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How to Hire a Talent Acquisition Specialist?

December 21, 2022

Finding and hiring the right talent is extremely testing in today’s competitive landscape. Amidst rapid innovation and fast-paced growth requirements, over 60% of company leaders say recruiting and retaining employees are the two biggest challenges they face in business.

So having a well-versed and experienced talent acquisition team is a necessity for your organization. Not to forget – we are in the middle of a candidate-driven market with a huge difference between the demand and supply of talent. 

The stepping stone to hiring success is building a capable team with deeply skilled talent acquisition specialists. But the big question is – how can you assure hiring the right TA candidates? What should you look out for in talent acquisition specialists while hiring?

In this blog, we will discuss the ins and outs of how to hire a TA specialist and the things you need to consider while hiring and building your recruitment team. 

What is The Role of a Talent Acquisition Specialist?

A talent acquisition specialist manages the entire recruiting cycle. The responsibilities distributed among individuals in a TA team vary as per experience, skills, seniority, and company requirements. The role of a TA specialist is largely determined by the size of the company and the overall recruiting team. 

The role can be broadly defined as sourcing, attracting, interviewing, hiring, and onboarding employees for your company. By analyzing the long-term business goals, talent acquisition specialists work closely with stakeholders and hiring managers to fulfill talent needs of an organization and support business success.

At a ground level, everything it takes in between finding the most suitable candidates to onboarding them is the job of a TA specialist.

  • Creating job descriptions
  • Creating job posts 
  • Posting jobs to job boards and portals
  • Sourcing passive candidates
  • Reviewing and shortlisting Resumes
  • Conducting phone screening and interviews
  • Guiding candidates about the recruitment process
  • Collaborating with hiring managers
  • Scheduling interviews for candidates
  • Keeping candidates updated about recruitment stages
  • Negotiating payroll with candidates
  • Creating job offers for the candidates  
  • Extending offers to selected candidates
  • Onboarding candidates 
  • Assisting in succession plans
  • Advising hiring managers on interviewing, hiring, and candidate evaluation
  • Handling candidate experience

How to Hire a Talent Acquisition Specialist: Step-By-Step? 

Talent acquisition specialists are instrumental in enabling businesses to source and hire top talent. As you already know about the generic role of a talent acquisition specialist, it’s now time to create and implement a hiring action plan.

Prior to brainstorming, sourcing, and evaluating TA candidates, you need to comprehensively analyze your company’s recruitment requirements and the current hiring team’s capacity

Suppose you have enough people who screen candidates well. In that case, you need to hire someone specialized and experienced in sourcing candidates. Early-stage startups, on the other hand, need someone who can wear multiple hats. 

Having a crystal clear conception about your talent acquisition requirements and organizational goals helps you focus your efforts in the right direction. Let’s now dive into a step-by-step approach for hiring a talent acquisition specialist and building a strong recruitment team.

Step 1: Create an Ideal Candidate Persona

First things first, decide the type of candidates you want to recruit. From extraordinary communication skills to relationship building, negotiation, engagement, strategic sourcing, and more capabilities must be taken into account. Identify and break down the skill requirements for talent acquisition specialists.

  • What are the educational qualification criteria for the role?
  • How many years and what type of work experience do you want in candidates? 
  • What are the specific skill sets you’re looking for?
  • Which industry experience would you primarily prefer?
  • Are there any tools your candidates should be hands-on with?
  • What are some personality traits that will fit your company?
  • Where do they look for a new job?
  • What are their career and life goals? 

Forming a candidate persona by answering all these questions would ensure you are not shooting in the dark while sourcing candidates. Further, it helps you determine the traits of the ideal candidate, and plan your sourcing and recruitment strategy further.

Step 2: Analyze Role Requirements and Document Your Recruiting Process

Next up is identifying and analyzing your role requirements specific to organizational needs and business goals. A talent acquisition specialist is expected to handle any task from sourcing to onboarding successfully – you already know this.

