gaon (villages), garib (poor) and kisan (farmers).

Diversity is another aspect that the PM has taken note of. Two ministers are women, and five are Dalits, two from other minority communities. The 19 ministers come from states like UP, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Bengal, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Delhi, Uttarakhand, Karnataka and Assam. And he has been very strict about promoting – he only promoted the current environment minister Prakash Javadekar, who was at the minister of state level, to the Cabinet minister rank. The rest have been sworn in as ministers of state. 

The ones who didn’t perform well were firmly ousted from the ministers’ position. The five ministers who were dropped from the Union Council of Ministers are - Minister of State for Human Resource Development Ram Shankar Katheria, Minister of State for Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation Sanwar Lal Jat, Minister of State for Tribal Affairs Mansukhbhai D Vasava, Ministers of State for Agriculture M K Kundariya, and Minister of State for Panchayati Raj Nihal Chand.

So national or corporate, HR remains the key focus area for all. 

Article Source: Here

Image Credits: Pixabay.com

Shared by: Beena Sandeep, Iris software solutions llc, Asst.manager HR

Focal EE Approach of Identifying Employee Engagement Priorities

(Focal Employee Engagement (Focal EE) is a cloud-based employee survey solution measuring employee engagement and satisfaction.)

Employee surveys are tools used by organizational leadership to gain feedback on and measure employee engagement, employee morale, and performance. Usually answered anonymously, surveys are also used to gain a holistic picture of employees' feelings on such areas as working conditions, supervisory impact, and motivation that regular channels of communication may not. Surveys are considered effective in this regard provided they are well-designed, effectively administered, have validity, and evoke changes and improvements [1]

Engagement is a combination of commitment to the organization and its values, plus a willingness to help out colleagues (organizational citizenship). It goes beyond job satisfaction and is not simply motivation. Engagement is something the employee has to offer: it cannot be 'required' as part of the employment contract. There are many individual and organizational factors that determine whether employees become engaged, and to what extent they become engaged.

If you are assessing the level of engagement or job satisfaction of your employees, you need to know exactly what matters most to them. This information is critical to understanding exactly what you need to fix. To simply know what employees are most and least satisfied with is not enough. For example, you might find that your employees are "very dissatisfied" with some aspect of their jobs, but that the thing they are unhappy with is not really that important to them or has little bearing on how engaged they are. Or you might find that your employees are moderately satisfied with some other aspect of their jobs, but you also learn that this is the most important thing to them and therefore an area to focus on improving. [2]

Simply asking employees to tell you what is most important to them is one approach, but this approach has some serious drawbacks. Most significantly, it doubles the length of the survey, which means fewer employees will complete the survey and those that do will be more likely to either find the process more bothersome or experience "survey fatigue" as they near the end. Worst of all, this means you will probably get fewer written comments from your employees.

Focal EE uses a different approach to measure "importance". The method we use starts with a statistically-based model of engagement that uses factor analysis to identify the key components of engagement that are common across most/all organizations.

Next, we use correlation to identify which items are the biggest drivers of engagement in a specific organization. It is important to note that correlation is not causation. Strictly speaking, we cannot establish a cause-effect relationship based solely on correlations. However, from a practical perspective, items that are highly correlated with engagement are usually a reliable indication of what is having a positive or negative impact on engagement.

Finally, we incorporate group size and standardized scores to identify the items that are the highest engagement priorities. Generally speaking, this means we look for items with high correlations and low scores.

References & Further Reading
1. Knapp, Paul R. and Bahaudin G. Mujtaba. May 2010. "Designing, administering, and utilizing an employee attitude survey." Journal of Behavioral Studies in Business. Volume 2

2. Identifying Employee Engagement Priorities

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Shared by - Beena Sandeep, +Beena UK Asst.manager HR, Iris Software Solutions LLC