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Are You an HR Pro Being Asked to Lead Talent Acquisition? 6 Tips for Success
By Linda Brenner | February 20, 2025
Check out this list of tips for new talent acquisition leaders - especially if you're coming from an HR Generalist role - to shorten your learning curve and drive meaningful results faster.
Talent Acquisition Org Design Best Practices
By Tom McGuire | February 17, 2025
What’s the best way for recruiting teams to think about tackling hiring requisitions? First in, first out – like milk? Nah, I don’t think so; but surprisingly, many succumb to this approach in the face of hiring manager pressure and the absence of business-based prioritization.
Five Reasons Why Candidates Aren’t Applying to Your Jobs
By Linda Brenner | February 06, 2025
There are many reasons why candidates aren't applying to jobs the way they did before the pandemic. A recent survey identified five key reasons for this (hint: 'being lazy and on unemployment' didn't make the list.)
Recruiting Process Outsourcing (RPO) Can Improve Hiring Results: Four Ways to Do It right
By Tom McGuire | February 02, 2025
Recruiting Process Outsourcing firms (RPOs) often have a reputation for overpromising and under-delivering, but does it have to be that way?
RPO Lessons Learned: When RPO is Not Working Well
By Tom McGuire | January 29, 2025
So your organization is using an RPO (Recruitment Process Outsourcing) firm and you suspect things aren't going as planned? Or perhaps you are considering an RPO? Read on to learn about these common pitfalls. And check out other articles in our series to find solutions.
How Do You Measure Quality of Hire in this Talent Marketplace?
By Tom McGuire | January 28, 2025
In this full employment economy, finding and winning top talent for critical roles is a key business success factor. But if you’re still thinking about quality of hire in the old way (hiring manager surveys to assess ‘happiness’ with the recruiting team or managers' assessment of a new hire 30 days in), then you’re missing the chance to prove the value of Talent Acquisition in 2019 and beyond.
The Most Effective Recruitment Process in the Toughest Talent Marketplace
By Linda Brenner | January 28, 2025
It’s a trick: the most effective recruitment process isn’t one - it's multiple processes, differentiated and highly engineered. Because in the most challenging talent marketplace that most of us have ever worked in, we can't wing it anymore - nor can we build our processes based on what we've always done, or what hiring managers demand.
Talent Acquisition Audit: Six Signs You Need One
By Linda Brenner | January 28, 2025
Six circumstances where it makes sense to bring in outside, unbiased resources to conduct a talent acquisition audit.
How to Improve Recruiting: Begin with a SWOT Analysis
By Tom McGuire | January 28, 2025
Need to figure out how to improve hiring speed, quality and diversity? Begin with one of the most tried-and-true methods to assessing strengths and weaknesses: a SWOT framework for recruiting. Learn how this method can help you get started the right way.
Where the Talent Went and What To Do About It
By Linda Brenner | January 28, 2025
Despite the waning of the COVID-19 pandemic, hiring and retention remain a significant challenge for businesses. Factors contributing to this shortage include demographic shifts, declining birthrates, and lower labor force participation rates. Here are four strategies to address this issue. And do it now, because it's not going to get easier anytime soon.
Are you in a War *ON* Talent or a War *FOR* Talent?
By Linda Brenner | January 28, 2025
Here are eight clues for determining where your organization falls.
2023 Talent Analytics Playbook for CHROs
By Tom McGuire | January 28, 2025
The explosion of HR tools, technology and trends makes zeroing in on essential analytics more difficult than ever. How should Talent Analytics define HR priorities? What are the greatest obstacles to achieving effectiveness? What does a Talent Analytics "homerun" look like? In 2023, talent analytics should not just support, but fundamentally drive, your organization's business strategy.
Let’s Modernize Talent Acquisition Before Jumping on the AI Train
By Linda Brenner | January 28, 2025
HR and Talent Acquisition teams often lack the necessary foundation to make AI truly effective because of undefined processes, ambiguous roles and unclear goals. So before delving into AI-driven solutions, TA needs to build its foundation: clear strategies, well-defined and differentiated processes, supporting org design and data-based measures of success. Only then it can be determined where AI can add the most value.
DIY: 3 Steps to Doing Your Own Talent Acquisition Audit
By Linda Brenner | January 28, 2025
Why is now the best time to evaluate and improve hiring in your organization? Because waiting for the perfect moment is futile. The talent marketplace evolves unpredictably, with some skills becoming increasingly scarce (AI, data analytics) while others are more abundant than ever (cashiers, call center rep, sales agents). Hiring leaders demand swift, high-quality hiring, and senior leaders are reluctant to fund more recruiters. Continuing to rely largely (or solely) on job postings is ineffective in today's changing landscape. Read on to discover strategies to take charge, assess your talent acquisition function, and prioritize improvements to make hiring faster and better.
Interviewing Isn’t Enough: The Best Way to Hire Recruiters Now
By Linda Brenner | January 28, 2025
Struggling to hire recruiters who excel beyond the interview? Old school style interviews don’t cut it when it comes to assessing critical TA skills like prioritization, judgment, and influencing others. Discover In-Box Dash, an AI-powered solution that simulates real-world recruiting challenges, providing you with a fast, accurate way to assess and develop your team. A fast, accurate and cost-effective way to elevate your talent acquisition game, brought to you by TGA.
Re-Engineering Recruiting: Tips for Assessing and Improving your Talent Acquisition Function
By Linda Brenner | January 28, 2025
Now might be the optimal time to re-engineer your recruiting processes. Start by objectively determining which metrics are most important to your business, how to evaluate them and the best approach for improving these outcomes.
Technology is Not the Answer to Your Hiring Problems
By Linda Brenner | January 28, 2025
The volume and variety of TA technologies on the market would lead even experienced HR professionals to believe that at least one of them must be the key to improving the speed and quality of hiring. After all, even during these difficult economic...
Simplifying Workforce Planning: Practical Tips for HR Leaders
By Linda Brenner | January 28, 2025
In today's data-rich landscape, workforce planning is essential for HR leaders to identify talent-related priorities and investments. While tools like Visier and Tableau provide instant and slick access to data, the challenge lies in ensuring its accuracy, deciphering its true meaning and turning it into actionable plans. By focusing on key metrics such as attrition rates and tenure distributions, HR leaders can create directionally-accurate workforce plans that can evolve over time to enable their organizations navigate the most complex talent marketplace we've ever known. This article details a roadmap that will help HR leaders build a simple workforce plan that will allow them to address the most important people-related trends in their organization, now and in the future.
Recruiting Top Talent: Four Ways to Repel those with Scarce Skills
By Linda Brenner | January 28, 2025
Hiring Manager Satisfaction Surveys: The Worst Thing to (Still) Happen to Talent Acquisition
By Linda Brenner | January 28, 2025
Hiring managers rating recruiters on how well they filled their job does nothing but reinforce arcane and counter-productive behaviors. Rather than asking: "Do you like us? Were we responsive and pleasant? Did you like our candidates?", Talent Acquisition teams should be measured on hiring speed and quality. Note: by "quality" we mean how well did new hires stay in the role and how well did they perform. Because, like it or not, if TA isn't hiring people who stay and perform, something is amiss. Hiring managers, in turn, will *really* like recruiters if they hire top talent who stay longer than their predecessors. But, if you just can't let these surveys go, read on for tips for best positioning these surveys.
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Linda Brenner
Linda is an industry vet with keen observations and a knack for calling it like it is.
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Tom McGuire
Tom brings the unlikely blend of Finance & HR to the practice, illuminating readers with the link between talent and business value.