But what about your company’s unique requirements? You might need someone comfortable with tech hiring, or sourcing great sales candidates based on your business status. 

Additionally, you can also be asked to fill in the gaps in your current talent acquisition team. SO be prepared for business-specific analysis and plan of action. Before you enter the recruitment funnel, outline your talent acquisition process. Identify various strategies, channels, and other informational insights you would need – and maintain a collaborative document.

As you update the tactics and tweak your recruitment process for meeting hiring requirements optimally – keep your document up to date.

Step 3: Prepare a Talent Acquisition Job Description 

Once you have finalized the role requirements with respect to your current talent acquisition team and business, you can start sourcing candidates. Preparing the job description is the first task you’ll need to do.

Here are the necessary components you must have in your job description:

  • Job Title: The position you’re looking to fill. For example - Senior Talent Acquisition  Specialist. 
  • Roles & Responsibilities: An outline of the candidate’s day-to-day activities. From ideation to implementation and the impact on the organization, everything should be covered.  
  • Skill Requirements: Skills and abilities a candidate must have to perform the job successfully. 
  • Perks and Benefits: The compensation details, perks of the job, and any other benefits. 
  • About the Company: Why should a candidate consider working with your company?

Talent Acquisition Specialist Job Description Template

Role

A Talent Acquisition Specialist is responsible for the sourcing, screening, and hiring of skilled and qualified candidates to fill different positions. They communicate with potential candidates via online and offline platforms and use negotiation skills to help staff bright and talented people. They need to ensure that the company attracts the best experts and professionals in the industry.

Responsibilities


  • Communicating with hiring managers to identify future job openings and the technical requirements for those jobs
  • Writing and posting job advertisements and descriptions
  • Sourcing and screening potential candidates via professional platforms, (e.g. Linkedin, Indeed, Monster, Github, Stack Overflow)
  • Arranging telephone, video, or in-person interviews
  • Performing background and reference checks
  • Presenting the resumes of the most suitable candidates to the hiring manager or customer
  • Offering job positions and completing the relevant paperwork
  • Keeping track of all applicants as well as keeping applicants informed on the application process
  • Forecasting recruitment budgets
  • Staying aware of new recruitment tools as well as the latest trends
Requirements
  • Minimum X years of experience
  • Ability to source candidates through job portals, social networking sites, referrals, etc
  • Experience with resume databases and Applicant Tracking Systems
  • Experience with various sourcing methods (e.g. Boolean search, social media recruiting, etc.)
  • Sound knowledge of all labor regulations and HR practices
  • Sound knowledge of full-cycle recruiting
  • Must know about recruiting through cold calling, as well as lead generation, interview preparation, placement, and closing
  • Should have prior experience in handling clients and other key stakeholders
Soft Skills
  • Strong verbal as well as non-verbal communication skills
  • Exceptional time-management and organizational skills
Nice to Have
  • Proven experience in hiring from multiple geographies
  • Ability to work independently in a fast paced environment & should meet the target

Step 4: Source Talent Acquistion Candidates

Now that you have the JD ready and you understand the role requirements, drafting a job post would be easier. Remember it’s an immensely competitive market and your job post needs to stand out in order to attract quality candidates.

  • Start with what is it like to work at your company
  • Why should candidates apply to the position?
  • Include the learning and growth opportunities in the team
  • State the company vision and mission
  • Tell them about the recruitment process

Prepare an impactful job post and job advertisement assets if required. The next step would be posting your jobs on various job boards and hiring platforms. You can leverage the following platforms for hiring talent acquisition specialists:

  • LinkedIn
  • Indeed
  • Instahyre
  • ZipRecruiter
  • Monster
  • GlassDoor
  • CareerBuilder
  • Dice

Additionally with over 73% of the workforce being passive candidates, you cannot miss out on passive talent sourcing as well. Reach out to qualified candidates on LinkedIn, Twitter, and even Facebook and offer them lucrative opportunities. However make sure that you are networking and building rapport first, and selling your job second.   

