Speaker 1: Have you ever hired someone who quit within a couple of weeks or joined the company only to discover that it is very different from what you expected? These are signs of talent acquisition gone wrong. Hi my name is Erk van Vulpen and in this HR deep dive you will learn what talent acquisition is, what the process looks like and how you can avoid making some of these mistakes. But before we dive into the content let me start by telling you a joke. An HR manager, her name is Cindy, gets hit by a bus and tragically dies. Her soul meets Saint Peter at the pearly gates. Saint Peter welcomes her and asks Cindy if she wants to spend an eternity in heaven or in hell. Before she can make her choice Peter tells her that she will take a tour to see where she will feel most at home. During the tour Cindy learns that heaven is nice but a bit of a boring place that involves a lot of playing the harp and singing. Hell however has a golf course and a country club and lobster for dinner and all her friends are there as well dressed in trendy clothes, laughing, eating and having fun. At the end of the tour Cindy meets Saint Peter again and Peter asks her if she made up her mind. Yes Cindy says, heaven seems nice and all but my friends are partying in hell and it looks like a lot of fun. Saint Peter nods and sends her down. When Cindy returns to hell she finds herself standing in a desolate wasteland covered in garbage and filth. She sees her friends dressed in rags and picking up garbage and putting it in sacks for the evening meal. The devil comes up to her and puts his arm around her and laughs. I don't understand stammer Cindy, earlier I was here and there was a golf course and a country club and we ate lobster and we danced and we had a great time. Now all there is is a wasteland of garbage and all my friends look miserable. The devil looks at her, grins and says, that's because yesterday we were recruiting you but today you're staff. This is obviously a joke but it does show why recruiting is often referred to as the happy side of HR. So how do you make sure that your talent acquisition practices don't create a similar experience for your newly hired employees? Before we get into that let's first examine what talent acquisition is and take a look at the end-to-end hiring process. The company we'll follow is called Trellox, a fashion retailer. At Trellox Isa is the talent acquisition specialist and Johnny is the head of the marketing department. Our story starts with Johnny who is the hiring manager and Isa will come in later. Johnny's team is busy and overworked so he is looking to hire extra help. The first step is for Johnny to understand what role he needs to create. This phase is called the job analysis which involves talking to his team to collect information on the new role. I could make a whole separate video on the job analysis step but it boils down to identifying the activities in the job as well as the knowledge, skills, abilities and other characteristics also known as KSAOs that the hire needs to be successful. Once Johnny is done with the job analysis he has the job specification which is essentially the list of KSAOs the candidate needs to be successful in the role. Now I mentioned the word twice already. Let's zoom in on what KSAOs are because they form the basis of all the steps in the talent acquisition process. First, knowledge. What knowledge does a candidate need? Do they need a bachelor's in marketing or at least five years of relevant experience? How well do they need to know your particular industry? Knowledge is often easy to identify in a resume. Next, what skills does a candidate need? Do they need to create ads, manage social media accounts or do something entirely different? Skills are often easy to assess in a work test. Then you have abilities. Abilities are more innate. Some people have a great eye for design. I personally don't. I make a PowerPoint presentation and it looks absolutely horrible but I'm a good writer and I'm very organized. These abilities can be explored in a structured interview. And finally you have other characteristics. What personality traits are you looking for? Will the role be very dynamic and unpredictable? Then maybe a more extroverted candidate may be a better fit. And are you looking for a highly creative thinker or for a more detail-oriented person? This requires making decisions on what the ideal candidates will look like. These KSAOs are the basis for everything in your talent acquisition process and they will guide the recruiter and hiring manager to find the right candidates. Let's now take a look at Iza, our talent acquisition specialist.

