7 Strategies for Scalable Talent Acquisition in HR
Clients come and go so fast these days that the business demand is constantly changing. On top of that, you need to keep up and adjust, as well.
But, as you continuously grow, you don’t want to compromise quality and the fantastic working atmosphere you’ve already created.
How do you achieve that? By making a strategy for scalable talent acquisition!
What is a scalable talent acquisition strategy?
While your organization transforms to answer any current business needs, so should your employees. A scalable talent acquisition strategy is a fruitful approach to creating a team that can adapt quickly—change, increase, or decrease, based on your specific business needs.
This kind of strategy starts at the very beginning of the new hire process—from finding, attracting, hiring, training, and all the way to retaining top talent at a company.
How to develop a scalable recruitment strategy in seven steps
1. Write down what an ideal applicant would be
What kind of skills, education, experience, and traits would the perfect person for your company have?
The best way to do that is to map out employee skills to find out what you’re missing. You might be able to fill the gap by training someone already employed at your company. On the other hand, you might realize that you’ll need to hire new people to answer the new needs of your brand.
Employee Skills Matrix from Ganttic
When you write down what you need while hiring, keep in mind that you probably won’t find exactly what you’re looking for.
That’s why you need to make a list of priorities. For example, if you’re in need of experts in a field, experience and qualifications are crucial. If your goal is to diversify your team on all fronts, look for someone abroad.
A secondary, data-driven approach, towards figuring out your hiring need, would be to create an internal benchmark.
By grouping your existing workforce according to job clusters, roles and responsibilities that are highly similar, and dividing them into groups of high and low performers. This enables you to get a direct insight into exactly which cognitive or behavioral traits matter most for your open role.
This competency based hiring approach works especially well for high volume roles, gaining clear insights into the skills required allows you to select the candidates with the required competencies right from the start of your hiring process.
Example of an internal benchmark showing two distinct competencies
2. Build a diverse talent pipeline
You should leverage multiple sourcing channels and not only look for candidates on LinkedIn, or some other field-specific platform.
Instead, make a list of trusted talent management sources, such as Upwork, Fiverr, LinkedIn, etc., but also check out specialized groups on social media, job fairs, professional events, and of course recruitment agencies.
Another way to find talent is to connect with universities and offer internship programs. For example, IBM has partnered up with a few United States universities for teaching and research positions. In this way, the company can cultivate relationships with potential future job candidates.
Don’t forget that sometimes it is much cheaper to train someone who already works for you instead of hiring a new person. The average organization spent $1,280 per employee on workplace learning in 2021, according to the Association for Talent Development’s 2022 State of the Industry report.
3. Building brand recognition to recruit fitting talent
Research by LinkedIn has proven that 75% of job seekers consider an employer’s brand before even applying for a job. That means that your social media accounts, website (especially the ‘Career’ section), and Glassdoor reviews should portray and reflect your employer brand.
There are a few ways organizations can brand the recruiting process and spark positive reviews:
- Put candidates' experience as a priority, just like you would while selling your product/service. Woo them.
- Use automation whenever you can. For example, use automation tools to schedule interviews. You’ll save a lot of time so you can focus on meaningful things, such as timely communication.
- Make sure that the tone of your messages corresponds to your brand’s voice. Besides answering the candidates promptly, it is crucial that you do answer altogether. A lot of applicants never hear from a company once they apply for a job and that can be extremely harmful to the company’s brand.
- Always evaluate your HR processes and act upon the evaluation.
For example, Spreetail surveyed potential candidates about their candidate experience and found out that rejected candidates wanted more detailed feedback about hiring decisions.
Spreetail did so, resulting in the growth of their Net Promoter Score and maintaining the relationship with candidates for future roles. That being said, you can now understand that building brand recognition massively helps with the recruitment of people who share your values.
When you build your online presence with quality, people who either want to work in your company or already have positions will come to you on their own.
