10 Ways to Improve Business Performance by Applying The Best Talent Acquisition Practices

By Polelo Madalane

Firstly, let's define what Talent Acquisition is. Talent Acquisition refers to the process of proactively and continuous attraction of potential employees through various channels and approaches and ensuring an effective onboarding process of new recruits. People are attracted to something if it has features that they would like to have, hence, it is critical that the Talent Acquisition Specialist (TAS) fully understands the features of the organisation's employment brand and continuously work towards strengthening it to improve its ability to attract potential talent to the organisation.

As a TAS, you can position your organisation to attract the best talent in the market if you apply the practices expressed in this article. The following ten practices will set you apart from other traditional Recruiters:

Practice 1: When do you act?

First and foremost, you need to analyse the business strategy to understand the talent implications thereof. You need to determine what workforce profile in terms of the quantity and the type of positions will be required by the organisation given the business strategy (3-5 years plan). This is what I call the "zooming out" action. Once you understand what the future will look like, you need to "zoom in", that is, looking internally if you have the potential employees to be developed for the future roles.

The traditional Recruiter act when they receive a requisition to fill a vacancy, while a TAS has a talent acquisition strategy that guides them as to what they need to do to constantly attract and place talent when it is needed. You need to identify mission critical positions (positions that drive the achievement of the business strategy and difficult to fill) and ensure that you have identified successors internally or externally to fill them should they become vacant. You also need to conduct retention risks for the critical positions so that you have an idea of when they will become vacant.

Practice 2: Pool to recruit from

Unlike the traditional Recruiter who relies on responses from adverts and recruitment agencies database for a pool to recruit from, the TAS proactively identifies internal and external pools to recruit from, especially for critical positions. The TAS knows what talent is available in the market and where to find such talent.

Practice 3: Attraction of talent

You will have a database of potential candidates whom you have had some informal interviews with to understand what they can offer and also what your organisation can potentially offer them. These potential employees constantly receive messages about the features of your employment brand. When a vacancy becomes available, you know exactly who to contact for a formal interview.

Practice 4: Performance measures

Traditionally, the performance of the recruitment function is measured by the number of people appointed in a particular period, the recruitment costs incurred and the recruitment turn-around time. The TAS measure their success on recruitment efficiencies (cost reduction and time to recruit), short term labour turnover (number of new recruits who left the company before completing 1 year of service) and new recruit's performance (hire time productivity).

Practice 5: Focus of the Talent Acquisition Specialist

The task of the TAS does not end when the candidate joins the organisation. The TAS must ensure that onboarding of the new recruit happens as per the onboarding process of the company. They will ensure that culture and job fit assessments take place in the first six months of their employ. They work in partnership with Human Resources Business Partners to determine the engagement levels of new recruits in the first six months of their employ. Technically their tasks end when the line manager appoints them permanently (end of the probation period) and when the TAS is satisfied with the engagement level of the new recruit.

Practice 6: Talent acquisition culture

Talent acquisition is not the responsibility of the TAS alone. Everyone in the business constantly identifies and refers top talent to the TAS. A mindset that acknowledges the importance of attracting and retaining the best talent must permeate all levels in the organisation, especially the leadership rank. The leadership of the organisation is measured on how well they attract (number of best talent referred and recruited) and retain talent (labour turnover rate of critical talent and employee engagement levels). The TAS must help entrench the talent acquisition culture in the organisation.

Practice 7: Talent segmentation

Critical positions are given a high priority in terms of time and resources. Sometimes when a new business strategy develops, the types of positions that have the biggest influence on the execution of the business strategy change. It is incumbent on the TAS, to know at any given point in time, which positions should be in their radar. The traditional Recruiter has no idea of strategy critical positions and assumes that leadership or senior positions are critical positions.

Practice 8: Talent strategy

The TAS understands the organisational talent strategy and their day to day talent acquisition activities are guided by this strategy. They understand the long term plans of the organisation and the implications thereof on what needs to happen on a daily basis to enable the company to implement its business strategy.

Practice 9: Business acumen

The TAS understands the organisation's business model, operations, competitive position and stakeholders and uses this information to advise line management of the best fit for the organisation and the position.

