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Sean Stern is the Director of Talent Acquisition for Goodwill of Greater Washington (Goodwill), where he is responsible for leading a group of extraordinary talent acquisition partners on Goodwill's People and Culture team, to deliver and recruit new incoming talent for available opportunities. Sean works with the organization's senior team leaders to support the strategy building and management of recruitment processes for Goodwill.
We asked Sean what he thinks a lot of people might not know or understand about talent acquisition. A greater understanding will lead to better collaboration, appreciation, and employee retention.
Here's what he shared with us.
Talent Acquisition is more than a fancy name for recruiting. It is a full life cycle support in the hiring process for the 3 core customers we serve: The candidate, the Hiring Manager, and the organization (process and compliance). The support keeps strong candidate flow and an improved experience, from seeking out job ads through to application, interview staging, job offers, administration steps (such as background checks and drug testing), and finally, new hire onboarding.
Talent acquisition is not just posting “help wanted ads”. It starts with the evaluation of the entire candidate experience and evaluation. We not only work to connect with potential and future employees, but we also are constantly supporting the brand or the " employee value proposition". Supporting the experience of the candidates as a positive engagement, keeping our hiring managers informed of our candidate vetting and pipeline building, but also doing administrative support to always drive the efficiency of hiring. Presenting our New Hire Orientation and tracking for proper compliance and successful completion of this important step also lies with People and Culture and the Talent Acquisition team. Delivery of this process both remotely and in person, supporting our engagement of our team, and making the first days of joining [Goodwill] not only informative but important- tracking all the required information needed in our information system.
To measure impact, we manage through improved time to hire (opening of new jobs to filling or closing the position), in addition to applicant flow rate to keep the available talent pool sufficient to meet the needs of Goodwill. We strive to keep vacancy rates at productive levels across all centers of excellence in the organization: our stores, our contract sites, our Excel Center charter high schools, and our administrative headquarters roles. Ultimately keeping the core customers we serve feeling informed, engaged, and their needs met. Our customers are our candidates and hiring managers alike!
Our team is always working together to meet the needs of our Goodwill, which also means regularly meeting with partners across the organization to keep our "elevator pitch" or employee value proposition up to date. What we do matters, and sharing how and why we support the community makes a difference every day with potential candidates looking to make that connection. Supporting each other as a team, and celebrating our successes is also important in how we build our team focus. It's not always a numbers game. We lay a foundation today as brand ambassadors that will bear fruit in months to come!
It's important that others understand that we have updated our ability and systems to reach more people and strive to share opportunities across many platforms. Whether in person, in our store iPad kiosks, or our effort in partnership with Marketing to help spread the word through our employer career website, Glassdoor, and Indeed outreach pages, as well as LinkedIn and social media pages. It is not just for the open jobs but the career path available for people interested in learning more.
You can reach us in so many different ways, chief among them at Recruiting@dcgoodwill.org. Even if you're just exploring an opportunity.
We are a diverse, inclusive, growing organization, ready to open our doors for more talent, not close them.