Step 5: Interview Shortlisted Candidates

This is one of the most crucial steps of talent acquisition. Assess screened and shortlisted candidates based on various aspects including skills, experience, and personality traits.

Here are 3 of the most common subjects covered in interviewing talent acquisition specialists

  • Communication abilities: Analyze how well they communicate and if they are able to convince someone on the other side.
  • Relationship Building: This is a must-have skill for talent acquisition specialists. No matter the results of the interview, the candidate must initiate and form strong relationships with people.
  • Talent acquisition strategy: This is a tricky one, but you can focus on the approach to building a talent pool, sourcing candidates and trying out some sample scenarios for analyzing the TA specialist candidate’s abilities. 

Step 6: Extend Offers to Selected TA Specialists 

Reach out to selected talent acquisition specialists and decide on the compensation. Your negotiation skills come into the picture here. 

Next, extend your offer letter to all the candidates who have been selected. In the case of passive sourcing, extend to only those who were aligned with you on the compensation and are willing to move forward. 

Ensure having a deadline for the joining date and mention the necessary documents required by your recruiting team. 

Step 7: Onboard Candidates Who Accept the Offer

  • Get the required documents and set up the offer agreements with candidates
  • Organize an orientation session for the onboarded candidates 
  • Introduce them to the entire team and the teams they will be working with
  • Guide the new candidates about your HR tools and communication channels
  • Provide candidates with forms for benefits and perks like Health Insurance.

Things to Keep in Mind While Recruiting Talent Acquisition Specialist?

Hiring talent acquisition specialists is a critical job as the candidates hired would be driving the recruitment and hiring of your organization. The entire business depends on the talent that you acquire and hence the people interacting and assessing with your candidates must be skilled, experienced, and adaptive enough.

  1. The candidates you shortlist must be pro communicators and ace relationship-building exercises by remaining composed in all situations.
  2. Analyze the candidate’s ability to adapt to multiple role requirements.
  3. Gauge their talent sourcing and niche-hiring experience.
  4. In case you want to hire a TA specialist who will be taking upon technical hiring, check the candidate’s technical knowledge.
  5. Make decisions based on the success of previous hires and a unique approach toward convincing talent.

Accelerate Your Hiring for Product Manager with Nurturebox 

Hiring talent acquisition experts is not a piece of cake today. With new-age companies growing astoundingly fast and scouting for skilled recruiters, you need to take a step ahead. To find the best talent acquisition candidates who would further drive your hiring, leverage automation for accelerating passive talent sourcing and engagement. 

Nurturebox is a one-stop talent sourcing and engagement automation platform. Take a look at how you can source talent acquisition specialists from LinkedIn using Nurturebox:

  • Install the Nurturebox Chrome plugin and sign up.
  • On your LinkedIn profile, begin searching for talent acquisition specialists with boolean searches stating the required experience from targeted locations and including other criteria.
  • Add qualified candidates to your sourcing campaign pipeline with just a click.
  • Automate candidate engagement through email, Whatsapp, and LinkedIn direct messages for reaching out and nurturing candidates at scale.  

Amidst today’s noisy digital world, brands find it challenging to create meaningful connections with their customer base and target audience. Getting the target consumer’s attention and persuading them to buy from you gets even trickier. Hence, content marketing has become more crucial than ever for brands to attract, educate, and retain customers.

Content creation is a top priority for 80% of marketers, and there is no reason it shouldn’t be. Consistent, high-quality, and engaging content impacts your audience’s decisions through education and persuasion.

Depending on your business goals and requirements, the role of Content Marketers you hire will vary. The primary responsibilities revolve around forming consistent brand messaging and deciding upon a unique and identifiable voice, style, and pitch across various distribution channels.