Practice 10: Talent acquisition sources

Unlike the traditional Recruiter who uses traditional talent acquisition sources like print advertising and recruitment agencies, the TAS uses multiple sources with more emphasis on social media, and employee referrals.

Conclusion

The demand for the best talent outstrips the supply for talent and the war for talent rages on. It is against this background that we need to improve our skills on positioning our organisations to attract and retain the best talent in the market.

Six Thinking Hats, or Should It Be Seven?

By Dr Neil Thompson

Edward de Bono is best known for his work on lateral thinking. In fact he has become a very influential writer in shaping generations of managers. He has the distinction of being famous for more than one approach - that is, as well as being extremely well known for his work on lateral thinking, his six thinking hats framework has also been very well received and proved to be of great benefit to a wide range of organisations.

The approach is based on making sure that decision making is based on six types of thinking:

i) that concerned with objective facts and figures;

ii) the emotional dimension;

iii) a consideration of weaknesses and limitations;

iv) positive thinking and optimism;

v) creativity and innovation; and

vi) control and coordination - linking the six hats together.

The success of this approach is indicated by the comments made by de Bono in the second edition of the book:

A major corporation (ABB) used to spend thirty days on their multinational project team discussions. Using the parallel thinking of the Six Hats method, the discussions now take as little as two days. A researcher from a top IBM laboratory told me that the Six Hats method had reduced meeting times to one quarter of what they had been... In a simple experiment with three hundred senior civil servants, the introduction of the Six Hats method increased thinking productivity by 493 per cent. (1999, p. ix)

No doubt a significant part of its appeal is the fact that structured frameworks such as this can be very useful in raising confidence, giving a sense of purpose and direction and providing a useful tool that can be helpful in working through the complexities of management practice. Such tools can be a very helpful bridge between theory and practice.

However, despite the success and usefulness of de Bono's six thinking hats framework, I would argue that there is a key dimension missing, hence the need for a seventh thinking hat. For me, any approach that fails to put equality and diversity at the heart of its thinking is a flawed approach. If respect, fairness and valuing difference are not central themes, then there is a significant danger that the approach will fail to do justice to the complexities of human resource management.

I would therefore want to propose equality and diversity as a seventh thinking hat. In considering any project or set of issues there should be explicit and detailed consideration of the equality and diversity dimensions. As De Bono's six hats are coded by colour I would propose that this hat be referred to as the gold thinking hat. This is because I see it as a gold standard. If people genuinely are an organisation's most important resource, then it is important surely to make sure that people are treated with fairness - and this makes a spirit of valuing diversity crucial. Some people may argue that equality and diversity can easily be incorporated into the existing six hat framework. However, I would not see this as being sufficient, as it is essential to make sure that it is covered and not seen as an optional extra.

We have learned over the years through the difficult and demanding history of tackling discrimination that problems can arise at a number of levels - often unwittingly - therefore there is a great danger that any approach that does not put equality and diversity explicitly on the agenda may allow problems of discrimination to creep in. It is therefore important to think of seven thinking hats, with the addition of the gold hat of equality and diversity, rather than simply try to see equality and diversity as subdivisions of the other six hats.

It is several decades now since Edward de Bono's work first came to our attention. During that time, he has established himself as a major writer who has emphasised the importance of thinking. I would want to endorse not only his six thinking hats approach in particular (as amended to incorporate the seventh hat) but also more generally in terms of his commitment to the value of thinking as a management tool. There are significant dangers in uncritical reliance on management fads. To my mind, this is the great strength of de Bono's work - that he emphasises the importance of thinking, but also provides tools to assist in that process. If we can now add the seventh dimension in terms of a gold thinking hat for equality and diversity, we can build on great strengths of de Bono's work.
Reference

De Bono, E. (1999) Six Thinking Hats, 2nd edn, Harmondsworth, Penguin.

Dr Neil Thompson is an independent author, educator and adviser. For more information about Neil and his work, visit http://www.neilthompson.info This article first appeared in the THE humansolutions BULLETIN. For details of this and other free resources, visit http://tinyurl.com/freeresourcesfromneil