Talent acquisition: what it is and how it differs from traditional recruitment

A vacancy opens, the HR department publishes a job ad, reviews CVs, organises interviews and closes the process. With the next vacancy, everything starts from scratch. This model works as long as the market supplies candidates. When candidates are scarce, the company pays for it with longer time to fill, agency fees and projects waiting for people. According to ManpowerGroup's "Talent Shortage 2026" report, 57% of employers in Poland report difficulties filling positions, and Tomasz Walenczak, Managing Director of ManpowerGroup Poland, believes the labour market is shifting from a quantitative shortage towards a qualitative one – companies are moving away from mass hiring towards acquiring highly specialised skills.

That is why more and more organisations talk about talent acquisition. The thesis of this article: talent acquisition is not a new name for recruitment, but a broader, continuous system that connects business plans with the employer brand, sourcing, selection and onboarding of new employees. Recruitment is part of it – an important part, but not the only one.

Talent acquisition – what is it?

Talent acquisition is a strategic, long-term approach to hiring in which an organisation determines in advance which skills it will need, builds access to candidates and hires people who will help achieve its business goals.

SHRM, the US association of HR professionals, frames it similarly in the description of its credential programme (as of November 2026): talent acquisition goes beyond filling open positions and covers identifying, attracting and retaining the right people so that they support the company's strategic goals and long-term growth.

The key features of this approach:

• a horizon longer than a single vacancy – planning covers the coming quarters and years, not just current needs;
• continuity – contact with potential candidates continues even when the company is not recruiting;
• link to the business – priorities stem from the company's strategy, not only from managers' requests;
• measuring results – what counts is not only the speed of hiring, but also the quality and durability of hires.

Talent acquisition in Polish: what to call it

The most accurate Polish equivalent is "pozyskiwanie talentów" (literally: acquiring talent). Polish companies also use names such as "dział pozyskiwania talentów" (talent acquisition department) or "zespół ds. pozyskiwania pracowników" (employee acquisition team). The English term remains in use mainly in job titles, the names of departments in international companies and in industry reports – so it is worth knowing, but in internal communication the Polish term works perfectly well. Literal translations such as "akwizycja talentów" sound artificial and are best avoided.

How talent acquisition differs from traditional recruitment

The difference does not lie in the tools, but in the starting point and the time horizon. Traditional recruitment starts with a vacancy. Talent acquisition starts with the question of what people the company will need and where it will find them.

This does not mean traditional recruitment is worse. In many companies – especially smaller ones or those that hire rarely – it is entirely sufficient. Talent acquisition makes sense where hiring is frequent, skills are hard to find and the cost of a wrong or late decision is high.

What a talent acquisition system consists of

Workforce planning

The starting point is a plan: which roles and skills will be needed, when and where. In a press release from February 2026, Gartner reports that in a July 2025 survey of 426 HR leaders, 42% named strategic workforce planning as one of their top priorities. Gartner describes it as planning the skills needed to achieve goals over a three-to-five-year horizon – as opposed to recruitment, which plans roles for the coming year. The same release states that only 31% of recruiting teams use labour market data to shape business and talent strategy.

Employer brand and value proposition

Candidates compare offers. Pay, scope of work, development opportunities, flexibility and benefits all matter. A consistent, credible employer value proposition makes every subsequent process easier, because candidates already know what to expect. Part of this proposition is the benefits package – we write about how to build and communicate it in the article Employee benefits in recruitment. Companies that want to give employees freedom in choosing benefits can use, for example, Nais eVouchers – a solution from Nais, a company in the same group as ShareHire.

Sourcing and the candidate pool

Talent acquisition assumes that the company does not wait for candidates to apply on their own. It actively reaches people who are not looking for a job and stays in touch with them. We describe the details in Passive recruitment and Your own candidate database.

Internal recruitment and referrals

The closest to the company are its current employees – as candidates for new positions and as people who can refer someone from their network. Well-planned talent acquisition always checks these two sources first. When it is better to bet on internal promotion and when on an external candidate is explained in the article Internal and external recruitment. How to organise referrals – in the guide Employee referral programme from A to Z.

Selection and candidate experience

Even the best-fed funnel achieves nothing if the selection process is unclear, too long or poorly rated by candidates. Talent acquisition therefore also covers choosing assessment methods and caring for contact with the candidate at every stage. See: Recruitment and selection methods and Candidate experience – what it is and how to measure it.

Onboarding and retention

The process does not end with signing the contract. If a new person leaves after a few months, the whole effort has to be repeated. That is why a measure of talent acquisition effectiveness is also how new employees go through onboarding and whether they stay with the company. Helpful reading: Employee onboarding step by step and Employee retention.

Talent acquisition management: how to run this function

Managing talent acquisition means organising people, processes and data so that the company hires predictably. In practice, it covers several areas.

Roles in the team

Larger organisations usually have the following roles (titles differ between companies):

• talent acquisition manager or director – responsible for strategy, budget, metrics and cooperation with the management board;
• talent acquisition partner or recruiter – runs processes for selected departments and advises managers;
• sourcing specialist – actively searches for candidates and handles the first contact;
• recruitment coordinator – organises meetings, documentation and communication with candidates;
• employer branding specialist – responsible for the company's communication as an employer.

