5 talent acquisition strategies for 2023

As the year-end approaches, many organisations are starting to consider their people strategies for the year ahead – and talent acquisition strategy is an important element.

As the CIPD say, a good people strategy is ‘a coherent planned framework for employees to be hired, managed and developed’, taking into account both ‘an organisation’s long-term goals’ and ‘the evolving nature of work itself’.

Talent acquisition strategies, then, are the framework and tactics you plan to adopt, to overcome today’s recruitment challenges and hire the people the organisation needs to fulfil its goals.

And recruitment leaders are certainly not short of challenges. Talent acquisition professionals today operate in a volatile world where hiring can be complex. Some of the biggest issues are:

• Skills shortages abound, making successful hiring difficult. Research from the FSB found that 54% of small businesses in the UK hoped to grow in 2020, but a third say skilled staff shortages were a major barrier.
• Cost pressure is increasing, as inflation continues to grow. Talent acquisition leaders are under pressure to build a cost-efficient recruitment function, at the same time that 64% of businesses are seeing an increase in employee requests for pay rises.
• Turnover is often high, increasing pressure on talent acquisition teams to back-fill roles and secure high-quality new hires despite declining engagement and a weakening culture. For example, recent research shows that 63% of UK businesses have experienced high staff turnover that erodes culture.
• New flexible working models put pressure on talent teams to work differently together and overcome new challenges to build an effective recruitment process.

If your organisation is exploring how to develop a talent acquisition strategy to cope with these challenges, read on. We share five examples of strategies you might consider and some tactics to implement each. 

5 talent acquisition strategies for a volatile world

1 – Candidate attraction

When organisations face skills shortages and heavy competition for talent, focussing on boosting candidate attraction can help your business gain an edge. Some tactics to consider:

• Strengthen your employee value proposition. Your EVP captures the value you offer candidates. A strong EVP helps you differentiate – and Gartner research finds organisations that effectively deliver on their EVP reduce annual employee turnover by 69% and increase new hire commitment by nearly 30%. 
• Optimise your job postings. Job adverts are often the first interaction candidates have with your business. Do they give the right impression? Are they memorable? Do they stand out from the crowd? 
• Consider recruitment marketing. Talent acquisition best practices have evolved, as 86% of HR professionals now believe recruitment is becoming more like marketing. According to talent acquisition software leaders Tribepad: ‘Recruitment marketing involves the processes you have to complete before a candidate actively applies for your job.’ They talk about tactics like content marketing, guerrilla outreach, social media recruitment and employee reviews.

2 – Long-term relationship building

Long-term relationship building is another talent acquisition strategy worth considering for 2023. As In-house Recruitment (IHR) comment:

‘Recruiting new employees from scratch in an unpredictable, candidate-driven market can be stressful, lengthy and often unsuccessful. Talent teams are finding themselves stuck in the endless cycle of sourcing, screening and interviewing with no palpable results. A better way to approach your hiring process is to look at building and nurturing talent pools, which will keep you ahead of business demands and free up your limited time and resources.’

This proactive approach is becoming talent acquisition best practice, to fill talent pipelines and meet key skills needs.

3 – Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI)

Gartner report that diversity, equity and inclusion were a top priority for 35% of HR leaders for 2022, so boosting DEI strength is likely to feature amongst many organisations’ talent strategies.

Research consistently shows the business benefit of improving diversity and this must start with recruitment; with the people you bring into the business. Improving diversity and building inclusive recruitment processes can also help address skills shortages, by opening new talent pools.

For example, 72% of UK employers are now looking to re-recruit retired workers back to the workforce. Older workers are often subject to ageism but instead can provide a valuable source of experienced talent.

Diversity and inclusion are also important to your employer brand. Glassdoor’s Diversity and Inclusion Workplace Study 2020 found that 76% of candidates consider an employer’s DEI credentials when evaluating companies and job offers.

Here are a handful of talent acquisition best practices to prioritise diversity and inclusion:

• Ensuring everyone involved in recruitment takes unconscious bias training
• Reviewing end-to-end hiring processes for potential discrimination
• Using inclusive language in job adverts
• Using technology to anonymise identifying information from applications
• Using recruitment reporting to track diversity flows

4 – Remote recruitment

Hybrid working models look like they’re likely to be a continued feature of 2023. 96% of organisations in the UK have become more flexible about where employees work since the pandemic. And a recent Microsoft study found that more than 50% of workers in the UK would resign if their employer removed hybrid working options.

If employers are committed to this route, this opens new challenges for recruiters.

For example, the same study also found that remote onboarding has been challenging. 36% of UK workers who started a new job since the outset of the pandemic have experienced an entirely remote onboarding process, and report a number of difficulties:

• Forming relationships (42%)
• Asking managers for information or questions (33%)
• Learning to use new software (24%)
• Earning the confidence of colleagues (23%)
• Soaking up company culture (21%)

If remote recruitment is an important strategic priority for your organisation, talent acquisition leaders must rise to these challenges. At the same time, the recruitment team will need the right virtual technologies to do their jobs efficiently and effectively.

5 – Recruitment cost reduction

According to Finance Monthly, some of the biggest financial challenges for businesses right now are poor cash flow, increasing business costs, difficulty meeting growth targets and employee turnover. Overall, 75% of 1000 UK business leaders said the current economic ecosystem makes it challenging to run a business.

In this context, reducing recruitment spend is likely a critical priority within many organisations’ talent acquisition strategy.

Good recruitment reporting will likely prove critical, to help teams identify efficiencies. Strong people analytics could prove a major boon here, although right now only 17% of UK HR professionals use people data regularly.

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Talent leaders are navigating a challenging environment – but the five talent acquisition strategies we’ve shared here hopefully serve as some inspiration to take your business forward. Do you have any talent acquisition best practices to share, as other leaders develop their plans for the year ahead?