Since HR professionals, at one time or another, deal with employee recruitment, talent acquisition is something they pay a great deal of attention to. Of course, this is not new but worth mentioning. A mistake in this area may be vital to the organization and HR professional must choose their practices wisely when recruiting and hiring.

This article addresses these practices in depth to set the record straight upon the importance of talent acquisition.

1. Prioritize Candidate Experience

Knowledge is a collection of meaningful experience. The key take-away for executives is that prioritizing candidate experience can enable organizations to solve problems and create value through improved performance and it is this point that will narrow the gaps of success and failure leading to more successful decision-making.    

2. Tailor Talent Acquisition Strategy to Business Goals

HR professionals must determine the organization’s business goals for the next three years and develop a talent acquisition strategy which focuses on planning the work and technically supporting newly-hired employees to achieve the business goals. A talent acquisition strategy helps companies to achieve their business goals that reflect excellence and some kind of higher order effectiveness. This is where HR professionals can attempt to achieve business goals—stemming from a talent acquisition strategy across pivotal areas on the organization.    

3. Educate Hiring Managers

 Hiring managers can become familiar with employee recruitment practices through education. Education is more active, broad, flexible, experimental, synthetic, and strategic compared to training. Why is this, you may ask? Because education is a process that leads to acquiring new insights and knowledge, and potentially to correct sub-optimal or ineffective actions and behaviors that cause companies to spiral out of control.

4. Enhance Training Efficiency

HR professionals must provide work-related training programs for newly-hired employees when beginning onboarding and must be aware of their training efficiency programs. As with most training practices, I agree with Jennifer Rowley who suggests training courses as an effective way to share knowledge. Most importantly, applying knowledge aimed at providing better decision-making and work related practices and creating new knowledge through innovation. Knowledge has to be measured in some way, many trainers talk about return-on-investment (ROI) of training which is hard to measure, training satisfaction measurement by participants and their desire to apply it to the workplace is a an excellent barometer of learning new skills or building upon old ones. The key point in the training is the knowledge use coupled with testing and re-testing to ensure that the knowledge is actually helping the organization grow both professionally for employees and profitably for all stakeholders. 

5. Write Loose Job Descriptions

When newly-hired employees come onboard, they are given job descriptions. But how can HR professionals write loose job descriptions? The answer to this question lies in an HR professional’s demonstration to motivate employees to approach organizational problems in a more novel approach. In doing this, executives can inspire employees to rethink problems and challenge their current personal attitudes and values. Most importantly, executives can transform organizations by attempting to change the basic values, beliefs, and attitudes of employees so that they are willing to perform beyond their previous or originally level specified by the organization in their job description.

6. Be More Flexible

 Flexibility in the workplace may enable executives to improve departmental and managerial interactions and develop relationships among managers, business units, and departments. Through flexibility in the workplace, executives can also shift the power of decision-making to the lower levels and inspire newly-hired employees to create new ideas and implement them, which can in turn propel interdepartmental communications and improve knowledge exchange.

Mostafa Sayyadi works with senior business leaders to effectively develop innovation in companies, and helps companies—from start-ups to the Fortune 100 — succeed by improving the effectiveness of their leaders. He is a business book author and a long-time contributor to HR.com, People + Strategy and Consulting Magazine and his work has been featured in these top-flight business publications.  

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