In small companies all these tasks are often performed by one or two people. Then it is especially important to set priorities: which activities to run continuously and which only for a specific vacancy.

Processes and technology

The foundation is a single, consistent process flow for the whole company and a system in which candidate and source data are recorded. Most often this is an ATS – we write about when a company needs one and how to choose it in the article ATS – what it is and whether your company needs one. An overview of other tool categories can be found in Recruitment and selection tools.

Artificial intelligence plays an increasingly important role. In LinkedIn's "Future of Recruiting 2025" report, 37% of organisations said they were implementing or experimenting with generative AI tools in recruitment (27% a year earlier). People who used them estimated the time saved at around 20% of their working week. We write about where AI really helps and where it does harm in AI in recruitment.

Cooperation with the business

Talent acquisition only works when the HR team knows the business's plans in advance. Practical tools include regular reviews of the workforce plan with management, jointly agreeing job profiles and regular reports on the labour market situation.

How to measure talent acquisition effectiveness

Metrics should answer three questions: how fast, how costly and how well the company hires. The most commonly used measures:

What does this look like in large markets? According to SHRM (2025 Benchmarking, Recruiting; a survey of 2,371 SHRM members in the US), the average cost per hire was USD 5,475 for nonexecutive hires and USD 35,879 for executive hires, and only 20% of organisations measure quality of hire. These are US market data, so they should not be transferred directly to Polish conditions – but they show well that cost per hire rises with the level of the position, and that quality of hire is still rarely measured. LinkedIn's "Future of Recruiting 2025" report points to a similar problem: 89% of talent acquisition professionals believe that measuring quality of hire will become increasingly important, but only 25% are very confident that their organisation does it effectively.

Detailed formulas and interpretation of the metrics can be found in the articles KPIs in recruitment and HR and How much does it cost to hire an employee?.

When a company needs talent acquisition and when recruitment is enough

Talent acquisition as a separate function makes sense when a company meets at least some of the following conditions:

• it hires regularly, not just a few times a year;
• it looks for skills that are hard to find on the market or in its region;
• it is planning growth, entering a new market or opening a new location;
• it pays high recruitment agency fees;
• it loses candidates to competitors at the offer stage;
• it sees high turnover in the first year of employment.

If a company hires rarely and positions are easy to fill, an extensive function is not needed. In that case it is worth adopting a few elements: a simple annual workforce plan, an organised candidate database and a referral programme.

First steps: how to move from recruitment to talent acquisition

1. Collect data on current processes. Time to fill, costs, sources of hire and first-year departures will show where the biggest losses are.
2. Agree a workforce plan with the management board. A simple list of roles needed within 12 months, with critical positions marked, is enough.
3. Choose positions for proactive work. For the hardest roles, start building a candidate pool before a vacancy appears.
4. Organise internal sources. Check whether employees know about open positions and can easily refer friends or apply themselves.
5. Strengthen the employer value proposition. Describe honestly what the company offers – pay, development, flexibility, benefits – and keep this message consistent across all channels.
6. Introduce a metrics review. Once a quarter, analyse the costs, time and quality of hires by channel, and translate the conclusions into the budget.

Summary

Talent acquisition is a broader and more proactive approach than traditional recruitment. It starts with a workforce plan, covers the employer brand, sourcing, internal recruitment and referrals, selection and onboarding, and its effectiveness is measured not only by speed, but also by the quality and durability of hires. Not every company needs an extensive department – but every company can adopt a few practices from this approach that lower costs and shorten time to fill.

One of the simplest elements of such a system is an employee referral programme: it taps into the current team's networks and provides data that make it possible to compare referrals with other channels. ShareHire helps design, launch and measure it. If you want to see how referrals can support talent acquisition in your company, discover ShareHire.

Sources (accessed: 10 November 2026)

• ManpowerGroup Poland, "Niedobór talentów 2026" (Talent Shortage 2026; survey of 502 companies in Poland, October 2025): https://manpowergroup.pl/raporty/raport-manpowergroup-niedobor-talentow-2026/
• ManpowerGroup Poland, "Blisko 6 na 10 firm w Polsce nie może zrekrutować nowych pracowników" (press release, 3 March 2026; survey period 1–31 October 2025): https://biuroprasowe.manpowergroup.pl/448722-blisko-6-na-10-firm-w-polsce-nie-moze-zrekrutowac-nowych-pracownikow
• SHRM, Talent Acquisition Specialty Credential (programme description): https://www.shrm.org/credentials/specialty-credentials/talent-acquisition
• Gartner, "Gartner HR Research Finds Only 31% of Recruiting Teams Use Labor Market Data to Inform Their Talent Strategy", 18 February 2026: https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2026-2-25-gartner-hr-research-finds-only-31-percent-of-recruiting-teams-use-labor-market-data
• SHRM, "SHRM Releases 2025 Benchmarking Reports" (press release, 2025): https://www.shrm.org/about/press-room/shrm-releases-2025-benchmarking-reports--how-does-your-organizat
• LinkedIn, "The Future of Recruiting 2025": https://business.linkedin.com/hire/resources/future-of-recruiting