3 Steps to Make Recruiting Your Competitive Advantage
Prior to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) Talent Management conference, I was able to attend the TAtech Spring Congress. The TAtech event was super interesting and I can’t wait to share with you some of my takeaways over the coming weeks.
One of the big takeaways for me was a session by Jerome Ternynck, founder and CEO of SmartRecruiters. He was talking about making recruiting your organization’s competitive advantage. Here’s the bottom-line: If organizations want talent to be their competitive advantage… If they want a best in class candidate and employee experience… If companies want a kickass employment brand… then recruiting has to become a competitive advantage for the organization. So, how does that happen? Well over my time at SHRM Talent Management and TAtech, I heard three things:
- Properly staff your talent acquisition team. If recruiting is marketing, then organizations need to start putting their money where their mouth is. I’ve never worked for a company where sales and marketing positions were filled using requisitions. When a great sales person was identified, they were hired. We found the budget. Sales was that important. If talent is important to the company, then start doing the same for recruiters.
- Train the talent acquisition team. Everybody needs training. Everybody. It undermines the credibility of the talent acquisition function to look for candidates that are self-learners and then not do the same for themselves. Professional development can improve morale, engagement, and retention. Organizations should want the individuals selling people on working for the company to be as excited as the candidates.
- Give recruiters the tools. New recruiting tools are coming out all the time, especially in technology. Recruiters need to be exposed to those new tools, so they can determine if they’re right for the organization. True – There are some old-school recruiting methods that are still very effective and those shouldn’t be abandoned. But recruiting sources should be regularly evaluated for their effectiveness.
Organizations don’t expect understaffed, untrained marketing departments with outdated technology to deliver high performance. Well, maybe some of them do…but I’d wager they don’t always get the results they’re looking for. The same is true for talent acquisition. If organizations want the best talent, they need to give the talent acquisition function the people, training, and resources to effectively execute the recruiting strategy.
Image captured by Sharlyn Lauby after attending the Great Place to Work Conference in Austin, TX
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