Recruitment Vs. Talent Acquisition – What is the Difference Between the Two?

It’s not unnatural to think that talent acquisition and recruitment are the same. While these two business growth strategies (or simply hiring strategies) are designed for a similar purpose, they are not the same.

Many people, including some companies, assume recruitment and talent acquisition processes are synonymous or spitting images of one another. But only the companies that focus on the bigger picture understand the paramount difference between the two. If you are one of those that think these two terms are the same, this article is for you. This article discusses all the differences between the two and how to choose the right strategy.

Okay, before we learn about the differences, let’s first get into some basic HR glossary. Let’s understand what recruitment and talent acquisition actually are.

What is a Recruitment?

Recruitment refers to active hiring to fill vacancies. It is a process of finding, evaluating, and hiring potential candidates to fill an open position. In short, it is a quick fix for immediate needs.

What is a Talent Acquisition?

Talent Acquisition is the hiring process that focuses on finding the right talent for your business. Talent acquisition strategy focuses on long-term goals such as building a talent pool that matches your organization’s goals and culture.

An effective talent acquisition strategy involves all HR team members continuously working on attracting and retaining talent.

What are the Differences Between Recruitment & Talent Acquisition?

The vital difference between talent acquisition and recruiting is that while recruiting is filling a vacant position as soon as possible, talent acquisition is the process of finding candidates for a job role that isn’t open yet. Thus TA strategy is all about finding qualified employees for a future job opening.

Recruiting focuses closing on current job openings and includes these steps 

• Job posting
• Sourcing
• Screening
• Interviewing
• Selecting candidates
• Onboarding

The talent acquisition process is ongoing and has tricky steps that bring huge benefits to the organization. Additionally, if your talent acquisition leaders do the process the right way, you could see a reduced turnover rate and impressive ROI. Let’s see the steps involved in a typical talent acquisition strategy.

Employer Branding

Studies show that 97% of successful employers globally say that employer branding is their first-most priority. Another recent survey found that 96% of companies believe employer reputation can impact their revenue positively or negatively.

Employer branding plays a critical role in successful talent acquisition as well as the recruitment process. While talent attraction is an effective method to grow your human resources, 50% of candidates say they won’t join a company with a bad reputation.

So, as a company that wants top talent and needs to fill positions faster than its competitors, you need to build a positive employer brand. Furthermore, this will boost candidate experience, which is a critical factor in talent acquisition.

Note: Boosting a company’s reputation is both easy and difficult. However, you should only focus on building healthy long-term branding rather than one that fades out sooner.

Strategic Planning

As talent acquisition is a long-term process, it needs more planning associated with industry knowledge. The TA leaders need to look within the business to understand the strengths and loopholes of the existing strategy. Most importantly, you need to set short-term and long-term goals to grow your workplace into a talent resource.

You need to have a deeper knowledge of job trends, industry insights, and capabilities to analyze and strategize the process.

Also, there needs to be a smooth relationship between hiring managers and recruiters to implement strategies that perfectly align with the mission and needs of your business.

Sourcing

As discussed, spotting the right talent is the key to the success of a talent acquisition strategy. Hence, you need only to source the right candidates rather than a room full of irrelevant profiles. You must also focus on getting applications or profiles of potential candidates from different talent acquisition sources. You can rely on numerous job boards, social media such as LinkedIn or Twitter, and job fairs to attract talent. 

Sourcing in the talent acquisition process is beyond forwarding qualified candidates to the next stage. You need to start building relationships with those candidates by sharing insights into your company and creating interest in them to join your company. Yes, the main targets of the talent acquisition strategy are passive candidates.

As part of the TA team, you must prepare passive candidates to apply for future job openings.

Which Strategy to Choose: TA or Recruitment?

Although talent acquisition and recruitment are two different strategies, there should be no question of choosing one from the two. You need to have both strategies in place if you want to grow your business successfully.

Both recruitment and talent acquisition processes get you, talented candidates, to do the job. However, as the job market is getting tougher and tougher with time, you must stay many steps ahead of your competitors in the recruitment cycle. For this, you must have a proper talent acquisition strategy. However, this doesn’t mean you could avoid recruitment from your business strategy. Without it, you will have to face a hard time carrying on with your business as there comes a time when you need to fill a position immediately.

There’s no time better than now! As a growing company in a competitive industry, you need both strategies for hiring success. Hence it would help if you started implementing these two hiring strategies today.

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