If you’re not confident about your in-house resources for building an appealing brand, consider hiring an agency that can advise you on a content marketing strategy that will raise your brand's value. The initial investments can pay off surprisingly well.
4. Scale interview and assessment process
The selection process is like a funnel—there are a few steps along the hiring journey and, if you’re lucky, you’ll find a few fitting candidates for a vacancy.
These are the hiring process steps:
- Application
- Pre-selection
- Interviews
- Assessment
- Background check
- Decision
- Offer and contract
Some of these steps can be fully structured, standardized, and even automated. Studies have shown that structured interviews can predict how a person will perform on their job about 26% of the time, unlike unstructured interviews (14%) or background checks (7%).
Structured interviews are made to be objective. Interviewers ask the same predetermined questions in the same order to every applicant. Then, they rate the answers with a standardized scoring system.
5. Use data and analytics for continuous improvement
You won’t be able to scale the talent acquisition process without analyzing the data. The data can show you valuable information, like retention rates, turnover rates, salaries, and sick leave.
You can find out where the best candidates come from and then target your talent acquisition strategy to a specific university or professional network website.
While using hiring software, you can automatically organize incoming resumes and applications into categories based on keywords and custom parameters. That way, you can easily find a fitting person for a job vacancy.
For example, if you need a software engineer with 5 years of experience, simply enter the criteria into the search filter and find people who have what you need.
With AI software, you can make hiring faster and fairer, by:
- Streamlining resume screening
- Enhancing candidate sourcing
- Conducting efficient interviews
- Assessing candidate skills and abilities
- Addressing bias and promoting fairness
- Improving decision-making with predictive analytics
6. Develop a comprehensive onboarding program
Your hiring process shouldn’t end once you sign that contract with your new employee. You still need to figure out a smooth onboarding process. If the employee does well in training, they tend to stay longer with the company.
An effective HR ticketing system can help you organize a stimulating onboarding program, providing templates for standard processes and procedures. The first few weeks or months at a job can determine a person’s future commitment, motivation, and productivity.
Here are the steps you need to take to use this time to create a sense of belonging:
- Make an onboarding schedule and share it with your new employees.
- Make sure performance expectations and success are concrete and transparent, so your new hires have a sense of clarity and purpose. The most effective way to do this is to implement HR documentation, stating your company’s policies and procedures.
- Make simple feedback systems.
- Create a buddy system.
Omnidian recently received the Rise Award for its onboarding program excellence—they created a buddy system, where new employees are assigned a “Sol Mate” from another team.
That way the company encouraged cross-department collaboration and gave new hires someone to talk to about their plans and ambitions.
7. Deal with common scalability challenges
Right now, scalability seems like it will solve all of your problems. But it doesn’t come without its own issues, which you need to pay attention to.
The most common challenges are:
- Managing high-volume recruitment: your company probably needs a lot of new qualified people, and they need them fast. That’s always a challenge, but automating some (or a lot) of your processes can help you organize this time with less stress.
- Ensuring quality and consistency in the hiring process: by standardizing the hiring process, you’ll always have similar outcomes. Evaluate the process regularly and improve it where it is necessary.
- Adapting to changing market conditions and industry trends: try to be as flexible and agile as you can while obtaining the same level of quality. Scalable talent acquisition will make it possible to stay agile.
Conclusion
Changing the talent acquisition journey to a scalable one requires a few steps:
- Knowing an ideal candidate
- Having a diverse talent pipeline
- Building strong brand recognition
- Scaling and automating interview and assessment processes
- Using data and analytics for continuous improvement
- Developing a fruitful onboarding program
- Dealing with scalability challenges
As you can see, employee experience, starting even from the talent acquisition process, has become crucial when it comes to productivity. HR departments’ efforts are aimed at positive interactions from recruitment to continuous support and career development.
With a well-thought scalable talent acquisition strategy, the HR department will nourish commitment, motivation, and productivity.