Top 7 Skills Every Talent Acquisition Professional Should Have

Why is it important to think about the skills of your team of professionals?

Talent acquisition is the lifeline of any business. It is the crucial process through which organizations acquire their most important asset – people. Most business leaders agree that having the right people in your organization is extremely important. People can make or break organizations. You can have the best marketing strategy or the most effective plans to grow your business and still not succeed if you don’t have the right people taking care of the execution. That is why talent acquisition is so important for organizations.

Talent acquisition affects every aspect of your business. For your talent acquisition strategy to be successful, you must have the right team of highly skilled professionals. Having a clear, well-defined goal for talent acquisition is not the only part of hiring the right candidates for your organization. You need the right professionals – those who can properly articulate your requirements and expectations to the candidates. You need professionals who can properly assess the fit of the candidate with the requirement.

A Talent Acquisition (TA) professional is responsible for finding the right set of professionals for your open positions. This involves more than what you would expect. This person is responsible for creating compelling job ads, sourcing candidates, negotiating with the candidate, and handling the other crucial aspects of hiring a new employee. They have to find the right talent who can meet the needs and expectations of the organization.

In today’s highly competitive talent market, a TA professional holds a very crucial position in the organization. They are essentially the bridge between external talent and internal needs. Keeping in mind this vital role, here’s a list of top skills every TA professional should have.

Key Skills Your Talent Acquisition Team Should Have

1 ) Communication

The key skill every hiring and recruiting professional should possess is good communication. While this is one of the most basic skills for a professional to have, its importance cannot be overstated. Most TA professionals spend a lot of time in speaking or listening. They have to understand the requirements of the company.

They must take on board everything the hiring manager explains and understand completely what is required from a candidate. This helps them to speed up the process of searching for candidates who fit the profile well. It also helps them in clearly communicating the requirements to the candidate, so that they come into the process with expectations in line with the job requirements.

Talent acquisition professionals communicate with various people on almost a daily basis. Maintaining a strong line of communication with candidates is vital for your image as an employer. Negative experiences for the candidate due to poor communication skills of the recruiter can have dire results for an employer’s image on social media.

Your company’s TA professionals are the company’s representatives in the talent market. Every TA professional should be a good communicator and conversationalist to be successful in the market.

2 ) Marketing

Finding the right talent from the talent pool is like finding a needle in the haystack. Every TA professional should have a basic understanding of how to market themselves, the position, and the company to the candidate. If the professionals market the position in the right way, they will have a higher chance of attracting the right talent. This reduces the time taken to source each candidate.

This also helps in filling up those non-lucrative positions that do not have the highest pay package or the best benefits. Promoting and advertising such positions is a hard sell. A TA professional should know and understand the market well to stress on points that are most attractive to a potential candidate.

3 ) Adaptability to Technology

Today’s technological landscape is always shifting, with new IT industry trends, technologies and updates popping up in rapid succession. A TA professional should have basic understanding and knowledge of how technology impacts recruiting and which new tools can make their job easier. Newer and better technologies are being developed every day which can be used to further optimize the hiring processes. A good TA professional knows how to leverage these to their benefit.

Technologies like Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS), Human Capital Management (HCM) suites, and Performance Management Platforms are constantly changing the way hiring processes flow. Your TA professionals should be quick to adapt to these if they wish to succeed.

4 ) Understanding of Social Media

Your TA professionals need to be great at social media to succeed in today’s market. Social media is one of the most effective ways to connect with talent quickly and efficiently. It is also the great aggregator, where you can tap into talent from anywhere, making sure your reach is maximized. (LinkedIn alone boasts 722+ million professionals on its network). There are a variety of groups and communities on these platforms which can be utilized to ensure your job ads reach the right people with the right mindset. It also eases the process by enabling TA professionals to directly reach out to potential hires.

5 ) Data Analysis

Data Analysis is a crucial part of a modern TA professional’s toolkit. Your TA professionals should be well versed with data analytics tools and understand which metrics matter to the organization. Embracing approaches with the most favorable results and leaving behind those not working for your organization will optimize your hiring processes. This can only be done if the TA professionals have an analytical mindset, which can make your recruitment marketing more effective. This in turn helps in effectively planning for talent acquisition.

6 ) Multitasking

There are a lot of items on a TA professional’s plate, which need attention. There are multiple job openings at any given time in the organization, requiring job ads, sourcing efforts, screening efforts, negotiations, background checks, etc. A TA professional has to manage many items in a limited amount of time. Apart from that, they have to be on their A-game when communicating with the candidates who apply for these positions. Managing these tasks is not easy. That is why a TA professional has to be a skilled in multitasking.

7 ) Networking

Deep understanding of people is a crucial skill to achieve success as a TA professional. Recruiting is all about people. It is vital to form meaningful relationships with people and create a network of professionals which can be tapped for openings at your organization. Building connections is important because they might one day lead to a hire. That is why networking is always a part of an efficient talent acquisition strategy.

Conclusion

Talent Acquisition is an incredibly fulfilling field. You are constantly helping your organization in key aspects, which will have far-reaching effects on it. It is also a demanding field. It takes a lot of skill to navigate through the crowd and find the right person for your company.

That is not the only role of a TA professional. They are also representatives of your company in a highly competitive talent market. They are responsible for portraying your brand as the one candidates trust and rely on. With the right skills and mindset, a TA professional can do wonders for their organization.