Time and time again, many have wondered: Does Harvard shape its students to be exceptional, or do exceptional students shape Harvard?

The answer may not be immediately apparent. 

However, it is evident that places like Harvard and Google are filled with talented individuals, and this (with a mix of other factors) ultimately drives these institutions forward. 

Similarly, talent is the lifeblood of your organization and your brand. 

But merely recruiting whenever you have an open role may not help you source the best employees. You need a proactive and strategic talent acquisition process to compete with more prominent brands with extravagant perks to recruit great candidates quickly. 

Let’s explore six strategies that you can get started on today to nurture a steady, quality pipeline of candidates in the future. 

How is talent acquisition different from recruiting?

Recruiting refers to the specific activities involved in filling open job positions. This includes drafting job descriptions, posting openings, sourcing candidates, screening resumes, interviewing, hiring, and onboarding. It's generally driven by immediate needs to place the right talent.

On the other hand, talent acquisition is an ongoing strategic process. It involves:

• Forecasting talent needs
• Identifying top prospects both internally and externally
• Fostering engaged talent communities
• Assessing capabilities
• Developing future leaders. 

Therefore, it goes beyond immediate requisitions to build a sustainable pipeline.

To sum up their difference: 

• Recruiting kicks in to fill the open sales role that was recently vacated.
  Talent acquisition seeks to create a pool of promising sales prospects through campus programs and talent mapping, even without current sales openings.
• Recruiting solves the immediate candidate problem. In contrast, talent acquisition is future-focused. 

6 Benefits of talent acquisition

Let’s explore the key tangible benefits you can discover from getting serious about talent acquisition:

1. Boosts employee productivity

According to the Journal of Applied Psychology, top performers in complex roles can be so incredibly productive that their output vastly exceeds that of lower-performing colleagues. 

Traditional hiring approaches may not give you the time needed to find these performers. However, by adopting an ongoing talent mapping initiatives, you can:

• Take a deeper, longitudinal view of promising prospects over weeks or months. That is, you can tell who’s a high performer and can sustain higher productivity levels. 
• Get a deeper understanding of a candidate's critical thinking, leadership, and cultural fit through various assessment methods.
• You can also use work simulations, peer interviews, case studies, and challenges to assess skills.

Besides, developing an intentional talent acquisition strategy allows you to match evolving business needs to talent strengths early on. 

For example, if you plan to expand into a new market, having candidates with the necessary skills already in your talent pipeline is crucial. This eliminates productivity losses caused by hastily hiring and training less-prepared individuals.

Kula ATS, a comprehensive applicant tracking system (ATS) designed for rapid growth, allows you to tag candidates during the talent acquisition process. This makes your entire database easily searchable when hiring. 

Found someone with the right skills? Simply tag their profile (and any others!) with keywords like “coding skills” or “marketing analytics” for quick candidate searches in the future.

2. Enhances innovation capabilities

If you rely solely on your current team’s perspectives and skillsets, this can lead to blindspots, organizational inertia, and stagnant ideas. Most industries nowadays undergo rapid change, where out-of-the-box insights unlock new sources of value. Look at how quickly AI is taking over almost every tool you use in a matter of two years. 

With a talent acquisition strategy, you can scout across demographics, industries, academia, and adjacent tech spaces to find talented individuals who can innovate. 

For example, a marketing department at a consumer goods company would typically have managers who excel at brand strategies, messaging, and bringing physical products to retail. But shifts like personalizing according to new digital analytics or leveraging tools like text to speech for enhanced user engagement may not be something they’re very good at.

To tackle this issue, smart talent pipelines anticipate these skills adjacencies. Your ongoing university campus recruiting could tap someone combining an MBA with computer science. Mid-career transitions can also harness experts from other industries.

The point is — a robust talent acquisition helps you prompt innovation and brings something new to the table.  

3. Reduces hiring costs

It’s far easier (and cheaper) to hire top talent in a planned manner than filling urgent vacancies under pressure. Not doing this leads to quick, costly decisions.

You can maintain a steady pipeline of qualified, interested candidates across critical roles with structured talent acquisition. For SaaS sales roles, partnering with specialized recruiters like RevPilots ensures access to top-tier candidates who match your requirements. This way, when it’s time to recruit, you can avoid mishires or overpaying to woo the candidates. 

Structured talent acquisition also uncovers strong internal prospects years before openings materialize, helping optimize your budgeting for business and reducing recruitment costs. You get to gauge the capabilities and leadership potential of talents already familiar with your culture and systems. If you spot potential and go in for a promotion, you’d be sidestepping external recruitment fees — bringing costs down further.

