As technology advances relentlessly, senior human resources executives must not only have the skills to do their job but also need to develop the skills of the future, a workshop heard in HCM City last week.

Nguyen Thi Quynh Phuong, director of executive search and selection at Talentnet, an HR consulting firm, said the top 10 skills that “talent acquisition” (TA) need to have in the industry 4.0 era include social selling with design thinking, recruiting with agility, situational judgement, commercial awareness, digital literacy-artificial intelligence, managing ethical dilemmas, data focus and storytelling, and market research and strategising.

Nguyen Cao Tri, vice president, SMB and retail business at steel firm NS BlueScope, said commercial awareness and data focus and storytelling skills are important skills for TA.

TA must tell candidates their company’s advantages compared to other companies to engage and inspire them to join.

Talent acquisition is a process that encompasses mapping, scanning, recruiting, acquiring, getting people on board, and retaining skilled human resources and developing them.

It is a long process and of course humans play a key role in recruiting and developing talent, but technology also plays a role in each stage of the process, he said.

Tran Van Tho, tax partner at Parker Randall, said TA need to have a scientist’s skills to analyse data and understand more about their candidates so that they can appeal to and influence candidates by storytelling about their companies.

Another important skill for TA is strategising, he said.

TA or HR managers must understand their companies’ operations to identify a talent pool so that they can approach and sign up talented people when the company needs them, he said.

LinkedIn other social networks, workshops and forums are sources for TA to search, network and build relationships with potential candidate communities to build a talent pool for their companies, he said.

Many companies have invested in tools to map talent in the market, even follow their movements in the job market to approach them when needed, he said.

Le Quang Dai, managing director of CLF (Duy Tan Group), said acquiring talent needs talent influencers/advisors’ skills.

TA must understand thoroughly about the position they need to recruit for to counsel candidates so that the latter can make the right decision, he said.

Delegates agreed that the development of technology has changed the way recruiting is done and TA must utilise new technologies in their job.

They also agreed that co-ordination between HR and other divisions in an organisation is key to a company’s success.

Phuong from Talentnet also spoke about global recruitment trends by sector, function and geography.

The technology sector is expected to experience the strongest growth this year, followed by healthcare/life sciences, industry, financial services and retail, she said.

The US and Asia are forecast to see the biggest recruitment growth this year, she said.

The Association of Executive Search Consultants, which represents a vetted, exclusive class of executive search and leadership advisory firms world-wide, predicts that CEO/board of directors and IT director, finance director, sales director, and HR director are among functions forecast to experience the most demand growth this year, she said.

Organised by Talentnet, the workshop titled “Talent Acquisition: Blend with business” was attended by more than 100 delegates, mostly HR executives. — VNS