Part of the talent strategy cluster. This is educational, operational guidance that connects to the wider site — the employee lifecycle, employer operations, metrics and templates.
Adapt it to your strategy, capability needs and context.
Why it matters
At the executive level, attracting and hiring the talent the business needs decides whether the business has the people it needs to deliver. A clear strategy turns capability needs into priorities and programs, instead of reacting role-by-role.
Strategy connects capability to outcomes.
Key concepts
- The talent the strategy needs.
- Employer brand and pipeline.
- Build-vs-buy-vs-borrow.
- Quality of hire as the goal.
Operational framework
- Set the strategic objectives and target capabilities.
- Map current vs needed capability.
- Design the programs and priorities to close the gap.
- Connect to workforce planning and the lifecycle.
- Govern, measure and report on a cadence.
Workforce considerations
- Which capabilities to hire for.
- Where pipelines must be built.
- How brand supports attraction.
- How quality is judged.
Common challenges
- Reactive, role-by-role hiring.
- A brand that overpromises.
- Thin pipelines.
- Speed over quality.
Best practices
- Plan acquisition against capability needs.
- Build honest brand and pipelines.
- Decide build/buy/borrow explicitly.
- Govern by quality of hire.
Common mistakes
- No acquisition strategy.
- Overpromising the brand.
- No pipeline.
- Ignoring quality.
Measure this with the quality of hire metric, put it into practice with the recruitment planning template, and run it as a system via hiring forecasting.
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