Therefore, keep tabs on your hiring costs to compare the difference between having a talent acquisition strategy and not having one. 

Kula ATS's intuitive analytics dashboard empowers you to make data-driven hiring decisions. Track customizable metrics like cost-per-hire and time-to-hire, then easily pivot your strategy based on insights. You can also effortlessly distribute job ads to aggregators and search engines. It requires no integrations or added costs.

4. Develops a future leadership pipeline

Talent acquisition doesn’t only depend on building your pipeline by hiring external talent. You can also identify potential within your company and nurture them over time. 

This way, you have capable leaders lined up as your current tenured management nears retirement. Internal candidates also have higher retention rates and can quickly take charge during transitions. They don’t have to spend a ton of time adjusting to the culture you have built, as they already know how you operate.

Let's say you conduct performance reviews twice a year using the Objectives and Key Results (OKR) method. You've set a long-term goal (objective) for your employee, with measurable targets (key results).

If they consistently meet or exceed their targets, quickly surpassing your initial objective, it's a strong sign they're ready for greater responsibility.  You can consider promoting them to a higher role.

5. Strengthens employer brand

When you demonstrate a commitment to sourcing quality applicants, it signals you invest in people. This spreads awareness that your company is a rewarding place to build a career for the long haul.

Building an employer brand actively is also something you have to do if you want to invest in talent acquisition. You will have a stronger employer brand by the end of it, whether inadvertently or through active efforts. 

How does this work exactly? Getting serious about talent acquisition means:

• Moving beyond job boards to authentic culture cultivation on platforms talent spends time.
• Encouraging teams to showcase innovation projects on LinkedIn, feeding follower growth, and humanizing workflows. 
• Amplifying underrepresented voices on diversity spotlights that spotlight your DEI compliance.  

Kula ATS empowers you to create a cohesive and compelling brand experience at every stage of the candidate journey. Craft branded, localized, and mobile-responsive job ads, career pages, email campaigns, and offer letters – all without coding or external support.

This helps you efficiently manage distinct brand identities within the platform, ensuring consistency across all touchpoints. You can tailor application processes with role-specific questions and assessments.

Additionally, Kula ATS proactively supports your DEI initiatives with features designed to promote fairness and inclusivity.  The platform helps mitigate bias with reminders for interviewers to focus on diversity goals. 

You can also streamline outreach to diverse talent pools with one-click job distribution to specialized job boards for minority groups, women, veterans, and others.

6. Provides competitive advantage

Your mode of talent acquisition can give you a distinct edge against the competition. Advanced AI and analytics capabilities help source, engage, and onboard sought-after talent faster than other companies still mired in manual HR processes. 

With tailored automation for repetitive tasks, your talent acquisition team can achieve the bandwidth to get creative in recruitment initiatives. This means you can discover new avenues and tactics while others are still preoccupied with administrative tedium.

You can seamlessly streamline your workflows and save time with Kula ATS's extensive automation features. Effortlessly configure candidate rejections, assessment triggers, and interview reminders – all with customizable delays and messaging.  Personalize your notifications to stay on top of your hiring tasks.

Kula ATS also helps you make data-driven hiring decisions. The platform's intuitive dashboard provides a quick overview of your hiring pipeline, while built-in hiring plan analytics offer deep insights into time-to-hire and lead times. Track referral effectiveness to optimize your sourcing strategies. Plus, the analytics API lets you extract data for advanced analysis.
Kula ATS simplifies report generation as well. Build, export, and schedule on-demand reports in minutes, with no technical expertise needed. Access customizable analytics dashboards for insights into applications, hiring timelines, referral sources, and more.

Finally, as a future-proof solution, Kula ATS helps you leverage the power of AI. The platform's built-in intelligence and ML capabilities enable you to create customized rule sets.  You can automate candidate advancement through your hiring funnel, ensuring the most qualified individuals move forward efficiently.

Overhaul your talent acquisition strategies with Kula ATS

The tangible benefit to turning recruitment into a proactive talent acquisition strategy is that you are more aligned with broader business goals. 

From cost savings to competitive differentiation, the benefits are too compelling to ignore if you seek to grow in today’s dynamic landscape.

Leveraging an AI-driven platform like Kula with built-in intelligence, comprehensive automation, and actionable analytics can help you shape your talent acquisition better. This transforms legacy talent recruitment into a scalable function that is fine-tuned to your organization’s needs.

To learn more, schedule a demo today!