There’s a lot to get your head around when it comes to talent acquisition. Maybe you’ve made some bad hiring decisions in the past and you’re afraid of making another. Or perhaps your hiring drive went well before — but took so long that you’re determined to find a more efficient way. Wouldn’t it be great to have a full overview of the whole talent acquisition process in one place?
Our talent acquisition playbook covers every step:
including understanding what your open roles require, advertising the job, screening and interviewing candidates, and extending an offer before onboarding your new hire.
Meet with our hiring coaches today to see how AI can slash 90% of the time from your hiring process. Start filling jobs faster right away, with 10x higher quality people.
What is Talent Acquisition?
Talent acquisition is the process of identifying, accessing, and recruiting workers for an organization, with a focus on finding the best fit for the role. Sometimes, used to mean “recruitment,” talent acquisition is more accurately about long-term planning, not reactive short-term hiring.
First Things First: Use AI
Using AI (artificial intelligence) where possible will make the talent acquisition process faster and easier, reducing your recruitment costs dramatically. It can potentially save you over 90 hours for each new hire:
| Task | Typical ATS Time | AI ATS Time |
| Write job description | 4 hours | 10 minutes |
| Post to job boards | 1 hour | 1 minute |
| Resume review | 15 hours | 2 hours |
| Pre-screening | 15 hours | 2 hours |
| Interview scheduling | 10 hours | 5 minutes |
| Conduct interviews | 40 hours | 4 hours |
| Decision process | 4 hours | 3 hours |
| Offer and paperwork | 4 hours | 10 minutes |
| Pre-onboarding | 10 hours | 10 minutes |
| Totals | 103 hours | 12 hours |
In this talent acquisition playbook, we’ll highlight key ways to use AI to bring this dream into the waking HR world.
1. Assess Your Open Roles
Before you jump into hiring, partner with business operations to find out exactly what job duties each role will require and what separates a “good” candidate from a “great” one. Getting clear about this difference up front means you’re far more likely to hire someone who’ll perform well — and who’ll stick around.
2. Create Job Descriptions (Job Ads)
During the first step, you likely began moving toward creating a clear job description. That’s a document that sets out what the role involves, and what skills and qualifications it requires. But writing a working job description or job ad can take hours. So — write your job descriptions with ChatGPT. Here’s how:
Prompt:
"Create a formal job description for a construction foreman, not a job post not a job advertisement. The Job description should be formal and focused on sharing the Objectives and Key Results and Key Performance Indicators for the job. It should also discuss what problem the person in this role solves for both the internal and external customers.
Lastly include potential skills, qualities and experiences that would be helpful for someone to have or need to develop inorder to be successful at achieving the OKRs and KPIs.
These can be listed as Key skills, abilities and knowledge required to perform the job duties as described."
ChatGPT response:
"Job Description: Construction Foreman
Position Overview:
The Construction Foreman plays a pivotal role in the successful execution of construction projects undertaken by our organization. This position is responsible for overseeing and coordinating the daily operations of construction sites, ensuring that projects are completed on time, within budget, and to the highest quality standards. The Construction Foreman reports directly to the Project Manager and collaborates closely with various stakeholders, including internal teams and external clients, to achieve project objectives.
Key Objectives:
- Project Efficiency: Ensure that construction projects are executed efficiently and effectively, meeting or exceeding established timelines and budgetary constraints.
- Quality Assurance: Maintain a high level of construction quality and safety, adhering to industry standards and regulatory requirements.
- Resource Management: Effectively allocate and manage resources, including personnel, equipment, and materials, to optimize project productivity.
- Team Leadership: Lead and motivate the construction team to ensure they work cohesively and meet project goals while fostering a culture of safety and excellence.
- Client Satisfaction: Deliver projects that meet or exceed client expectations, resulting in high levels of satisfaction and potential for repeat business.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs):
- Project Schedule Adherence: Ensure that construction projects adhere to established schedules, minimizing delays and disruptions.
- Budget Compliance: Keep construction projects within budgetary constraints, minimizing cost overruns.
- Safety Performance: Maintain a safe work environment with no recordable safety incidents, injuries, or accidents.
- Quality Control: Ensure that construction work consistently meets or exceeds quality standards and specifications.
- Team Productivity: Monitor and enhance the productivity and efficiency of the construction team, optimizing resource utilization.
- Client Feedback: Gather and assess client feedback to measure satisfaction levels and identify areas for improvement.
