Have you ever hired someone who quit within a couple of weeks? Or joined a company only
to discover that it is very different from what you expected? These are signs of talent
acquisition gone wrong. Hi, I’m Erik van Vulpen and in this HR Deep Dive you will
learn what talent acquisition is, what the process looks like, and how you can avoid making some of
these mistakes. But before we dive into the content, let me start by telling you a joke.
An HR manager, her name is Cindy, gets hit by a bus and tragically dies. Her soul meets
Saint Peter at the Pearly Gates. Saint Peter welcomes her and asks Cindy if
she wants to spend an eternity in heaven or in hell. But, before she can make a choice,
Peter tells her that she will take a tour to see where she will feel most at home.
During the tour, Cindy learns that heaven is nice – but a bit of a boring
place that involves a lot of playing the harp and singing. Hell, however,
has a golf course and a country club with lobster for dinner. And,
all her friends are there as well, dressed in trendy clothes, laughing, eating, and having fun.
At the end of the tour, Cindy meets Saint Peter again, and Peter asks her if she
made up her mind. "Yes", Cindy says, "Heaven seems nice and all, but all my friends are
partying in hell and it looks like a lot of fun!" Saint Peter nods, and sends her down.
When Cindy returns to hell, she finds herself standing in a desolate wasteland covered in
garbage and filth. She sees her friends dressed in rags and picking up garbage and putting it
in sacks for the evening meal. The Devil comes up to her and put his arm around her
and laughs. "I don't understand," stammers Cindy. "Earlier I was here and there was a golf course
and a country club and we ate lobster and we danced and had a great time. Now all there is,
is a wasteland of garbage and all my friends look miserable." The Devil looks at her, grins,
and says: "That's because yesterday we were recruiting you... but today you're staff."
This is obviously a joke but it does show why recruiting is often referred to as ‘the
happy side of HR’. So, how do you make sure that your talent acquisition practices don’t
create a similar experience for your newly hired employees? Before we get to that,
let’s first examine what talent acquisition is and take a look at an end-to-end hiring process!
The company we will follow is called Trellogs, a fashion retailer. At Trellogs,
Isa is the talent acquisition specialist, and Johnny is heading the marketing department.
Our story starts with Johnny, who is the hiring manager. Isa will come in later.
Johnny’s team is busy and overworked, so he is looking to hire extra help. The first step
is for Johnny to understand what role he needs to create. This phase is called job analysis,
which involves talking to his team to collect information on the new role.
I could make a whole separate video on the job analysis step but it boils down
to identifying the activities in the job as well as the knowledge, skills,
abilities, and other characteristics, also known as KSAOs, that the hire needs to be
successful. Once Johnny is done with the job analysis, he has the job specification, which
is essentially the list of KSAOs the candidate needs to be successful in their new role.
Now I mentioned the word twice already. Let’s zoom in on what KSAOs are because
they form the basis for all the steps in the talent acquisition process.
First: knowledge. What knowledge does a candidate need? Do they need a bachelor’s in marketing, or
at least 5 years of relevant experience? How well do they need to know your particular industry?
Knowledge is often easy to identify in a resume. Next, what skills does the candidate need? Do they
need to create ads, manage social media accounts, or do something entirely different? Skills are
often easy to assess in a work test. Then you have Abilities. Abilities
are more innate. Some people have a great eye for design. I, personally,
don’t; If I make a PowerPoint presentation, it looks absolutely horrible – but I am a good writer
and I am very organized. These abilities can be explored in a structured interview.
And finally, you have other characteristics. What personality traits are you looking for? Will the
role be very dynamic and unpredictable? Then maybe a more extroverted candidate
may be a better fit. And are you looking for a highly-creative thinker or a more detail-oriented
person? This requires making decisions on what the ideal candidate will look like.
These KSAOs are the basis for everything in your talent acquisition process and they
will guide the recruiter and hiring manager to find the right candidate.
Let’s now take a look at Isa, our talent acquisition specialist.
“I sit with Johnny after he has completed the job requisition process. The job requisition
is the formal request to create a new position in the company. As a talent acquisition team,
we need to have the job formally approved in order to start hiring.
My vacancy intake meeting is perhaps the most important meeting in the entire
process. During this meeting, I will ask Johnny the hard questions. It is easy for him to define
a job, but I actually need to find the person, so I will ask specific questions that help me
find and select the right candidate. For example, if candidates need both a bachelor's in marketing
and five years of experience, which one is more important? These kinds of questions
help me find the right profile. After my conversation, I publish the job vacancy.