From raising brand awareness to attracting a relevant audience to your website, boosting social media presence and engagement, generating leads, and building brand loyalty – content marketing drives all the growth efforts for your brand. When done effectively, it can help you:

  • Build positive brand awareness
  • Make your audience stick around for longer
  • Get better traction on social media
  • Gain more trust of your audience than ever
  • Generate qualified leads
  • Improve conversion rates
  • Boost business visibility with SEO
  • Position your brand as an authority
  • Cultivate loyal brand fans

While content marketing is a broad role with numerous areas of expertise involved, it’s vital to thoroughly understand your company’s current marketing goals and the related requirements. In this blog, we will dive deep into the step-by-step approach to hiring a Content Marketer.

What is The Role of a Content Marketer?

A Content Marketer must be deeply passionate about telling your brand’s story to the world. The objective is to educate and nurture the target audience to establish brand authority using thought-leadership and drive more people to buy from you.

As a candidate is expected to be a mediator between the brand and the target audience, they are primarily responsible for planning, creating, and sharing valuable content to grow their company’s awareness and engagement to bring more business.

To be more specific, the role of a Content Marketer requires a perfect blend of creativity and attention to detail in an individual. It’s a balancing role, as they need to ensure creating content that resonates and strengthens business relationships, using strategies that position your business as authentic and problem-solving.

Take a look at the core responsibilities of a Content Marketer that most businesses expect them to take over:

  • Research and Competitor Analysis: The first and foremost step to creating a content marketing strategy is effective initial research. It not only helps a Content Marketer understand the nuances of the industry through competitor analysis but also study and understand the target audience thoroughly.
  • Building Content Marketing Plans: Once the competitor research and target audience analysis is done, a Content Marketer needs to work on the different plans for all the business objectives, targeted channels, segments of the audience, and the bigger marketing strategy. A content marketing plan typically consists of:
  • Specific goals along with a pre-decided timeline
  • Various channels to be targeted for content distribution
  • Types of content to be created
  • Budget for the entire staff, outsourced services, and paid promotion (Collabs and Ads)
  • Creating Editorial Calendar: Creating, managing, and maintaining a content calendar is one of the most crucial responsibilities of a Content Marketer. It is a centralized visual document that enables effective collaboration among the marketing team and helps Content Marketers ensure on-time production and delivery.
  • Content Creation: Once the strategy and calendar have been approved by relevant stakeholders, Content Marketers need to do the on-ground work. This task usually depends on the scale of your company and content marketing strategy. Suppose an organization already has a set of writers, then the Content Marketer doesn’t need to create content by themselves.
  • Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Producing quality content that educates your target audience and resonates with them, isn’t enough. You need to optimize your content creation to make it search engine-friendly. While most companies need a dedicated SEO specialist for keyword research and planning, Content Marketers need to closely collaborate with them and should be well-versed in the basics of SEO.

While the practices discussed above are primary responsibilities of a Content Marketer, they also need to be proactive with

  • Content editing and ensuring adherence to a certain style guide    
  • Continous publishing and distributing content
  • Measuring and analyzing performance

How to Hire a Content Marketer: Step-By-Step?

Content marketing has become the key to driving growth for businesses. Unlike a few years ago, it’s not possible now to get away with a one-person team for content marketing. You need deeply trained individuals for specialist roles.

Let’s now dive into the step-by-step approach of hiring a Content Marketer. But before you even source your first candidate, you should have a clear expectation of the skillset and experience to look out for top content marketing candidates.

Top Must-Have Skills in a Content Marketer

Apart from having relevant industry experience, a good Content Marketer must possess the following skills.

  1. Excellent Writing Skills

A Content Marketer’s prior skillset should be writing excellent attention-grabbing content. From long-form blog posts to website copy, ad copies, social media content, video scripts, emails, newsletters, e-books, whitepapers, and more – a Content Marketer should be able to adapt to the business’s specific requirements and create quality content.