Speaker 2: I sit with Johnny after he's completed the job requisition process. The job requisition is basically the formal request to create a new position within a company. So as a talent acquisition team we have to wait for the job to be formally approved before we can start hiring. My vacancy intake meeting is perhaps the most important meeting in the entire process. I will ask Johnny the difficult questions. You see it's easy for him to define the job but I actually have to find the person. So I will ask him very specific questions in order to help me find the right candidate. For example, if candidates need both a bachelor's in marketing and five years experience, which one is more important? The answers to these questions will help me find the right profile. After my conversation I then publish the job vacancy. So people can either apply on their own or I will reach out to them through what we call sourcing. So when I source a candidate I will make a list of all the candidates and then double check their profiles with Johnny to make sure I'm finding the right people and then I will reach out to them. And sometimes I also look for people internally who want a different role within the company. So once we have enough candidates we can start the selection. In my screening calls I check that candidates meet the required KSAOs and that their salary expectations match what the company can offer. My goal is to create a diverse slate to present to the managers. Then I will decide to like this video and subscribe to this channel. Johnny will then conduct the interviews for the top candidates. For more senior roles I usually advise Johnny to give the candidates an assessment so we can make a more informed and even better choice. Johnny really likes Norma so I check her references. Everything checks out so I call Norma and make her an offer. Now Norma did not make this easy for me. She received a competing offer from another company so we had a bit of a back and forth. But finally she accepted our offer and signed our contracts and she starts in two weeks. When her onboarding starts I will follow up to make sure that everything is going okay and evaluate the hiring process. If there is a mismatch in expectations we need to know as soon as possible so we can correct it and make sure it never happens again. For Norma I am confident that she will like this role. I mean Johnny is so impressed with her that he told me he may put her on the fast track for managerial role. I mean to me that says job well done. I'm really happy we hired Norma and I cannot wait for her to get started and see her around the office.

Speaker 1: This is a story of a very successful hire and a great collaboration between hiring manager Johnny and Issa. The collaboration works well because Issa has all the skills she needs to be effective at talent acquisition. Let's dive into what these skills are and what they look like. A talent acquisition specialist like Issa needs operational, tactical and strategic skills to be effective. Operational skills include communication, coordination with stakeholders like the hiring manager and candidates, sourcing, running effective meetings, fostering long-term relationships with candidates and managing the applicant tracking system or ATS. Tactical skills include running the job intake, determining selection criteria, designing job description and screening questions, evaluating candidates, running various employer branding initiatives and recruitment marketing. Finally, strategic skills include designing a talent acquisition strategy, forecasting hiring based on business needs and building a talent acquisition and employer branding strategy. Let's zoom in on three essential components of talent acquisition that help to attract and retain top talent. These are the employee value proposition, the employer brand and the employee promise. Each of these influence how the organization presents itself to prospective and current employees and nailing these is crucial to long-term recruiting success. First, we have the employer brand. The employer brand is the organization's reputation of the organization as an employer. When you hear Microsoft, you may think of innovation, high-impact work and generous compensation. Great employer brands are aligned with the organization's mission, vision and values. Companies like Google, HubSpot, Nvidia and Spotify have excellent employer brands that help them attract people. If a recruiter from one of these companies approaches a candidate, they are much more likely to say yes compared to other companies. This reputation is called the employer brand. Your employer brand is part of your employee value proposition or EVP. The EVP is the offerings, experiences and rewards that the employer offers. It answers the question, why should I work on this company and why should I stay at this company? For a company like Google, this may be salary, working conditions, challenging projects, an opportunity to make an impact on the world but also secondary benefits like health insurance, stock options, a company car, sports facilities, parental leave and extra holidays. Together, your EVP and employer brand create a compelling reason for people to join you which helps you to attract talent. The employer brand and employee value proposition also create expectations. This is the employee promise. The employee promise is the commitment an organization makes about what employees can expect from the organization. That is where at the very beginning Cindy was tricked by the devil. She was promised fun and games and lobster for dinner but when it came to reality, Cindy was disappointed. Hell did not deliver on its employee promise and if it was any other organization, Cindy would quickly leave and try her luck at a different place. That is how talent acquisition not only helps to attract people but also sets people up to stay at the company for a long time. Now I have a favor to ask you. 83% of the people watching our videos haven't hit the subscribe button yet. The bigger our YouTube audience get, the more of these videos we can make. So if you enjoy this video, please hit the subscribe button. And there you have it. You now know more about the talent acquisition process, the skills you need to stand out in talent acquisition and the things an organization can do to attract talent. You also know the best HR joke that I know and you should try it at a party.