As today’s hiring landscape only grows more competitive, it is more important than ever to build a cohesive hiring strategy to attract and retain the best talent. In SHRM’s webinar titled “Finding the Right Talent Through a Cohesive Hiring Strategy,” Nicole Belyna, SHRM-SCP, director of talent acquisition and inclusion at SHRM, and Chris Courneen, senior vice president and  global head of human resources at MS International Inc., discussed the key principles, tools, and best practices for creating a strategy that aligns with a company’s goals and promotes long-term success.

Effective Recruiting

Today’s talent pool has high expectations and a lot of resources available to help workers find the right employer. To attract the best hires in a competitive labor market, businesses require a consistent plan of action. “It’s absolutely critical to have a cohesive hiring strategy today, now more than ever,” Belyna said. “Alignment across people, platforms, and purpose creates consistency and — ultimately — better hires.”

Courneen emphasized the practical side of modern recruiting. Talent acquisition ultimately ties back “to the profitability of [the] organization, whether it’s about the cost of acquiring the talent, the cost of acquiring the wrong talent, the opportunity cost of open seats,” he said.

Recruiting and hiring thus affects the entire business, so the process should be as effective as possible to avoid costly errors.

Key Strategic Components

To hire for any position, talent acquisition specialists need to, above all, understand the elements of a role and what skills are required to perform it well. They need to know how they “define what good work looks like,” Courneen said. This will allow them to translate that definition to traits they are looking for in a successful hire.

He also emphasized the importance of eliminating bureaucracy in the recruiting process, because the goal is to create a candidate experience that is “valuable, that is meaningful, but is fast.” Similarly, the process should not stick to a rigid structure; flexibility is critical because what might work in one area of a business may not work in another.

Budding technology such as generative artificial intelligence can be used to speed up and streamline the recruiting process. However, there are limits to its application. Employers should be “using technology as a tool, but not building [their] process to the technology,” Courneen cautioned.

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