What Is Talent Acquisition?

While you might equate talent acquisition with recruitment, talent acquisition goes beyond filling an immediate vacancy to build a talent pipeline that promotes the long-term success of your organization. This encompasses many responsibilities, including job analysis, strategic recruitment practices, onboarding, and maintaining a positive candidate experience. Explore why talent acquisition is important for your organization and how to enter a career in this exciting field. 

What is talent acquisition? 

Talent acquisition is the process and strategy of identifying, acquiring, and retaining talent to meet a company’s needs. A business might have a whole team of talent acquisition professionals, or they can be part of a human resources (HR) team, working on sourcing, assessing candidates to fill open positions, establishing a future candidate pipeline, and nurturing talent. 

Talent acquisition teams are responsible for implementing strategies to attract candidates that align with the organization they are working for. They do this partly through branding, communication, and producing messages. 

Once you've identified a candidate, the talent acquisition team monitors the talent acquisition lifecycle from application to job offer, with continual responsibility for retaining and developing the person they recruit.

Read more: What Is Talent Attraction?

How does talent acquisition differ from recruitment?

Recruitment is a subset of talent acquisition. While you'll notice some crossovers between talent acquisition and recruitment, the two also have some key differences. Recruitment is a linear process involving sourcing candidates for a particular role, while talent acquisition takes a more cyclical approach, known as the talent acquisition cycle. This involves building an ongoing strategy to attract and source talent, recruit, hire, and onboard, ensuring this can be utilized repeatedly.

Types of  roles within a talent acquisition team

Some companies have teams dedicated to talent acquisition, and others are part of larger HR teams within an organization. A single person may be responsible for the talent acquisition cycle in smaller companies. In cases where a team exists, it will vary according to the organization's size. In general, you may find the following  roles:

*All average annual salary is sourced from Glassdoor as of June 2024

Talent acquisition manager

Average annual base salary (US): $81,553

The talent acquisition manager builds, implements, and manages a company's recruitment and talent acquisition strategies. In larger organizations, this role may be at the director level, with various management positions below it. However, talent acquisition managers generally are in charge of the process. 

As a talent acquisition manager, you’ll work to understand the company's recruitment needs, oversee employer branding activities, work with employees to understand their needs, and work on retaining staff and recruiting. 

Read more: What Is Talent Management? 2024 Career Guide

Sourcers

Average annual base salary (US): $51,646

Sourcers provide the talent acquisition team with a stream of new candidates. These may be internal candidates who have been nurtured and trained, new graduates, or candidates from external sources. As a sourcer, you provide the recruiter with a pool of talent from which to recruit. 

Recruiters

Average annual base salary (US): $61,044

This could be a single recruiter or team comprising a recruitment manager, recruitment coordinators, and recruitment consultants. Recruiters work to select potential interview candidates by assessing whether they have the right skills and are a good fit for the company ethos. They will also work with and support candidates through the recruitment process, providing feedback and support with questions they may have. 

Read more: What Is a Recruiter?

Talent acquisition roles and responsibilities

Talent acquisition professionals drive a company’s growth and success through identifying, attracting, and hiring top talent. This role involves developing and executing recruitment strategies to source candidates from various channels and then screen, interview, and assess candidates to ensure they align with the company’s values. This is often a proactive approach, creating a talent pipeline to identify top candidates and market the organization as a preferred employer for when openings arise.

In addition to recruitment, these professionals maximize employer branding, helping to promote the company as a desirable place to work. While individual job responsibilities will vary, common ones you’ll find in this position include:

• Attend industry events: Network with potential candidates by attending relevant events. Discuss current and future openings at the company and develop ongoing relationships with top talent.

• Develop and implement recruitment strategies: Execute recruitment plans to attract and engage relevant talent. This can include social media, job sites, career fairs, and more.

• Design engaging candidate experiences: Cultivate a transparent and efficient pipeline to move candidates through the recruitment, hiring, and onboarding process.

• Screen and interview candidates: Conduct initial screenings, interviews, and assessments to find talent likely to succeed at the organization and meet expectations.

• Enhance employer branding: Promote the organization as a great place to work by creating engaging job descriptions and managing an online presence on recruitment platforms.

• Create a long-term recruitment strategy: Analyze recruitment metrics to identify strengths and weaknesses of current practices and make adjustments. This is often done with applicant tracking systems (ATS).

• Support onboarding: Assist with the onboarding process to create a positive experience for new hires.

