Those new to the HR world might have a misconception that recruitment and talent acquisition are the same concepts. This is where they are highly mistaken. There are multiple differences between recruitment and talent acquisition.
If you’re an HR intern or a fresher in the HR sector, you must understand the difference between these concepts. This will help you move up the ladder of your professional calibre when employed in an HR-related firm.
For instance, recruitment merely invites resumes for job vacancies to fill them up on time. But Talent acquisition is a timely and ongoing process.
Read the blog for the right example of recruitment and talent acquisition to better understand these two HR concepts individually.
4 Differences Between Recruitment and Talent Acquisition:
Planning and strategy:
HRs and hiring managers acquire talent with careful planning and strategy. By acquiring talent, they mean to hire and onboard specialists, leaders, motivators, guides, mentors, and change-makers.
That’s just one example of talent acquisition with careful planning and strategy. Because specialists, guides, leaders, or managers are not easy to convince. They must be persuaded over time.
They have to be reached out on an appropriate platform, at the right time, with the right offer. HRs or hiring managers must convey to them the value they will earn after joining their firm for bringing in more growth, development, and profits.
Whereas recruitment is a linear process. While understanding the recruitment and talent acquisition difference, understand that recruitment won’t need in-depth planning or strategising processes from HRs.
To recruit, they already have full information about the job openings. They can post the vacancy and hire the candidate that matches the JD perfectly. Recruitment does not need to be continuous or planned. It commences when there’s a vacancy in the organisation.
Workforce segmentation knowledge:
The talent acquisition cycle does not end in one day or an hour like the recruitment. It has to be well-planned, as discussed in the point above. That part of planning also involved knowing the right segment of the workforce.
That would include knowing the skill set, challenges, strengths, weaknesses, moral attitudes, and social reputation of the talent. After a careful 360-degree study, HRs can acquire a certain talent.
Unlike recruitment, talent acquisition might involve several tests, interview rounds, and other meetings. That happens because a particular talent is not onboard in a single day.
The talent has to match the requirements put up by the segmented workforce or functional area. That is majorly because the talent to be acquired will be greatly responsible for bringing more growth and profits to the firm/team.
And if the talent is unable to do so, it will cost the firm the replacement cost.
Coming back to the point, it’s just one important example of recruitment and talent acquisition situations in a firm.
With this, you can acknowledge how a segmented workforce drives the requirement to bring a more talented and self-driven professional to the organisation.
Employer branding:
Internal and employer branding matters to a greater extent while acquiring talented professionals in the firm. Because such people are self-driven and goal-oriented, they would want to know the “whys” behind joining a particular offer.
That’s why the company itself must have a strong image and deliver on its promises. Again, this is a continuous process. HRs will understand and experience it more while researching recruitment and talent acquisition strategy.
However, it’s another point to note that employer branding would not matter much while recruiting.
The recruitment process has the main goal: fill up the vacant positions on time. The job-fit candidate’s planning and the costing are already predefined while HRs post the job offer on various portals.
From thereon, they have to look out for the best candidate amongst the applicants to fill up the job. This job might not be highly specialised, needing special talents. But it must be at the executive level where the company needs highly active and process-oriented workers.
These workers or hires would not question the existing employer branding much. The core reason could be that they need this job too. So there would not be any elongated negotiations or discussions.
The scenario is quite different concerning the talent acquisition rounds.
That is why HRs must acknowledge the modern and growing differences between recruitment and talent acquisition. It’s for their benefit only as an HR person. These meaningful differences can help HRs to hire better from the next hiring, staffing, and recruitment cycle.
Finding the best talent scoping and sourcing channel:
It takes a lot of calculation for HRs to find the right platform to acquire the desired talent in the record time. That might be the case in recruitment which only focuses on fulfilling the job opening.
This job opening could be temporary or permanent. However, when you’re selecting, searching, and acquiring talent, it has to be on an ongoing basis. You don’t acquire a talented person for a day or two.
That’s a norm as these talented people are usually managers, high-class leaders, potentially employees with hidden talents, experienced workers, and more.
Until and unless it is a contractual job, acquiring talent is permanent. For that, HRs need to find the best of the best recruitment and talent acquisition platforms online.
HRs can also use uKnowva’s recruitment and talent management tools for posting their job openings. Later, they can integrate these job openings with other well-knowing hiring and acquiring channels in their locations.
But HRs professionals must not stop learning about the common differences between recruitment and talent acquisition. With timely practice on both recruitment and talent acquisition, they will get a better understanding of each concept with examples.
This practical knowledge is necessary so HRs would know which hiring, recruiting, and acquiring platform is the best at present. Each platform has different needs and demands. Therefore, HRs must thoroughly research and observe each channel’s hiring pattern.
In fact, with the uKnowva recruitment engine, it’s possible to check the efficiency score of each sourcing and talent acquiring portal.
Conclusion:
You can find the right example of recruitment and talent acquisition in your own organisation. To do so, verify how regularly employees get hired there. How does the HR senior manager acquire talented people for the firm’s ultimate growth?
These talented people might not work full-time in the company. At times, these talented people are the consultants, growth coaches, and marketers for the start-ups and growing firms.
But recruiting is completely different as it hires and onboards those employees that the company needs every day. These employees help optimise daily operations of the business or its unit when hired through standardised recruitment processes.
That’s another reason why getting the right knowledge on the differences between recruitment and talent acquisition is the need of the hour. It applies majorly to the HR professionals and growing companies to optimise their talent acquisition and hiring policies.