Effective talent strategies for recruitment and engagement has never been harder to achieve. 

A recent survey, for example, showed that a staggering 68% of HR professionals are having difficulty filling positions from their current talent market. What’s more, 84% report that applicants simply don’t have the skills they’re looking for. 

That’s why it’s never been more important than it is today to re-evaluate your talent recruitment approach, touchpoints and management systems to ensure your business will attract high quality candidates with those hard-to-find technical skills, but also have a higher success to hire them and keep them engaged. 

And a holistic talent management system will do just that. 

What is a Holistic Talent Management System?

In the talent procurement world, there are two predominant strategies behind bringing in new talent: reactive recruiting and holistic recruiting. 

Ever heard of the phrase “post and pray”  well that is reactive recruitment is about, as you may have guessed, it revolves around filling a position once it’s opened up, or reacting to a vacancy. If someone leaves the company or is terminated, a reactive minded recruiter would research the position, document the necessary skills and qualities for the role, and then begin searching for a replacement based on that criteria. 

A company with holistic minded recruiters, on the other hand, is able to fill the position much quicker because they’ve already got an active talent pool and sustained talent pipeline in place. 

By building interest in your company by highlighting an appealing brand, creating a multi touch, multi platform recruitment strategy, and promoting attractive company core values (like a dedicated succession plan), you can start bringing in candidates with those hard-to-find skills before a vacancy pops up. 

But a total talent management strategy doesn’t stop there — while casting a wide net over a long period of time will certainly attract high-quality talent with the skills you’re looking for, keeping them engaged once they’re in the door is another issue entirely. 

Employee engagement hinges on finding ways to inspire your workforce. While great pay and benefits are undeniably the primary factor in choosing to work for a company, they’re more than often not the reason for leaving. 

Instead, employees who end up jumping ship tend to base their decision on not getting along with their superiors, and feeling like there aren’t any opportunities for growth. To combat this, successful talent management systems will put an emphasis on employee skills, training and mentoring. 

In fact, when implemented properly, mentoring alone can have a significant impact on skill development and larger talent strategy goals as well as employee engagement and retention. 

All in all, the aim is to both bring in qualified employees and make sure they get enough out of the work to stick around. When you incorporate a holistic approach to your talent management, you’ll find that your workforce is happier, more productive, and fulfilled. 

Tips for a Holistic Talent Management System

Working on a total talent management approach with many of my customers, here are some things I challenge them to consider when creating strategies that will help them attract, engage, and retain top talent. 

• Define Your Branding: Developing your company brand and employee value proposition is one of the most effective ways of bringing in top talent with the hard-to-find skills that you need. While the typical “War for Talent” consists of offering higher pay and better benefits, if you can’t match your competitors in this area, you have to get creative. Flexible schedules, paternity leave, a relaxed atmosphere, and company retreats can all go a long way towards attracting the right people, even when the salary isn’t competitive.  

• Seamlessly Integrate Contract Workers: The gig economy is growing more and more every day as employees realize that the lifestyle may just have more to offer than working under a single company. If you want to attract and retain these highly-specialized individuals, perhaps permanently, your business needs to rethink its onboarding and HR strategies to better facilitate cooperation amongst temporary and permanent employees. 

• Utilize Technology: While creating apps and hosting media centers used to be reserved for only the biggest corporations, nowadays almost any business can utilize these company culture disseminators to both bring in new talent as well as instill loyalty in current employees. 

• Vary Your Recruiting Channels: The days of simply putting an ad in the paper and getting hundreds of qualified applicants are past. Modern recruitment now requires a bit more searching on the employer’s part. 

Job aggregators and boards, social networks, campus recruiting, career fairs, and talent communities are all resources that are necessary to tap in order to hone in on your ideal employee.