Recruitment vs. Talent Acquisition

Employers usually treat Recruitment, and Talent Acquisition as same, but there is a difference between the two. Though it depends from company to company based on the size and functioning, they still need to understand which one to focus on while creating a workforce.
Both the approaches fulfil same purpose: hiring people and building teams. But please note that they both follow separate sets of steps while implementing. This article explains us the differences between Recruitment and Talent Acquisition, so let’s dive in.

1.    Defining the Scope of Recruitment and Talent Acquisition

The recruitment process is a component of the broader talent acquisition strategy, focusing on immediate hiring needs. Employers might have done recruitment drives on small and large scale, but they all come under the strategies created by Talent Acquisition Team. Hence, it has a limited scope.
Talent Acquisition has a broader scope. It includes not just recruitment, but recruitment based branding too. They work with the marketing, PR and HR teams of the company. On one hand, the hiring takes place, on the other hand the TA team works on expanding their company horizons by practising various other team related activities.

 2.    Types of Work Each Function Entails

Recruitment majorly involves activities like sourcing, selecting, short-listing, interview schedules, and hiring. This is a pretty standard process for hiring candidates as per the company requirements.
The work of TA team is ongoing. They overlook the recruitment team and create an effective corporate strategy for networking. This is focused on company’s market standing, leading to an increase in candidate traffic towards the firm.

 3.    Comparing the Hiring Processes

Recruiters usually hire interns to fill the vacancies in an organisation. It’s their task to fill the open positions for different teams, so the work is not affected and the new hires can fulfil company goals. The candidates are shortlisted based on the qualifications and experience held in order to be shortlisted.
During talent acquisition, they don’t just hire people through their education and expertise. They deep dive into candidate profile and relevance. They get to know the candidate through their aptitude and soft skills. Even if they don't have the right education, the TA team trusts them and thinks they can learn what they need to know for the job. So they do a 360-degree assessment of the candidates instead of just a few factors.

 4.    A Look at Long-Term Strategy and Vision

The Recruitment team focuses on filling open positions right away and closing them quickly. The TA team focuses on positions that might not be open right now may be opened in the future based on business statistics.
So, recruitment doesn't think about what the company will need in the future. But a Talent Acquisition guy's job is to think about and explore the business with different team leaders. By focusing on that, the company can plan for future projects without having to worry about the workforce.

Usually small companies have Recruitment teams to fulfil their immediate candidate requirements based on their work. But as they grow, they must focus on developing a Talent Acquisition team that can handle their growing team needs. They should also hire a PR, who has better networking and connectivity with candidate pools, job portals and committees.
After a point it becomes important to hire the right people for the right role and that can happen only if companies focus on quality instead on quantity. If your intern hirings are good, your organisation's future would stay in good hands.