A Proactive Approach to Talent Acquisition in FMCG
In today’s highly competitive fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) industry, the last thing you want is to lose good talent to a competitor. The best way to prevent that is to take a proactive rather than reactive approach to talent acquisition.
Being proactive requires looking ahead to the skills needed in the future. It means having a strong training and development program to nurture and retain top talent. As the world embraces hybrid work, proactive companies are finalizing and rolling out official policies to ensure work gets done while their workers stay safe.
Take FMCG company Marico, for example. According to Amit Prakash, the company’s chief human resources officer, “Marico’s decision to become a hybrid workplace aims to appeal to the sensibilities and preferences of the new-age professionals while delivering on the business needs. With this development, we will be equipped to not only attract talent from across geographies but also mitigate attrition by retaining members who choose to leave due to locational constraints.”
That’s forethought.
An end-to-end talent lifecycle management strategy can help your company transition to a proactive approach to talent acquisition, putting your talent team in the driver’s seat to build pipelines, engage talent and fill roles as soon as they become vacant.
What is a talent pipeline?
A talent pipeline is not just a collection of resumes or applications. “Instead, it’s a critical corporate asset that must be actively nourished,” according to Forbes. “A talent pipeline is a living and breathing community of highly credentialed talent in which your HR and recruitment leaders are constantly submerged.”
For a talent pipeline to be effective, you have to target and build relationships with candidates who could be a great fit for your company. Think of it as “relationship-centric” recruiting. It requires forethought like Marico showed to think ahead to what talents and skills will be needed in the future and to look for and nurture candidates who possess those skills and talents.
A proactive approach to talent acquisition like this tends to result in better candidates, engaged passive candidates (those not actively looking for a new role), improved diversity and a better candidate experience.
How to build a talent pipeline
Before you can start building a talent pipeline, you need to inventory the skills you have in-house, evaluate your long-term business plan, and determine what skills and roles you’re likely to need in the future.
To do this effectively, you need to be able to access all the talent-related data at your disposal. If that data is kept in different systems, it won’t do your company a whole lot of good. So the first place to start is by centralizing all of the data to provide a single source of truth. A talent data platform, a vital component of a talent lifecycle management strategy, can help.
Another important component of talent lifecycle management is artificial intelligence (AI). AI can save your talent teams tons of time wading through talent data. It’s able to map data points and skills to give you a big picture of the talent you have in-house and to expose gaps where additional skills are needed. This picture can then put you in a good position to plan for talent needs five and 10 years down the road.
Equipped with that information, you can start engaging with passive candidates who possess those future-needed skills or show potential to develop them. A good place to start engaging is with the candidates who previously applied for positions at your company but weren’t selected to be hired.
Attracting and nurturing talent
Beyond engaging “silver medalist” candidates, your talent teams can look for and find good-fit candidates through job-seeking platforms such as LinkedIn and through events. Create opportunities for candidates to meet your team, to get familiar with the company and to see firsthand what a day in the life might look like. And be sure to personalize the experience.
Regardless of where you find the talent, it’s important to keep communication open with potential candidates to keep them engaged with your company and “warm” to opportunities as soon as they open. Engagement can be as simple as having them read a blog they might find interesting and asking for their opinion or feedback. Or, it could be having them complete a survey to get a better feel for what they look for in a company.
A Fortune India article summed it well, “HR teams must customize their talent management practices and maximize opportunities presented by the new hiring landscape. It is important to adapt their approach to talent acquisition in the present landscape, thereby improving business value, and positioning their organizations to attain their objectives.”
Learn how Beamery helps FMCG companies create an effective talent pipeline.