How to Build an Effective Talent Acquisition Strategy

An effective talent acquisition strategy isn’t as simple as filling a gap in the team when someone leaves. Really making a mark with a sustainable acquisition strategy means putting in place a holistic process that enables your business to scale, sourcing and placing talent that will grow with your business as it evolves - something that we’re well versed in here at Drake New Zealand. 

While the current New Zealand job market is currently leaning in favour of employers with a record drop in job advertisements and a pool of capable local applicants to consider, a good talent acquisition strategy will see your business through the inevitable ebbs and flows of the job market for years to come.

In our experience, there are a few tried and tested techniques for building a talent acquisition strategy. Below are the four elements we’d recommend focusing on - and how we can help!

 

Define your goals and strategic direction

Your wider business strategy is the foundation that your talent acquisition strategy should build upon. Before advertising roles to candidates, it’s important to clearly define your long-term objectives, your business values, and the direction and pace at which you’re aiming to grow.

Skipping the business strategy can lead to hiring for the short term, a lack of understanding of the skill sets required to achieve your long-term goals, and an inability to articulate the ins and outs of roles and how they contribute to the business as a whole.

 

There are a few ways that your business strategy and recruitment are intertwined:

• Budget: Your business strategy will outline your budget allocated for acquisition. This will determine the types of candidates you can compete in the market for, and the return on investment in human resources you’d expect to see from your hires over time.
  
  

• Goals and objectives: If your business goal, for example, is to double your client base and revenue, your talent acquisition strategy should take this into consideration and plan for an increase in human resources to mitigate the workload.
  
  If your goal, however, is to become the market expert in your field, your talent acquisition strategy might require investment in more senior or specialised roles. Whatever the objective - every hire should tie back to the bigger picture strategy.

• Timeline: A key element of a business strategy is to place a timeline against the goals your organisation wants to achieve, which in turn, informs the timing of your talent acquisitions in line with budget and growth. 

• Values: Last but not least, your business strategy should offer guidance on the core values your organisation operates in accordance with. This will help to make sure that the people you hire are not only a good match skill-wise, but care about the same things you do, share your business core values, and are in it for the right reasons.  

 

Aligning your talent acquisition strategy to the wider goals of the business is something that Drake New Zealand can help with. 

The sooner you’re able to plug your acquisition partner into your strategy, the better we’ll be able to advise on what talent is available within your budget, set realistic timelines for acquisition and prospect with your future business goals in mind.

 

Curate your brand through the lens of a jobseeker 

Viewing your company through the lens of a job seeker is an art form. Understanding how your brand is perceived by the public and curating your brand to appear attractive to the type of talent your strategy seeks to hire requires time and attention.

Every aspect of your business that’s visible to the public is an opportunity to showcase what your company is all about and attract value-aligned talent and should be evaluated and leveraged in your talent acquisition strategy, including: 

• Social media: To many candidates, your social media channels are the first port of call to get a feel for what your organisation is like to work for. Offer a peek behind the curtain with staff-generated content, day-in-the-life short-form videos, client and customer success stories and imagery that showcases the fabric of your company.

• Branding: Branding is a wide category and includes everything from your brand colours, logo, typeface, imagery and tone of voice across all marketing assets. Consider how these elements tie together for your brand, and what message they send to future employees.

• Values-led content: If you want your talent acquisition strategy to factor in company values when prospecting candidates, it’s important that your branding reflects these values. For example, if you want to hire a diverse group, make sure that you include diversity in your imagery, or if you’re looking for confident candidates, make sure to weave this tone of voice throughout your content.

• Reputation management: Your reputation as an employer in any industry in a market as small as New Zealand will precede you. It’s important to build a trustworthy and reliable brand throughout the onboarding, employment and offboarding process, as well as to keep tabs on review boards like Google My Business, Facebook and Glassdoor.

• Job descriptions and advertising: Job ads and descriptions aren’t just ads for a role, they’re ads for your business. Take advantage of talent acquisition partners, like the team here at Drake New Zealand, to tailor your job ads to attract the right talent and showcase your business in the best light. 
  
  

Utilise data to build your talent pipeline

Data is your best friend when building an effective talent acquisition strategy. Rather than making educated guesses at what kind of talent to hire and when, collecting, analysing and leveraging data can help to build an accurate picture of what your business needs to deliver on its strategy. 

The first challenge is ensuring that you’re capturing the right kind of data to help build your talent pipeline and inform your recruitment decisions. We recommend:

• Predicting workforce gaps: Keep records of workforce joiners, leavers and movers, as well as information on average tenure and qualitative data on employee experience. This will help your business to understand human resource churn and cost of turnover in different areas of the company. Predicting workforce gaps ahead of time, allows you to prospect for future business needs - rather than reactively fill current positions.

• Competency assessment technology: Many businesses rely on a gut instinct in an interview to select a good fit for a role. While this is an important part of the process, a successful talent acquisition strategy will leverage competency assessment data to make a final decision. For example, a Drake P3® test will assist in assessing personality traits to find the right fit and offer valuable data-driven insights for the selection process.

• Market data: Reviewing market-wide data regularly can help you to stay relevant and competitive with your job offers, perks and remuneration. We recommend keeping tabs on market-rate salaries, changing expectations of candidates and skill shortages or surpluses.

 

Beyond analysing external data, it’s also important to keep an eye on your own talent pipeline, and notice when applications are increasing or decreasing, whether there’s a specific drop-off point in the recruitment process where candidates lose interest, or on the flip side, if something is working extremely well. Effective talent acquisition strategies continually iterate and improve over time.

Find the right talent acquisition partner 

Talent acquisition can be a difficult layer to manage and develop, while also taking care of the other equally important facets of your business.

Finding a talent acquisition partner that can support you through this process and help you to build a talent acquisition strategy from the ground up that truly serves your business can expedite the process and guarantee success. At Drake New Zealand, we can help with: 

• Strategic planning of acquisition channels: Sourcing candidates beyond the typical job-board channels is a pillar of a successful talent acquisition strategy. An acquisition partner will help your business to source candidates proactively who aren’t necessarily looking for a role.

• Background and reference checks: A lot of the heavy lifting in a talent acquisition strategy is running background and reference checks on candidates. Working with the right partner who understands your brand and business needs can help to alleviate this workload.

• Onboarding process: Recruitment doesn’t stop at an accepted offer - it follows through all the way until your employee is trained and performing at the expected rate. The right recruitment partner will help your business to overcome the barriers to integrating new hires and reduce the number of days it takes for them to contribute to your bottom line.

 

An effective strategy requires effort and attention and will change with you as your company grows.

Ultimately, it comes down to front-footing your business needs, sending the right brand messaging to candidates, streamlining your recruitment pipeline and finding a recruitment partner to work with that will help your business delight candidates with an employee experience that matches your top-tier hiring process.