  1. Audience Research

Identifying user behavior is vital for framing the story in the right direction. So a Content Marketer must know how to identify and analyze the needs and pain points to develop a buyer persona. User research can be performed through social listening, relevant communities, in-person calls with customers, analyzing sales call recordings, and more.

  1. Keyword Research

Creating valuable thought-leadership content isn’t enough. Researching the right set of keywords is an essential skill to further educate your target audience on the Whys, Hows and Whats of your business, and have your website rank on Google.

  1. Data-oriented Content

Content that’s not backed by relevant data points does not build enough trust. Experienced content marketing professionals would always prefer data over hollow claims. No doubt that only data doesn’t help a content piece succeed, but it’s essential..

  1. Project Management, Planning, and Publishing –

A Content Marketer is also expected to break down and analyze the pain points to turn keyword research into content ideas. So a professional must be able to identify and solve content gaps.

Further, they must know how to create a content calendar, decide the different types of content, and choose relevant platforms to publish and schedule marketing campaigns.

  1. Content Promotion

Creating a valuable content piece, for example - an ebook, isn’t enough. Your content marketing team needs to promote it proactively for bringing enough attention and engagement.

  1. Performance Analysis

Setting up goals and plans is one thing, but continuously executing, measuring, and analyzing content performance is another. A Content Marketer should always be monitoring key performance parameters to figure out the upcoming plans with the necessary updates required.

Not to forget - stakeholders and marketing heads need the performance reports regularly. So Content Marketers must be able to collect and comprehend all the data to make it worth presenting.

Step 1: Create a Candidate Persona

Let’s sort out the priorities first, and decide the type of content marketing candidates you want to recruit. From exceptional research skills to storytelling, communication skills, relationship building, audience engagement, and more capabilities must be comprehensively considered. Identify and break down the skill requirements for Content Marketers:

  • What are the educational qualification criteria for the role?
  • How many years and what type of work experience do you want in candidates?
  • What are the specific skill sets you’re looking for?
  • Which industry experience would you primarily prefer?
  • Are there any tools your candidates should be hands-on with?
  • What are some personality traits that will fit your company?
  • Where do they look for a new job?
  • What are their career and life goals?

Forming a candidate persona by answering all these questions would ensure you are not shooting in the dark while sourcing candidates. Further, it helps you determine the traits of the ideal candidate, and plan your sourcing and recruitment strategy further.

Step 2: Document the Role Requirements and Decide on Your Recruiting Process

Next step is determining your role requirements suiting primarily to organizational needs and business goals. A content marketing professional is expected to own the entire content strategy, creation, and distribution. But what about your business’s unique requirements?

You might need someone comfortable with frequently creating long-form content pieces like blogs, ebooks, or whitepapers, or creating engaging video content based on your industry trends.

Talk to various relevant stakeholders for seeking the complete detailed company requirements for the role.

Before you enter the recruitment funnel, outline your talent acquisition process. Identify various strategies, channels, and other informational insights you would need – and maintain a collaborative document.

As you update the tactics and tweak your recruitment process for meeting hiring requirements optimally – keep your document up to date.

Step 3: Prepare a Content Marketing Job Description

Once you have finalized the role requirements with respect to your current content marketing goals and team, you can start sourcing candidates. Preparing the job description is the first task you’ll need to do.

Here are the necessary components you must have in your job description:

  • Job Title: The position you’re looking to fill. For example - Content Marketing Specialist or Content Marketing Manager.
  • Roles & Responsibilities: An outline of the candidate’s day-to-day activities. From ideation to implementation and the impact on the organization, everything should be covered.  
  • Skill Requirements: Skills and abilities a candidate must have to perform the job successfully.
  • Perks and Benefits: The compensation details, perks of the job, and any other benefits.
  • About the Company: Why should a candidate consider working with your company?

Content Marketer Job Description Template

Role

The job of a Content Marketer is to perform competitor research, create user persona, and write plagiarism-free content for blog articles, social media, and the company website. They need to stay updated on the latest SEO techniques.

