There are so many challenges that Talent Acquisition (TA) leaders are confronted with every day that it’s a real parlor trick to pin point the most compelling. If the pressure comes from the C-Suite (and doesn’t it always?), this gets narrowed down pretty quickly.
Year after year, the Conference Board have surveyed top executives asking about their key challenges and every year “talent” has been at the top of the list. This year is no different as the Conference Board states, “The #1 concern of CEOs is attracting and retaining talent. This is also true for the rest of the C-Suite, including CHROs and CFOs.”
Certainly, the amount of time openings go unfilled and the cost of filling them are critical challenges, but attracting and hiring top performing talent is the bottom line. I know this first hand from working with dozens of small to medium sized company TA leaders, businesses with 500 to 2,500 employees (SMB). They tell me how challenging it is to stay focused on meeting the top performer hiring goals their CEO’s demand amidst the struggle of managing the tactical elements of day to day recruitment. This challenge is not lost on those working in larger enterprise companies either, they are just as focused on hiring top performers as anyone. Enterprise typically has more resources to apply, but a strategy still has to be implemented.
There’s no standing still in this scenario as the business continues to move forward, and without workers, Hiring Managers apply a daily pressure if they can’t achieve their goals. If it takes too long, they turn to agency recruiters focused on their specialty who provide hires at a high cost, and if this becomes prevalent, the costs can bring additional pressures from the CFO.
Cures
In the last 3-5 years, as talent shortages have continued to hamper hiring, TA has turned to new measures. Talent Sourcing, Employer Branding and a focus on Candidate Experience have become popular for attracting top performers. These efforts have been effective, but how many SMB TA Leaders have been able to fully embrace or implement them. According to the Talent Board, more than half of enterprise companies still haven’t fully deployed these techniques, and you’d have to think smaller companies are using them even less.
Steps to Success Lies in Communication
If you evaluate these newer TA activities, there is one thread that intersects with all of them - communication. By focusing on how we communicate, any TA team can improve their effectiveness and efficiency in hiring more top performers. Consider:
Talent Sourcing:
Communicating email, text and vcm messages grab top performer attention
Employer Branding:
Communicating a sense of the work culture to candidates and applicants
Candidate Experience:
Communicating with applicants about the hiring process
All these activities, and most TA efforts, are rooted in communication. It is the necessary scaffolding of effective talent acquisition. Focusing efforts solely on communication can reap huge benefits.
If you aren’t able to hire sourcers, you can craft compelling personalized template messages that recruiters and hiring managers can both use to attract new talent. You may only deliver a single career page for employer branding, but the message templates you craft for recruiters, can be littered with references about your unique culture. Your ATS may only be able to send a thank you for applying type message to all who apply, but you can make this message more functional by adding what to expect if chosen to more forward in your process.
Don’t be left in the dust by your competitors in the search for great hires. The solutions to hiring top talent is all rooted in how you communicate, and this only takes an extra bit of effort.
If you are searching for ways to take your Applicant Communication to the next level, there are elegant, efficient and effective solutions available. The Convey Applicant Communication Studio can deliver both customized and automated email and texts to your applicants for every step in your hiring process. Your applicants will be thrilled, they’ll tell their friends and the number of top performers who apply will soar.
