Talent acquisition is more than just finding employees, it’s about building a pool of highly qualified talent to draw from when you need to expand your team, using solid strategies to attract, assess, and hire the right people.

So what’s the difference between recruitment and talent acquisition, and what does it mean for the hiring process and finding potential candidates? Finding top talent isn’t just a case of posting on job boards and keeping your fingers crossed – if you’re chasing the best of the best, you need to go above and beyond with your talent acquisition strategy. 

The biggest difference between talent acquisition vs recruitment is the way you approach people, with the talent acquisition process focused more on meeting candidates and building relationships over time, rather than simply throwing job ads out in the wild.

Your potential employees are very savvy when it comes to their careers, and if you want the top talent you need to offer the top job. This means giving applicants plenty of information on why your company is the best fit, what perks and benefits you offer, whether remote work is possible, and what their career trajectory looks like as a part of your team.

By implementing solid talent acquisition strategies you will ensure that your potential candidates will be the best of the bunch.

Want to stay ahead of the curve in talent acquisition? Download the 2025 State of the Market Report to gain in-depth insights and actionable strategies.

Talent acquisition strategies

Some of the strategies that companies use to attract and retain talent can help to answer the question of ‘what is the future of talent acquisition’, from improving branding to utilizing tools that help identify the top talent.

Employer branding

The best way to attract top talent to your company is to focus some energy on your branding and outline exactly why people should want to work for you. Using video content, testimonials, and eye-catching visuals can help demonstrate to candidates why you’re the best choice.

Building talent pipelines

Simple recruitment is a quick pipeline if you’re seeking immediate hires, but if you’re building a solid pool of talent you’ll want to build a solid pipeline to attract candidates. This could include a list of candidates who are pre-screened from previous outreach efforts, or accepting expression of interest applications throughout the year, giving you a head start when selecting potential hires.

An effective applicant tracking system

Utilising an Applicant Tracking System makes keeping up with your candidates a much easier task, allowing you to import and update records, view resumes and candidate experience, set up call scripts, and even rate the skill sets of the talent in your pool.

Attractive careers page

An effective career page shows your company in a good light and will help to attract top talent when you need them. This can involve providing helpful information about your company’s mission statement and values, employee testimonials, listing some of the benefits and perks to employees, 

Talent acquisition process

The key to an effective talent acquisition process is setting it up as strategically as possible; after all, you’re looking for top talent who will improve your company’s productivity and efficiency, and this is no small thing to achieve. That means ensuring your talent acquisition strategy is designed to attract – and most importantly – retain the people you hire.

Sourcing

Talent acquisition is an ongoing process of actively searching for potential talent through channels including LinkedIn, industry conferences, referrals, and job boards. This means you’ll always have a pool of talent ready when you need to expand.

Interviewing

Interviewing is the key to finding the best people, so make the most of it. Multiple interviewing stages, detailed in-depth reviews of resumes, and skills assessments are all great ways to dig into a talent’s skills and ensure they’re the right fit for your business.

Onboarding

A structured onboarding process can help fill the blanks in a candidate’s knowledge, give you the chance to run them through the company’s mission, introduce key team members, and show them the tools and processes they’ll be using, so that productivity is high from day one. 

Purpose of talent acquisition

The main purposes are to reduce your time to hire by ensuring you have a pool of talented candidates ready to go, and finding the right talent for the position so you don’t have to handhold when they start and can be confident that your new hires will be able to hit the ground running and giving you their best work from day one. 

By having a structured talent acquisition process, you can stay ahead of the game with a talent pool to draw from when your company needs to expand.

Having a workforce that is aligned when it comes to your company’s vision and culture puts you in a much stronger position to achieve long-term success, and achieving your business goals becomes much more possible when your teams are united in their own long term goals. 

The future of talent acquisition

Much like other industries, AI is becoming at the forefront of talent acquisition with new advancements that aim to streamline the acquisition process. 

AI can assist in automating time-heavy admin tasks (screening resumes, scheduling interviews, etc), improving response times, and enhancing data-driven decision-making.

For a glimpse into the future of talent acquisition strategies, check out JobAdder’s 2025 State of Talent Acquisition webinar and report, which does a deep dive into what you can expect to see on the horizon in the job market, touching on areas such as remote job growth, proactive sourcing and insights that could help improve your talent acquisition strategies.

Take your talent acquisition to the next level with JobAdder

If you want to get serious about your talent acquisition, JobAdder can help your company grow its talent pool with the power of proactive sourcing. We integrate with the best talent marketplaces and over 200 job boards so that finding and adding candidates to your talent pool is just a few clicks away.Book a free demo today.