Competing on Talent in Today's Business World

It is currently an exciting time for organizations with regard to the recruitment of talent. The business and organizational pressures for finding and hiring the best people could not be greater. Recruitment has not changed as a process—a vacancy still needs a suitable hire. However, the landscape, tools, technologies, behaviors and expectations regarding how an organization approaches sourcing and acquiring talent are changing rapidly. This book chronicles one organization’s journey as it goes about re-orienting the focus of its talent acquisition capability from the current reactive process to a strategic and proactive program capable of consistently sourcing and recruiting the very best people available. Forward-looking companies are seizing this opportunity to create a true competitive advantage in talent sourcing and acquisition. They are focusing on fine-tuning the fundamentals, while devoting increased time and planning to the more strategic areas of talent acquisition, including workforce planning and strategic sourcing. Their best-in-class approaches elevate recruitment from a transactional, short-term focused activity to a strategic, integrated, long-term approach that optimizes their investments in people.

This book articulates both the challenges and the response options that confront organizations as they compete for talent in this fast-changing business climate. The initial sections here provide a macro view on the changing work landscape and how recent trends and developments around technology and innovation are impacting the discipline of Talent Acquisition. The book is designed as a running case study profiling the best practices in recruiting. Drawing on both primary and secondary research, it adapts and learns from the best practices of high-impact business functions, such as a lean supply chain, analytics, process re-engineering, sales and marketing, and discusses the leading academics and practitioners in this regard. As such, this book will elevate awareness and discourse on the topic, and will help concretize a roadmap for organizations looking to revisit and re-invent their talent acquisition philosophies and practices as they compete for talent in today’s world.