Agile talent acquisition: a lean and flexible strategy positions your enterprise to build an anytime, anywhere, optimal workforce.
A comprehensive global talent acquisition strategy is workforce planning writ large. It enables you to ramp up hiring following a business acquisition in a new country, for example. An agile talent acquisition strategy can also prepare teams for expansion into new markets.
After exploring the benefits of talent acquisition, you may be ready to create an agile talent acquisition model.
Read on to discover the seven basic steps behind high-performing global talent acquisition strategies.
From the C-suite to the HR department to the project managers who will work closely with global hires, corporate buy-in is key to delivering an agile talent acquisition plan.
In many ways, the world is still the early stages of a global workplace. Executives and employees alike are still adjusting.
Teams may require training to collaborate effectively with workers across different cultures. A manager unaccustomed to working with one or two remote employees may require additional training and reminders to properly include those workers, for example.
When key decision makers support the global workplace, critical steps are less likely to fall through the cracks. These steps may include cultural awareness workshops and in-person team gatherings every quarter or so — activities which can help reduce frustration and friction, while helping teams bond and collaborate.
From the C-suite to the HR department to the project managers who will work closely with global hires, corporate buy-in is key to delivering an agile talent acquisition plan.
In many ways, the world is still the early stages of a global workplace. Executives and employees alike are still adjusting.
Teams may require training to collaborate effectively with workers across different cultures. A manager unaccustomed to working with one or two remote employees may require additional training and reminders to properly include those workers, for example.
When key decision makers support the global workplace, critical steps are less likely to fall through the cracks. These steps may include cultural awareness workshops and in-person team gatherings every quarter or so — activities which can help reduce frustration and friction, while helping teams bond and collaborate.
A positive, dynamic employer brand is the bedrock of effective global talent acquisition. Candidates in your target markets and around the world should gain a clear view of your workplace culture, day-to-day vibe, and long-term career opportunities. Important windows into your employee value proposition include:
Keep your current employees in mind when developing, or evolving your employer brand. They help sustain your value proposition and keep you honest if the EVP doesn’t translate to lived experience. Effective hiring, retention, and workforce engagement depend upon an authentic employer brand.
While it’s important to do your research, you can easily get stuck in this early phase and stagnate. Building or bolstering your global employer brand is a smart starting point.
While a consistent, appealing global employer brand is vital, job particulars require tailoring in different regions. Candidates in Belgium, for example, will have different expectations around compensation and benefits compared to candidates in Australia or the Americas.
Effective social media marketing can also change in different countries as platform preferences shift.
Though global talent acquisition is complex, recruitment technologies can keep the process manageable, central, and cost-effective. The right recruitment tech underpins a truly agile talent acquisition strategy.
There are many ways in which recruitment tech can help drive efficiency. Global applicant tracking systems search for local keywords to reduce the number of candidates who move to the more time-intensive steps of the hiring process. AI chat bots and automated emails can help drive candidate engagement. With video interviewing, you can manage first interviews without losing candidates who can’t easily meet in person. New solutions are always arriving.
From the start, clarify expectations in your global talent acquisition strategy. Even in an agile context, every global recruitment project should still start with an agreed deadline. This applies whether you’re rolling out a new global applicant tracking system, training your hiring teams in video interviewing, hiring a sales team in a new country, or crafting a social media recruitment playbook for a new region.
As the project progresses, you may need to review and realign. However, everyone should work towards getting a first version out the door, so to speak, and then iterating upon that. Taking too long to set projects live gives your competitors ample chance to breeze past.
Within your teams and service provider partnerships, there should also be clear accountability for meeting goals.
When it comes to an agile talent acquisition model, results matter. Leverage data analytics, as well as manager, candidate, and employee feedback to understand success factors, bottlenecks, and pain points.
Evaluations should include candidate quality, talent retention rates, and social media engagement. Such metrics can help inform strategy adjustments or overhauls. They can also highlight high-performing elements, thus allowing you to exploit these successes further. A global approach also allows these best practices to be shared more widely and replicated.
The global hiring landscape is here, and companies that leverage the talents of foreign workers have the upper-hand on establishing an identifiable employer brand in new markets. Remember this as you set out to develop an agile talent acquisition strategy targeted towards attracting highly engaged candidates.
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