Most organizations have a difficult challenge: how to acquire and retain qualified talent. In today's increasingly tight talent market, executives know that talent management is becoming much more complex. Some organizations struggle just to fill open positions with qualified candidates. To truly succeed, they must use talent management systems and strategies to consistently acquire and retain the best talent available and become an employer of choice.

The Talent Shortage is a Present and Growing Reality

When McKinsey wrote The War for Talent in 2001, they predicted the talent shortage that we now face. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the US will experience a labor shortfall of 10 million workers by 2010. The 500 largest US companies expect to lose 50 percent of their senior management in the next five years. Forty percent of these companies do not have a leadership succession plan.

People Are the Difference, Talent Is the Strategy

Yesterday's managers saw people primarily as a labor expense. Today, managers at leading organizations view human capital as their most valuable asset. The best differentiator in a world of accelerating commoditization of all products and services is having a dynamic talent pool that has experience and can adapt. The true differentiation of any organization is the culture, the people—the talent. Talent is the sole source of sustained innovation—and has been historically the foundation of competitive differentiation, performance, and value creation. Talent management enables organizations to continually challenge the market and grow. Growth is the primary characteristic of a winning organization and a winning team becomes an employer of choice.

Become an Employer of Choice

Establish your employment brand. That starts at your careers site where the online job browser decides to become an applicant and begins the candidate experience. Hopefully, that leads to automated recruiting, hiring, and onboarding processes—followed by a high performance employment experience that encourages others to join your organization through personal references and social networks.

Take Advantage of Advanced Sourcing Techniques, Social Networks and Blogs

Sourcing talent has changed. Job boards and agencies provide a foundation, but online social networks such as MySpace, Jobster, H3, and LinkedIn are becoming forces in talent acquisition. Understand and use social networks in your sourcing strategy to build your talent management database, extend your employment brand, and acquire top talent.

You Can't Improve What You Can't Measure

Your talent processes are only as good as your visibility into the metrics. Measure, analyze, and optimize your staffing and deployment strategies. Talent systems with analytic dashboards for recruiters and managers capture data and present actionable information for improvement.

Develop and Execute Your Acquisition and Retention Strategies

Talent strategies focusing on acquisition and retention are making an impact. Books-A-Million—the third largest book retailer in the US with 200 stores—differentiates with customer service by hiring people who enjoy reading and helping people who buy books. They use skills assessment tests and metrics developed by a team of psychologists to assess a candidate’s affinity for reading and how likely they are to perform well with customers.

OfficeMax manages talent acquisition across 900 stores on a single system that handles requisition creation, assessment, candidate management, and a talent pool process to identify and share qualified candidates.

A large global clothing retailer established specific branded careers sites and kiosks to attract candidates who fit their culture. They then use focused assessments to screen, interview, and hire the candidates who exhibit a superior product sense.

These are just a few examples. In the retail sector alone, talent strategies have improved efficiency by 80 percent, reduced hiring time by 70 percent, and increased retention by as much as 15 percent. On-demand talent management processes drive these successful initiatives.

As the talent shortage becomes more acute, successful HR executives in all industries will use talent management strategies to power employer of choice initiatives and move beyond the simple survival of filling positions. They will attract top talent, retain top talent, build high performance cultures, and drive superior business performance.