Responsibilities

  • Develop, write and deliver persuasive copy for the website, email marketing campaigns, sales collateral, videos, and blogs
  • Build and manage an editorial calendar; coordinate with other content crafters to ensure standards
  • Measure impact and perform analysis to improve KPIs
  • Include and optimize all content for SEO
  • Contribute to the localization of processes and content to ensure consistency across regions
  • Review and implement process changes to drive operational excellence

Requirements

  • Proven content marketing, copywriting, or SEO experience
  • Working knowledge of content management systems like WordPress
  • A well-maintained portfolio of published articles, blogs, copy, etc
  • Proven experience of working under pressure to deliver high quality output in a short span of time
  • Proficiency in all Microsoft Office applications, Google Suite
  • Fluency in English or any other required language

Soft Skills

  • Excellent verbal and written communication skills
  • Excellent writing and editing skills
  • The ability to work in a fast-paced environment
  • The ability to handle multiple projects concurrently
  • Strong attention to detail and the ability to multi-task projects and deliverables

Step 4: Source Candidates

Once you have the tailored job description in hand, it’s now time to do the groundwork and source candidates. Create an attractive job post to promote your job across job boards and social channels.

  • Begin with what to expect from the role at your company?
  • Why should candidates apply for the position?
  • Highlight the growth opportunities
  • State the company vision and mission
  • Briefly describe the recruitment process

Prepare an impactful job post and also execute paid job ad campaigns if required. The next step would be promoting your jobs on various job boards and hiring platforms. You can leverage the following platforms for hiring Content Marketers:

  • LinkedIn
  • Indeed
  • Instahyre
  • ZipRecruiter
  • Monster
  • GlassDoor
  • CareerBuilder

Not to forget - almost 3/4th of the workforce includes passive candidates, so you cannot miss out on passive talent sourcing as well. Reach out to qualified candidates on communities, LinkedIn, Twitter, and even Facebook to offer them suitable opportunities.

Step 5: Evaluate Candidates and Interview Shortlisted Ones

Once you have filtered candidates based on their experience and skills listed on their profile, it’s time to evaluate them deeply. Ask them to create a content strategy for your website, along with a value-adding content piece like a small blog. The topic of the article must fall within the scope of the strategy.

Interview the candidates whose profiles got shortlisted. Keep in mind the parameters covering skills, relevant experience, and personality traits of candidates.

Step 5: Make the Hire

Reach out to selected Content Marketers and communicate about the compensation.

Further, extend your offer letter to all the candidates who have been selected. In the case of passive sourcing, extend to only those who were aligned with you on the compensation and are willing to move forward.

Ensure having a deadline for the joining date and mention the necessary documents required by your recruiting team.

  • Get the required documents and set up the offer agreements with candidates
  • Organize an orientation session for the onboarded candidates
  • Introduce them to the entire team and the marketing teams they will be working with
  • Guide the new candidates about your company management tools and communication channels
  • Provide candidates with forms for benefits and perks like Health Insurance.

Supercharge Your Hiring for Content Marketer with Nurturebox

Inbound candidate sourcing doesn’t work effectively anymore. Do you also find challenges in closing quality candidates through job posts even after spending on ads?

Don’t worry, passive candidate sourcing can be an optimal solution for hiring top content marketing candidates.

Nurturebox is a one-stop talent sourcing and engagement platform which is powered by automation. Here’s how you can source product managers from LinkedIn using Nurturebox:

  • Install the Nurturebox Chrome plugin and sign up.
  • On your LinkedIn profile, start sourcing Content Marketers with boolean searches stating the required experience from targeted locations and including other criteria
  • Add the qualified candidates to your sourcing campaign pipeline with just a click
  • Automate the candidate engagement through email, Whatsapp and LinkedIn direct messages for reaching out and nurturing candidates at scale.

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