Talent acquisition consultant, Fonterra Brands Sri Lanka
The new reality has opened up everyone’s eyes to what could be. We are forced now more than ever to embrace change and to re-think, redefine and build new strategies to stay relevant in a new world. Amongst the chaos of learning new skills and being relevant organizations are also forced to look beyond normal people practices to accommodate new health and safety protocols and ways of working. And it is I believe a great eye opener for organizations to look at their talent acquisition and talent management practices. The time is now to re-visit your Buy, Build or Borrow strategies.
It is a gloomy time for talent acquisition teams and recruiters when many organizations are going in for budget cuts and recruitment freezes. But your role doesn’t end just because of these restrictions. I believe it opens up an opportunity for us to really look at what we can do to keep building employee value propositions to strengthen the organizations employer brand and internal engagement.
And it starts with teams agreeing that you have to move away from asking “how much of budget do I have to do a large scale media campaign or sponsorship?” - to asking yourselves the following:
What is the new reality around me – my talent market? my candidates?
What does my audience, the potential candidates and internal candidates want to hear or see?
What impact does our values play in encouraging the right candidate to keep wanting to work with us? And how do we talk about it?
How do I portray an employee value proposition that would touch the hearts of my team? While being authentic about it?
What would be the ideal platform for me to use?
It is not about your presence or the number of flags at a career day at a University anymore, yes branding material is important to be top of mind but I feel we now need to look at;
Impactful activities at Universities that would truly support building a future talent that is dynamic and multi-skilled. Make your presence count not through your fliers but your actions and programs.
Re-vamp early career programs like Internship and Management trainee programs so that you are geared towards building resilient young leaders who are exposed to new ways of thinking and working. Build the "right" skills in future leaders - empathy, effective virtual presence, authentic leadership etc...
Strengthen your internal recruitment and talent pipeline – Build and Borrow strategies will now more than ever be important to look at first. Develop gig and remote working opportunities.
Re-look at the tone of your messaging - it should reflect your values and how you truly live by them
Keep sharing stories about your communities – your teams – their strength - your resilience through a crisis.
Take this time to build your internal recruiters and hiring managers skills and provide the right information to your brand ambassadors. Re-look at the new skills your future candidates should have and realign your selection criteria.
The actions you take today whether it be proactive or reactive will reflect on your teams employee engagement survey – it is about being authentic to your internal teams ( its about what they want and not what you think they want), sharing stories with your future candidates to keep them interested and updated on who you truly are and can be in the future – your values, your people management skills, brand innovation and your leadership
Good luck in your new journey!
See Sharon's article on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/talent-acquisition-new-reality-sharon-amerasinghe/