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Learn more Talk to salesThe #1 ATS in market share, our cloud-based recruiting software is built for both commercial and large, global employers.
Learn more Talk to salesAttract the best talent for your business with powerful, on-brand career websites that excite candidates and drive engagement.
Learn more Talk to salesBuild talent pipelines, engage candidates with multi-channel marketing campaigns, and use machine learning to automatically surface the right talent for the job.
Learn more Talk to salesEmpower candidates with automated self-service, qualification screening, and interview scheduling through an AI-enabled digital assistant.
Learn more Talk to salesSimplify employee onboarding with automated processes that maximize engagement and accelerate productivity.
Learn more Talk to salesCompliment your sourcing and engagement efforts with award-winning lead scoring and advanced campaign personalization.
Learn moreImprove employee experience, retention, and reduce internal talent mobility friction with the iCIMS Opportunity Marketplace.
Learn more Talk to salesModernise, streamline, and accelerate your communication with candidates and personnel.
Learn more Talk to salesTransform the talent experience by showcasing your authentic employer brand through employee-generated video testimonials.
Learn more Talk to salesGet robust analytics that help you make sense of your data and illuminate your talent pool.
Learn moreSimplify recruiting, dynamically engage talent, and reduce hiring bias with job matching and recruiting chatbot technology.
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July 14, 2021 
5 min read
Recruitment and talent acquisition often get used interchangeably. No one is going to knock you for using one over the other in conversation. They sound like they’re the same thing.
While the goal is similar – hire amazing people – recruiting and talent acquisition differ tremendously in approach. In fact, they’re essentially polar opposites.
The main difference between recruiting and talent acquisition is short-term vs. long-term planning.
From our glossary of HR software terms: “Recruitment is the process of finding and screening qualified candidates for a specific position and offering the position to the best candidate.”
By contrast, talent acquisition is larger than any one position or moment in time. Whereas recruitment tends to be reactive, talent acquisition sources candidates proactively.
The difference between talent acquisition and recruiting can be explained by how people plan for vacation.
Some are up late packing a week’s worth of clothes the night before an early flight. They booked this trip on short notice, so there’s no real agenda. The deal was too good to pass up; they’ll figure it out when they get there.
Others work from a list they created months in advance and begin setting aside clothes and other essentials in the weeks leading up to their trip. They’re the kind of folks that buy (and read) travel guides. They know exactly where they’re going and what they’ll do when they get there, right down to their drink orders.
How do you know which your organization favors? Here’s a quick litmus test: Is your primary focus filling vacant roles today? Or are you focused on building relationships and fostering a community of talent for tomorrow?
You can’t plan for every retirement, promotion, or departure. Recruiting is there when you need to fill vacant roles quickly. There’s a clear short-term goal: fill the job and move onto the next.
Talent acquisition is an ongoing process of attracting and engaging talent with specific, sometimes niche skills, experiences, and perspectives. It’s also more strategic. It plans for a wide range of current and future business needs and is flexible enough to adapt as those needs change.
Recruitment doesn’t scale well because it’s focused on immediate needs in the short term. There’s only so much recruiters can accomplish in a day. A handful of vacant roles is one thing. But too many job openings without a clear plan to fill them can create pain for an organization. That pain expresses itself as employee burnout, lower productivity, and lost revenue.
Talent acquisition benefits from prior strategic planning. Acquiring a company, launching a new product, or opening a new location overseas? You’re probably going to need more people with specific skills and experience, perhaps in engineering, brand reputation, or cybersecurity.
The narrow scope of recruiting (e.g., fill this job) means you’re starting more or less from scratch for each new role. Success or failure is obvious and linear. With the talent acquisition process, there are more and quicker avenues to success. Your next great hire could be sourced externally, from an existing talent network, or filled by an internal candidate.
Both recruitment and talent acquisition have an appropriate time and place. All things being equal, talent acquisition wins out over recruitment because it approaches people as a strategic investment. That’s not to denigrate recruitment; sometimes the right move – the only move – is to get warm bodies into seats as quickly as possible. We don’t always have the luxury of planning ahead.
That said, talent acquisition takes into account how to attract, engage, hire, and advance the people at every level who are going to help your business thrive. It’s also better at adapting to the unexpected because recruiting teams that practice it are continuously building talent networks and engaging internal and external candidates. There’s no switch to flip on; it’s always running.
The world would be very different without talent acquisition. Without it, businesses would have a hard time scaling their workforces as needed. They’d be much more susceptible to fluctuations in the labor market. They would also inevitably find themselves on the back foot, at least sometimes. For example:
Talent acquisition makes sense because attracting and hiring passionate, qualified employees is an ongoing process. It only works when you’re attracting, engaging, hiring, and advancing the right people for your team. The whole thing falls apart when one or more of those processes falls out of step with the others.
This is where talent acquisition software can help you excel. For example, compelling career sites and employee video testimonials attract job seekers by build trust and highlighting company culture, mission, and benefits.
As you advance through the hiring process, candidate relationship management (CRM) and AI-powered recruiting chatbots help build talent networks and engage candidates. Advanced applicant tracking software (ATS) helps you hire the right talent for the right job.
Check out our 2021 recruiting strategies, your game plan to attract, engage, hire, and advance top talent throughout your organization.
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