Candidates can either apply on their own,
or I reach out to them through what we call sourcing. When I source candidates,
I make a list of candidates using LinkedIn. I then double-check their profiles with Johnny
to make sure I’m finding the right people, and then I reach out to them. I sometimes also look
for internal candidates, who are looking for a different role inside the company.
Once we have enough candidates, I do the selection. In my screening calls, I check if
candidates meet the required KSAOs and if their salary expectations match what the company can
offer. My goal is to create a diverse slate of candidates that I can present to the manager.
Next, I decide to like this video and subscribe to this channel
Johnny then interviews the top candidates. For more senior roles, I usually advise Johnny to give
candidates an assessment, so we have more data and can make a more informed choice. Johnny really
likes Norma, so I do a reference check. Everything checks out so I call Norma to make her an offer.
Norma didn’t make it easy for me. She got a competing offer from another company so we
had some back and forths. Finally, she decided to accept our offer and she signed the contract.
She will start in two weeks. When her onboarding starts, I will call her to check how things are
going, evaluate the hiring process, and to see if the job and company culture are in line with
what she was expecting. If there is a mismatch in expectations, we need to know it as soon
as possible so we can resolve it for Norma ánd make sure that will not happen again. For Norma,
I am confident she will like the job. Johnny was so impressed by her that he suggested that she may
be a good person to take over from him as a manager when he retires in a couple of years,
so who knows. Anyway, I’m very happy we closed Norma and I cannot wait until she gets started!
This is a story of a very successful hire and a great collaboration between Hiring Manager Johnny,
and Isa. The collaboration works well because Isa has all the skills she needs to be effective
at talent acquisition. Let’s dive into what those skills are, and what they look like.
A talent acquisition specialist like Isa needs operational, tactical,
and strategic skills to be effective. Operational skills include communication,
coordination with stakeholders like the hiring manager and candidates, sourcing,
running effective meetings, fostering long-term relationships with candidates, and managing the
applicant tracking system, or ATS. Tactical skills include running the job intake,
determining selection criteria, designing job descriptions and screening questions,
evaluating candidates, running various employer branding initiatives, and recruitment marketing.
Finally, strategic skills include designing a talent acquisition strategy, forecasting hiring
based on business needs, and building a talent acquisition and employer branding strategy.
Let’s zoom in on three essential components of talent acquisition that help to attract
and retain top talent. These are the employee value proposition, the employer brand, and the
employee promise. Each of these influence how the organization presents itself to prospective
and current employees. Nailing these three is crucial to long-term recruiting success.
First, we have the employer brand. The employer brand is the organization’s
reputation of the organization as an employer. When you hear “Microsoft”,
you may think of innovation, high-impact work, and generous compensation. Great employer brands
are aligned with the organization’s mission, vision, and values. Companies like Google,
Hubspot, NVidea, and Spotify have excellent employer brands that help
them attract people. If a recruiter from one of these companies approaches a candidate,
they are much more likely to say “yes” compared to most other companies. This reputation is the
employer brand. Your employer brand is part of your employee value proposition, or EVP.
The EVP is the offerings, experiences, and rewards that the employer offers.
It answers the question, “Why should I work for this company?” and “Why should
I stay at this company?” For a company like Google, this may be the salary,
working conditions, challenging projects, an opportunity to make an impact on the world,
but also secondary benefits like health insurance, stock options, a company car,
sports facilities, parental leave, and extra holidays. Together, your EVP and employer
brand create a compelling reason for people to join you, which helps you attract talent.
The employer brand and employee value proposition also create expectations. This is the employee
promise. The employee promise is the commitment an organization makes about what employees can
expect from the organization. That is where at the very beginning Cindy was tricked by the devil. She
was promised fun and games, and lobster for dinner but when it came to reality, Cindy was
disappointed. Hell did not deliver on its employee promise and if it was any other organization,
Cindy would quickly leave and try her luck at a different place. That is how talent acquisition
not only helps attract people but can also set people up to stay at the company for a long time.
Now I have a favor to ask you. 83% of the people who watch our videos haven’t yet hit the subscribe
button yet. The bigger our YouTube audience gets, the more videos like these I can create for you
so if you enjoyed this video, please hit the subscribe button.
And there you have it. You now know more about the talent acquisition process,
the skills you need to stand out in talent acquisition, and the things an organization
can do to attract talent. You also know the best HR joke that I know. You should try it at a party!