How to Add Value to Your Employer Brand as an Indispensable In-house Recruiter

‍You want a steady stream of top-notch talent (and all the internal accolades that come with it). But how can you make it happen if the rest of your company is still stuck in a humdrum hiring process?

Candidate lure-in, selection and staff retention are vital to the success of any company, but when you’re charged with running the people part of the business, it’s not always easy to stay on top of everything.

The fact that your company even has an in-house recruiting team says something about what its values are. Shared beliefs, common culture, a team effort to develop inclusion in the workplace — these are things that can’t be outsourced.

Which bring us to the hero question: Are you recruiting or acquiring talent?

Why ‘talent acquisition’ means stepping up your game

Back in the day, recruiting and acquiring talent were seen pretty as much the same thing.

For most of us, “recruitment” implies advertising jobs, reviewing applications as well as sourcing and hiring or rejecting candidates. But talent acquisition is much more than that. It’s about building talent communities, nurturing live talent pools and engaging potential qualified hires.

Today, you can still post ads on job boards, filter applicants and make your hiring decision. But for many industries and roles this concept is simply dead and gone. In order to find great talent you need to look deeper. Only when you’re proactively identifying and contacting candidates are you truly adding value to both your employer brand and your candidates.

But building an employer brand that has top-level candidates actively seeking you out takes some serious strategy. And making talent acquisition a value-producing business strategy (as opposed to a fly-by-night recruitment set up), is going to take some serious trust and influence internally.

Here are some tips to help you gain that proverbial “seat at the table” and become the TA hero you always wanted to be.

Have a simple, straightforward hiring plan

Companies like Facebook and Apple have made collaborative hiring a mandatory SOP within the business — and that didn’t happen by accident.

But you don’t have to be a business behemoth to pull it off, either. Companies of any size can bring more value to candidates and the bottom line by relying on a strong hiring plan that includes growth strategies and salary ranges.

Thinking strategically about long-term hiring needs, shows both your internal stakeholders and your candidates that you have a plan and a system that works.

Get your talent pool ready

“Oh, you have an opening you need to fill yesterday?” No problem. 😏

Having a pipeline of awesome candidates (who love you) means you always have options to turn to when the hiring pressure gets heated. Cultivate relationships with candidates (both past and current) and be the person who always has the perfect candidate on hand.

Be brutally transparent

Under the right amount of pressure, any company can make a hire. But how many can hang on to those new hires?

If your company has an onboarding or retention issue, it’s your job as TA hero to solve it. Collect data on retention rates, turnover, hiring costs and eNPS scores. It might be a lot of work upfront (but if you’re really honest, you could knock it out in a couple of afternoons), but it the time spend will come back to you tenfold when you get the kind of internal buy-in you need to fix what’s broken and rock the hiring process your way.

While recruitment remains an activity to fill immediate vacancies, talent acquisition is a long-term strategy to make hiring more productive at the business level. It’s up to you to decide which game you’re playing.

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