Problem Solving:
- Internal: The Construction Foreman solves resource allocation challenges, addresses on-site issues promptly, and maintains a motivated and efficient construction team.
- External: Externally, the Construction Foreman ensures client satisfaction by delivering high-quality construction projects on time and within budget, addressing any client concerns or requirements promptly.
Key Skills, Abilities, and Knowledge:
- Leadership: Ability to lead and manage a construction team effectively, fostering a culture of accountability, safety, and excellence.
- Construction Knowledge: In-depth knowledge of construction processes, materials, and methods, including familiarity with industry regulations and safety standards.
- Problem-Solving: Strong problem-solving skills to address on-site challenges and make informed decisions that impact project outcomes.
- Communication: Effective verbal and written communication skills for coordinating with internal teams, clients, and subcontractors.
- Time Management: Proficiency in time management to meet project deadlines and manage multiple tasks simultaneously.
- Safety Consciousness: A strong commitment to safety practices and the ability to enforce safety protocols on construction sites.
- Conflict Resolution: Capability to resolve conflicts and disputes efficiently, maintaining positive relationships with team members and stakeholders.
- Technical Proficiency: Familiarity with construction-related software and tools, including project management software and blueprint reading.
Experience:
- A minimum of 5 years of construction experience, with at least 2 years in a supervisory or foreman role.
- Experience in managing and coordinating construction projects of various sizes and complexity levels.
Qualities:
- Strong work ethic and dedication to project success.
- Adaptability and the ability to thrive in a fast-paced, dynamic construction environment.
- Attention to detail and a commitment to quality workmanship.
- Integrity and a focus on ethical conduct in all professional dealings.
The Construction Foreman is a critical role in our organization's quest for excellence in construction project delivery. Success in this role is measured by the achievement of the stated objectives and KPIs, as well as the ability to solve internal and external challenges efficiently and maintain high standards of construction quality and safety."
Discovered’s built-in recruitment AI can craft engaging job descriptions for you using powerful pre-determined prompts, turning these into true job ads that catch the attention of talented candidates:
3. Publish Job Descriptions
The best job ad in the world is useless if it doesn’t attract your next Tim Cook or Bob Iger. Get your compelling job descriptions into all the right places, so you can draw a pool of highly talented applicants. Simply putting your job description on your website and sharing it on social media isn’t enough. You also need to publish it on major job boards (many of which let you post a basic job ad for free).
The two must-have boards are Indeed and LinkedIn — plus any industry-specific boards that top talent will frequent when job-hunting.
Again, AI can speed this process up, with powerful integrations between ATS and job boards. You can take advantage of Discovered’s built-in integrations with Indeed and LinkedIn to post your job by simply clicking a button.
4. Create Candidate Scorecards
Candidate scorecards are an incredible tool for sifting the candidate wheat from the chaff. A high-quality candidate scorecard acts as a rating system, helping you ask interview questions that probe the exact skills and qualities your ideal candidate should have.
Your candidate scorecard lets you create an objective, like-for-like comparison between any two candidates, based on interviews’ independent scores. Extensive studies have shown that structured interviews are twice as effective as unstructured ones, making them an invaluable assessment method.
Again, you can use AI to speed up the process dramatically. Discovered – Performance Hiring Software’s built-in prompts can help you select key qualities and create an effective scorecard.
5. Screen Resumes
Wading through a stack of resumes can take hours. There’s a better way. Take a tip from highly successful organizations: over 98.8% of Fortune 500 companies use an ATS (Applicant Tracking System).
An ATS doesn’t replace your good judgment. Instead, its automated screening tools let you quickly check that candidates match up to your essential requirements.
6. Screen Candidates
Once you’ve ruled out the most obvious poor fits, it’s time to screen your candidates further. You can do that through:
Pre-employment skills assessments:
A shocking 78% of candidates lie on their resume – with 60% of those claiming to have mastered skills that they barely even use. That’s why it’s so essential to test for key skills, which you can easily do using proven pre-employment skills assessments that can improve your quality of hire by up to 90%.
Cultural fit assessments:
You need to hire employees who’ll be a great fit for their team — and you can assess that in a number of ways. One of the most effective is through DISC assessments — personality assessments that measure Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, and Conscientiousness — so you can avoid the 46% of new hires who fail due to poor attitude and personality fit:
Integrity testing:
If you test for nothing else, test for integrity. The Integrity First test is a simple but highly effective 8 minute survey that can cut your workers’ comp costs by 57%. Here’s the massive financial difference integrity testing can make:
Reference checking:
An astonishing 87% of business owners and hiring managers don’t check references. Yet reference checking (using previous direct supervisors) is the single most effective way to ensure a high-quality hire. With modern tools, reference checking is a breeze, so there’s no reason to skip this step.
