What Is a Talent Acquisition Specialist?

HR Outsourcing
What Is a Talent Acquisition Specialist?
Article by Zarah Ariola
Last Updated: March 29, 2023

A reliable talent acquisition specialist possesses extensive professional experience in recruitment and finding the perfect applicant to fill roles in your business.

The talent acquisition role is essential to your company’s success. To fulfill their duties and responsibilities, a TA specialist should have the core skills and training required.

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What Is a Talent Acquisition Specialist?

A talent acquisition specialist is a human resource professional responsible for coordinating with hiring managers to determine hiring needs, outlining the selection criteria, and sourcing candidates.

The talent acquisition role includes finding and attracting potential job applicants. The TA specialist conducts the initial interview of prospective employees. This is to identify if an individual matches the business’ needs and long-term goals.

What Does a Talent Acquisition Specialist Do?

A talent acquisition professional facilitates the whole recruitment cycle, requiring them to wear many hats during the different stages of the process.

The full recruitment life cycle includes:

  • Job description drafting and proposal
  • Sourcing
  • Succession planning
  • Candidate screening
  • Interviews
  • Job offers
  • Legal compliance
  • Management training
  • Career development
  • Reporting
  • Employee assessment and appraisal

Beyond hiring for your organization’s staffing needs, the TA professional strategizes for your long-term recruitment and human resource management. They consider your company’s future demands during talent mapping and plan execution. Your TA experts help hire the best fitting candidates who can contribute to your business success.

Working alongside hiring managers, they play a key role in employer branding programs and innovative initiatives. This will guarantee you invest in qualified jobseekers and select only the most suitable for your open roles.

Here is a more detailed look at the TA expert’s duties and responsibilities:

  • Candidate Sourcing: A talent specialist scouts for candidates by posting job ads on networking sites and the company website. They are on the lookout for applications sent directly to their emails. University visits and on-site job fairs are other ways to find talent. They can also obtain referrals from your current employees.
  • Candidate Screening and Interview Arrangement: Shortlisting follows once a roster of applicants is in hand. A TA specialist will curate the ones who match the job requirements more closely and can move forward. They will start reaching out to the shortlisted applicants via phone call or email. They will schedule video conferencing in which they should discuss basic information about the candidates, including professional work and proficiencies. Using an AI screening bot is also an option at this initial process stage.
  • Candidate Recommendation: The basis of the recommendations is to meet the minimum criteria for the post. Your talent expert needs to further sort through the screened candidates. They will select the ones to recommend for the hiring manager to interview for a more comprehensive screening.
  • Advising Hiring Supervisors: As an expert in diversity recruiting, your talent acquisition specialist guides hiring managers through every step in the process. From interview preparation to a thorough evaluation, ensuring that managers are well-informed about the legal aspects of hiring, especially discrimination laws, is part of the talent acquisition role.
  • Extending the Job Offer: The TAS works closely with the hiring manager and the compensation department to determine the correct salary and benefits information before sending the successful candidate’s official job offer.
  • Onboarding: The talent acquisition specialist is the HR team’s representative of the new hire. They take care of all onboarding-related administrative tasks and ensure expectations are well-defined.
  • Succession Planning: A talent acquisition expert helps prepare your business for inevitable changes in the leadership team. This involves planning, training and development, and hiring when necessary. They can propose to promote an internal team member to fill a higher position instead of onboarding an external candidate.
  • Ensuring Employee Engagement and Satisfaction: Talent professionals ensure that employees stay motivated and fulfilled on the job. This is a crucial factor in maintaining productivity and performance.

Talent Acquisition Specialist Job Qualifications and Skills

These are the required skills that make an effective TA professional:

Communication

Communication skills are required for a TAS’ success owing to the people-centric nature of their work. Effective spoken and written communication is essential in:

  • Liaising with hiring managers
  • Drafting comprehensive job posts
  • Engaging potential candidates in various media
  • Corresponding with applicants
  • Connecting your company with candidates

Additionally, communication covers more than what they say or write. In a talent acquisition role, it is important to understand nonverbal cues, such as facial expressions and body language. This enables a TA specialist to establish rapport with the diverse people they work with. It lets them see beyond words and gain insight into the behavior of others.

