How do you improve talent acquisition to be more efficient, less costly, and produce results when it comes to executive management and functional leadership roles?  Today companies have a hectic schedule due to keeping up with the competitiveness of the industry. Resources and time becomes constricted and companies do not have the time to implement a thorough recruitment and screening process.

Relying upon job boards, LinkedIn, focusing on branding and “social responsibility” on web site career portals brings in hundreds of applicants, but rarely the right applicants and most of those applicants are “C players”, the 55% of the workforce that  can show up to do a job but don’t add to increasing revenues, lowering cost, or creating new intellectual property.

Many companies employ internal recruiters of contract recruiters, and while they can produce more applicants, the quality of the candidates is at best “okay”.  Contingency search firms are internally measured on the number of sendouts (resumes) emailed each day, the focus in on quantity, not quality. If a company must conduct a phone screen, simply put the recruiter failed to do a good job in screening and assessment.

Companies engage a retained search firm to manage the recruitment process and to get down to a shortlist of highly qualified candidates ready for in-person interviews.  Retained search firms that are niche or boutique working in the company;s industry NEVER look at active job seekers who dominate job board and Linkedin job postings, but instead use their vast internal rolodex, identify and cold call, and reach out to those contacts to being them an opportunity and a challenge.

• Client-focused in time management – retained search improve talent acquisition as we only work on only a few select searches at a time per executive search consultant. Because the lead recruiter has a team behind him, each task from sourcing to pre-screen to deep interviews is assigned.  Since the focus is on quality, retained executive search consultants are not measured by the contingency search firm focus on sending out x number of resumes daily.
• Industry Expertise in Your Market – possess a higher level of proficiency when it comes to finding potential candidates for a specific niche industry and market.  These firms specialize in what are the trending news in the market, recruiting, executive changes at your competitors, and news about the current and future strategy of your market and your competitors.

 

Rather than using a typical job description quoting responsibilities and requirements, the approach is to identify team dynamics and documenting KPIs to ensure potential candidates can meet the objectives of the role.

Instead of focusing on a checklist of x number of years’ experience and skills, retained search focus on what the potential candidate will do with those skills to meet the performance objectives of the role rather than just having x years of experience with that skill.

The costs are much lower in the Long Run –  utilizing the expertise of a good recruitment team shows that retained search lowers the expenses used to screening applicants and potential sourced candidates.

 

Improve Talent Acquisition with Onboarding Tools

 

A custom onboarding tool that works is one that uses a psychometric composite team profile with the corresponding candidate profile and performance objectives of the role.  No lengthy involvement of time and effort by multiple executive staff members.  It is customized and easy to use.  It should include a personal action plan for the new hire that identifies his/her strengths and weaknesses and provides the designated mentor with an effective coaching and evaluation tool.

Retained search improve talent acquisition like NextGen Executive Search as clients has shown that the 72% who use the custom onboarding tool realize quick assimilation into the corporate culture and team dynamics, faster productivity, and longer retention.

Final Thoughts on How to Improve Talent Acquisition

 

 This relieves the company’s HR department of the expenditures that are used in screening processes such as background information, investigating previous employment records, filling up Hiring Managers inboxes with unqualified flypaper (resumes).  Searching for the ideal candidate for the job can take a lot of time and expense if the company does it alone.

Much Higher Retention Rate with Low Turnover – retained search improves talent acquisition with a much higher retention rate for candidates they’ve placed (NextGen Global has a 93% retention rate for placed candidate still working after 3.5 years of being hired and 87% still there at 5 years).

Retained search improve talent acquisition with a competitive edge as the people they place outperform, meet, or exceed your expectations and significantly contribute to the success of the organization.  Hiring the right staff, not just at the senior executive level, can propel the company towards success and development, but hiring the wrong ones stagnates the progress.  Improve Talent Acquisition by Elevating your Recruitment on Improve Talent Acquisition by Elevating your Recruitment to improve talent acquisition.