farming and hunting approaches for recruiting success.

There is no one-size-fits-all strategy for attracting and engaging the right talent. Like any other business process, talent acquisition needs to be well planned and customised to the size and needs of an organisation. With every corporate job set to attract an upward of 250 resumes, recruiters must first understand their hiring goals in order to be effective. Is the organisation trying to fill an urgent top-level position or create a talent pool of candidates by nurturing and engaging them? Once the purpose is clear, HR can better prepare to engage talent, enhance organisational performance, and reduce turnover by using the right approach.Here, we take a look at two approaches to talent acquisition based on organisational hiring goals.

Cultivate talent much like a farmer

This is a long-term approach to recruitment, which requires greater investment in training new hires and nurturing potential candidates. Here, the focus is on selecting ideal candidates from a diverse pool. Get in touch with variety of candidates through networking sites or career fest or through a database of professionals. Once candidates show interest, nurture them by educating them on why they should work with you and build their trust. This way, when the candidate is ready to make a move, you will be well positioned to take advantage of it. This will not only help you create a thriving pool of talent but will also enhance candidate engagement, bolstering your brand image.

This approach is well suited for hard to find niche skills and keeps candidates warm until a position opens up. A farmer’s approach can also be applied to internal recruiting where you pick best-suited candidates and cultivate their talent for replacing top leadership positions.

Don the hunter’s hat for pursuing top talent

Even the most successful companies lose top talent. According to research, India inc experiences an average annual churn of over 16%. For some organisations, the churn is as high as 40%. In such a scenario, HR needs to take a hunter’s approach to find the best talent - not for anything else, but to ensure that there’s business continuity. In today’s tight labour market, bad hiring decisions can result in 80% turnover, making it critical to treat your recruitment strategy with the same care and thoughtfulness as your customer strategy. Great companies raise the bar with every new hire. Maintaining this while ensuring that the new hire seamlessly fits into your company’s culture is not easy. To crack this code, it's important for HR managers to understand the DNA of right talent and educate the organisation about the same.

Ultimately, the ideal solution is to combine both hunting and farming approaches to recruitment based on the need, to successfully engage, informs and transform candidates into employees.