You Don’t Need To Be A Talent Recruitment Specialist

While the term ‘recruiters’ and ‘talent acquisition specialist’ might be used interchangeably, they’re not the same. Recruitment is generally reactive and hire employees for specific vacancies. Talent acquisition specialists are expected to be proactive and strategic, considering long-term HR needs and filling short-term vacancies.

The Role Of A Talent Recruitment Specialist

Talent acquisition specialists focus on end-to-end recruitment, often for specialised positions that have an extended hiring period, such as niche IT roles or executive positions. The job description typically includes succession planning, nurturing a talent pipeline, plus monitoring and staying actively connected with key candidates who have joined competitors.

Talent Acquisition Specialists source talents, screen candidates and manage the operational aspects of the recruitment process. In a 360-degree role, they oversee the entire recruitment process: from the definition of needs to the onboarding. In the context of hypergrowth, our TA Specialists must know how to innovate and expect changing priorities. It is essential for them to continually reach for new goals, and anticipate changes in order to adapt quickly.

The Four main roles of a TA Specialist is:

Source Talent

Pulling from a wide variety of sources, TA specialists look for talents who might not be actively searching for new opportunities, but that might be a great fit for your business and the position on offer. They network in different career groups, attend events, and build partnerships with schools to reach as many potential applicants as possible.

Screen Candidates

This role is of great importance because it is so easy to have the right candidates get lost in the noise or slip through the cracks unnoticed. Screening short-listed candidates before passing them on to the next stage is a rigorous and hands-on task that requires a TA specialist to be on top of their game. Their objective is to inform candidates of company culture, share accurate and transparent information, and challenge candidates to do their best during the screening process.

Ensure Process Is Followed

Talent Acquisition Specialists have complete ownership over the recruitment process, so they must organise the recruitment process efficiently and aim for a quick turnaround time, keeping the time-to-hire to a minimal. This can be accomplished by having a laid-out plan which can be rinsed and repeated for any additional hiring that needs to be done.

Uplift and Protect Company Brand

In the war for talent, companies with strong employer brands have the upper hand. Talent acquisition specialists that flourish are the ones who bring fresh ideas, designed to get a company noticed — even by professionals who aren’t actively looking for roles. Their objective is to make candidates think, “I want to work there.”

Examples Of What NOT To Look For In A Recruitment Specialist

One of the biggest things that can tarnish a brand is a sub-par recruitment plan executed by an ill-equipped recruitment specialist. Not only does it create a bad impression of your company with potential hires, but there is the extensive cost involved along the way. Here are a few ways to fix a broken system to improve your future hires.

Here are five bad hiring practices to not only avoid but to learn from:

Failing to re-assess a role

Every time an employee leaves, a company should re-evaluate the open position and make any necessary changes. Look at the tasks that are no longer relevant, delegate responsibilities that should lie with someone else, and add details to the job.

Badly Written Job Ads

Take some time to rewrite the job description – don’t just recycle old job ads. You need to make sure that it is concise, appealing, and accurate. It should clearly outline the skills and needs the job will entail.

Outdated Interviewing Practices

Interviews should be conversations. Your potential employees are not on trial – don’t interrogate them. Without a good discussion, you will never get to know a candidate’s real personality. This means going off-script to get them to truly open up about what they are looking for in their next role and to get them excited about this opportunity. Try to eliminate questions that allow unconscious bias into your decision-making. Remove the useless questions that resulted in your last bad hire. Get rid of the robotic script and start having real conversations, like real people trying to find out if they can work together.

Not Getting Back To Candidates Post-Interview

Respect goes both ways. If you cannot respect your potential employees’ time during the interview process, how can you expect their respect if they get hired? When you finally make your selection, thank all the candidates that applied, and let them know you’ve hired someone else. It may be a time-consuming task, but it’s an easy way to ensure that your company has an excellent reputation in the marketplace.

Reference Checking After The Job Offer

Reference checks should be considered a critical part of the interview process. It is the lazy interviewer that forgets to check them before an offer goes out. References are your final verification of a candidates’ past job performance. It would be an unprofessional situation, were you to revoke an offer because of something you discover later in a reference check.

Let talentCRU Be Your Recruitment Specialist

talentCRU is the unquestionable leader in the market when it comes to providing bespoke, customer-tailored recruitment solutions that include our MSP, RPO and Contractor services.

We are delighted to bring you over 100 years of combined market-leading Permanent recruitments services, Through DAV, The Personnel Concept and Kelly permanent placements into the talentCRU family, to provide a holistic end-to-end offering for our valued clients and candidates – such as yourself.

talentCRU is part of Adcorp Professional Services; a division of the Adcorp Group. This international workplace solutions group provides diverse talent management solutions across a vast spectrum of industry sectors, job types, and geographic regions.

Our full-service HR outsourcing solution covers everything from permanent recruitment and onboarding to performance management, payroll, and legislative reporting – all for an affordable, fixed monthly fee.

Whether you:

• need extra hands for an upcoming project,
• are looking for an expert to build something critical,
• need support scaling your business up or down, or
• need scarce skills to support digital transformation…

… we know people who know people.

Not only will we source the best individual or workforce for the job, whatever it is, we’ll also handle background checks, onboarding, offboarding, performance, payroll, and more.