Also, they can use it to convey more compelling messages, as in when drafting persuasive vacancy announcements and providing advice to hiring supervisors.

Active Listening

Talent acquisition specialists should be active listeners. Whether conversing over the phone, on a video call, or in person, TA experts need to pay attention beyond what is being said overtly.

Active listening skills may be regarded as the advanced form of listening as it goes hand-in-hand with making clever decisions. It stems from genuine curiosity and allows an effective TA professional to ask the right questions. This way, they can look through varying perspectives and draw out opinions so they can get to know people more deeply.

Planning

Talent experts plan wisely. Effective planning entails skillfully visualizing where their work fits in the bigger picture—what it means for your business growth to be hiring the right people for specific roles.

They consider the future when planning because thinking ahead is critical for a steady grasp of your organization’s long-term goals and vision. They do not only focus on filling urgent vacancies but also keep an active talent pipeline as part of a definitive succession planning strategy.

Learning and Development

TA specialists have an appetite for learning. Learning and development can be obtained from continuing education as much as from their different daily experiences. And a good talent professional knows how to find wisdom in every situation.

Proactive learning is a habit for TA leaders. It lets them adapt to various scenarios and environments, reinvent how they work when needed, and encourage changes to enhance workplace practices.

Relationship-Building

Candidate experience is a priority for a TAS. A good talent specialist believes that a candidate’s journey with your company is a vital foundation for successful recruitment.

Relationship-building skills have an impact on an applicant’s journey and, consequently, on your employer branding. How a TAS engages with colleagues, clients, consultants, and candidates speaks volumes about how your enterprise values its most important assets—its people.

Stress Management

The entire recruitment cycle consists of a series of long, meticulous processes. To find, attract, hire, and retain the best-fit candidates, talent professionals need to practice patience. They have to remember that their actions influence business operations, productivity, performance, and growth. That is why they need to keep an open mind and maintain level-headedness.

When equipped with stress management skills, they are not discouraged by hiccups or distracted by pressure.

IT and Social Media

Being tech-savvy is a highly valuable skill in the TA field. Social media-based hiring is on the rise, and new-age talent acquisition professionals know how to keep up. They are adept at technological tools and software and willing to learn more platforms to perform their tasks better.

There has been a significant increase in remote interviewing, online candidate assessment, and home-based employment. Technological adaptability is expected from talent specialists because of these new developments in work spaces. They should know the most relevant HR system advancements, namely:

  • Applicant tracking systems (ATS)
  • Performance management tools
  • Human capital management (HCM) suites

Why Is a TA Specialist Vital to Your Business Success?

Talent acquisition fills vacancies while fulfilling specific company objectives. It can be executed by your in-house TAS or using the services of a PEO employee leasing agency. Either way, your enterprise gains a competitive edge in the industry with the help of a professional talent acquisition specialist.

Here are the ways in which you benefit from their services:

  • Access to the best-in-class talent pool contacts
  • Professional assistance in candidate selection
  • Long-term management of employee relationships
  • More engaging business presence on professional networking sites
  • Analytics-based evaluation of your HR practices
  • Development of data-backed tactical approaches to recruiting and hiring
  • Less recruitment-related financial risks through better budget management
  • Consistently filled talent pipeline
  • Tapping both active and passive candidates
  • Competitor monitoring
  • Business agility and flexibility

Wrap-Up: Contributions of a Talent Acquisition Specialist to Your Business

More than direct involvement in every phase of the recruitment cycles, the talent acquisition role is about upholding your employer's branding. It is an investment to factor into your business growth. Your operational performance and productivity are anchored on excellent talent acquisition practices.

A TA specialist can find the best matches for your vacancies and, ultimately, get the right hire placed in the right seats in your organization.

A professional HR outsourcing agency can also help you with this process, so we advise looking for the right agency to partner with for your project.

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