Discovered – Performance Hiring Software incorporates all the screening assessments and automated reference checking you’ll need, so you can make confident hiring decisions without spending hundreds of hours on each one.
7. Interview
Once you’ve narrowed down your list of candidates with screening assessments, it’s time to interview your top picks. You’ll want to consider:
One-Way Video Interviews
When you use one-way video interviews instead of phone screening interviews, you won’t waste time on scheduling and no-shows. Instead, candidates can record their answers whenever they have time, and you can watch them at your convenience.
In-Person Interview
An in-person interview brings together the hiring manager, other decision-makers, and the candidate in real time. The key here? Only spend precious interview time on the few candidates you’ve screened to be best-chance matches for the role.
Often, you’ll want to carry out more than one round of interviews – especially for high-level roles. In your ATS, you can easily flag who’s been through the first round already.
Here are 72 interview guides covering almost all jobs known to humankind!
Working Interview
A working interview lets you fully engage with candidates and see what they can do on the job:
Create Interview Questions
Your interview questions should be based on your candidate scorecard, which lets you develop an interview guide. You can write them yourself, or use AI to come up with effective, insightful questions in seconds, like this:
Prompt:
Write 5 interview questions to assess whether a software developer has good communication skills.
ChatGPT response:
1. Can you describe a complex technical problem you've worked on to a non-technical stakeholder (e.g., a project manager or a client)? How did you ensure they understood the issue and the proposed solution?
This question assesses the candidate's ability to convey technical information in a clear and understandable manner to individuals who may not have a technical background.
2. Describe a situation where you had to provide feedback on a team member's code or work. How did you approach it, and what was the outcome?
This question evaluates their ability to provide constructive feedback in a professional and tactful manner, as well as their skill in handling potential conflicts or misunderstandings.
3. Can you give an example of a time when you had to document a complex technical process or system? How did you ensure that your documentation was clear and effective?
Documentation is a key aspect of communication in software development. This question assesses their ability to create clear and comprehensive documentation that can be easily understood by others.
4. Explain a project where you had to work with a remote or distributed team. How did you ensure effective communication and collaboration despite the physical distance?
Remote work and collaboration are increasingly common in software development. This question examines their ability to adapt their communication style and tools to work effectively in a distributed team.
5. Describe a situation where you had to communicate with a client or end-user to gather requirements for a software project. How did you ensure you fully understood their needs, and how did you ensure they understood the technical limitations and possibilities?
This question evaluates their ability to gather and clarify requirements, manage client expectations, and bridge the gap between technical and non-technical stakeholders.
Discovered’s built-in AI can help you to craft the perfect interview questions in just a few minutes.
8. Make Offers
Once you’ve chosen your preferred candidate for each role, it’s time to extend offers. You’ll typically do this via phone call and/or email, with details of the offer provided in writing. A good ATS will help you keep everything on track, right through the offer stage (and beyond).
Don’t leave highly talented candidates waiting around to hear back from you. You should aim to beat the average offer acceptance rate of 91%. Anything lower may mean you’re dragging out the process too long, or your salary and benefits package isn’t competitive.
9. Onboard
The talent acquisition process doesn’t end when your chosen candidate accepts the offer. It’s crucial to onboard new hires effectively, so they have a great experience and can fully contribute to your company as quickly as possible.
A strong onboarding process could increase your new hire retention by 82% and improve productivity by 70%. Yet you don’t need to spend hours creating it. You can design the perfect onboarding process fast with the help of AI:
10. Pay Attention to DEI
It’s vital to consider diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) when recruiting top talent. You want the best possible employees regardless of their gender, sexuality, nationality, race, or age. It’s easy when hiring to be swayed by unconscious bias, meaning teams can end up homogenous and lacking diversity — stifling creativity and innovation. Diverse teams can make better business decisions as much as 87% of the time, meaning that it’s crucial for your company’s success to pay attention to DEI when hiring.
Discovered: Your Talent Acquisition Partner
Discovered – Performance Hiring Software is a robust, full-featured recruitment platform that combines the power of an ATS with the efficiency of multiple AI integrations. The end result is a fast, smooth talent acquisition playbook with built-in execution. Schedule a demo today to see how Discovered can improve your hiring outcomes.