Read more: What Does a Talent Acquisition Associate Do?

Talent acquisition skills

To succeed in talent acquisition, you need to foster skills such as excellent communication, leadership, decision-making ability, and being up-to-date with industry standards and trends. While technical skills are essential to managing candidate recruitment metrics and analysis, this is a human-facing role, meaning workplace skills are very important to foster positive relationships with potential candidates. The following skills are likely to set you up for success in this position:

Technical skills

To be successful in this position, talent acquisition specialists need a deep understanding of HR principles, including basic HR software, hiring strategies, and core principles. This includes knowledge of social media, candidate sourcing techniques, and recruitment basics. Once these fundamentals are mastered, HR professionals can go one step further and harness more complex recruitment data analysis techniques. 

When it comes to software, applicant tracking systems (ATS) and human resource information systems (HRIS) are two important sources of candidate data. For example, a talent acquisition professional can use job recruitment data on these platforms to see which medium attracted the most successful employees to the company—was it job postings, job fairs, social media, or networking? By finding out what works and what doesn’t, professionals in this role can adapt strategies over time to produce the best outcomes. 

Workplace skills

Workplace skills such as communication, management, negotiation, and being detail-oriented are among the most important when it comes to talent acquisition roles. For example, you need to have strong communication skills to continually update and monitor candidates throughout the recruitment process, as well as the ability to communicate effectively with other human resource professionals to ensure the entire team is focused on the same goals at each step. 

Empathy is another important skill for talent acquisition professionals, helping them connect with candidates on a personal level and cater to the specific concerns, preferences, and motivations of each individual. This can help talent acquisition specialists tailor the recruitment process to them, which leads to more success in attracting high-quality talent. 

How to move into a talent acquisition role 

The skills, experience, and qualifications you need to work in talent acquisition vary depending on the job role and how senior the position is. Generally, you need a bachelor’s degree, ideally in human resources, and relevant recruitment experience. Typically, you’ll work in an entry-level talent acquisition role before moving to more senior positions. Over time, you can use your experience to manage talent acquisition teams in a senior position, such as the director of talent acquisition.  

Develop recruitment experience

If you work in recruitment, you will already have experience in the field. Talent acquisition managers must have experience in HR or on a recruitment team. If you don’t have experience in recruitment, consider seeking an entry-level position on a talent acquisition or recruitment team in the field you hope to work in. For example, if you are interested in a role in tech or health care, look for an entry position in this area. 

Entry-level recruitment experience is typically enough, but if you have experience in a more senior role, managing a team of recruiters, and taking on more strategic responsibility, you will be more marketable. It can be advantageous if your recruitment experience is in the same field as the talent acquisition role you apply for since you’ll have prior industry knowledge.

Complete required education

The minimum requirement to work in talent acquisition is a bachelor’s degree, preferably in human resources, business, or a subject relevant to a recruiting field. Some companies may ask for a master’s degree, and this is useful if your bachelor's degree doesn’t directly relate to talent acquisition. If you are looking to advance to a senior level, a master’s degree is helpful. 

Earn certifications

Certifications aren’t required for a talent acquisition role, but they can boost your credentials and enhance your resume. If you have a certificate from your time in recruitment, add it to your resume. Certifications to consider include:

Read more: How to Become SHRM Certified And Build HR Credibility

Salary and job outlook for talent acquisition managers 

Salaries for talent acquisition managers vary depending on the organization, experience level, location, and the rate of bonuses. Also, base salaries don’t always represent a person’s earnings, given that commission is earned by the number of candidates you place. 

The average base salary before bonuses) for a talent acquisition manager in the US is $113,819 [1]. While not specific to talent acquisition managers, the expected job growth for all human resources specialists between 2022 and 2032 is 6 percent, which is higher than the average for all occupations [2]. 

Get started with Coursera.

Within an organization, the talent acquisition strategy is a long-term talent pipeline designed to attract, engage, and onboard top candidates in the field. If you work in talent acquisition, you can expect to design creative and effective recruitment strategies, network with exciting talent, and create a streamlined, engaging hiring process for candidates from start to finish.

Building your credentials with an additional course or certification can enhance your chances of landing a talent acquisition role. On Coursera, you can find top courses from industry leaders designed to help you build foundational and specialty skills. To begin, start with Talent Acquisition, the first course in a five-course HRCI Human Resource Associate Professional Certificate.