7 Talent Acquisition Strategies for a Competitive Workforce

What is a Talent Acquisition Strategy? Key Differences from Recruitment

Before we dive in, let’s ground ourselves in terminology. Talent acquisition (or global talent acquisition, when applied across borders) is holistic and forward-looking. It focuses on building pipelines, employer branding, workforce planning, and long-term candidate relationships. The recruitment or hiring process is more transactional: it focuses on filling roles when they open.

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Where recruitment focuses on filling a vacancy, a talent acquisition strategy framework aligns hiring to business goals, addresses skills gaps in advance, and ensures you’re always engaging potential candidates – even when you're not actively hiring.

In today’s hiring landscape, with high competition for talent and rapid shifts in skills demands, you can’t afford to rely solely on recruitment. So, what can you do to futureproof your organization’s talent acquisition strategy? Let’s dive into some proven strategies.

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7 Core Talent Acquisition Strategies Every Company Should Use

Every company is different, but there are seven non-negotiable levers you can pull. If you want a strategy that scales, these should be the elements that you use to build your foundation and talent acquisition best practices.

1. Employer Branding

Did you know? 86% of job seekers research reviews before applying. People nowadays use a variety of online platforms and sources to research reviews. Social social platforms like LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook are just as important as Glassdoor and HelloPeter. Having strong employer branding can be what sets your company apart from the millions of other roles out there. It can influence whether your job postings convert or get lost in a crowded social media feed.

Where to get started with your employer branding:

• Build Where the Talent Is: With over 1 billion members, LinkedIn may be the biggest stage, but it’s not the only one. Candidates are scrolling TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and Glassdoor to size up your culture long before they hit “apply.” Use the free platforms at your disposal to let people see your values in action, hear your employees’ voices, and experience what it feels like to be part of your company.
• Showcase Company Culture Authentically: Share real employee stories, behind-the-scenes moments, and values in action. This gives job seekers a visceral sense of what working at your company will be like and whether they fit into it or not.
• Rope Your Employees In: The most credible sources of information for potential candidates are the people who already work at your company. Encourage your teams to post about their jobs, learnings, and team moments.

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2. Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI)

With 67% of job seekers reporting workplace diversity is an important factor when deciding whether to apply for a job, weaving DEI into your growth strategy transforms it from a compliance box to a genuine competitive advantage. It’s also a proven driver of innovation, performance, and engagement.

In global talent acquisition, DEI takes on the additional dimension of ensuring equity across borders. That means fair compensation, benefits, and career opportunities adapted to local contexts so every employee feels part of the same mission, no matter where they are.

How to hire for diversity, equity, and inclusion:

• Widen the Funnel: Audit your sourcing channels and job boards to ensure they’re reaching diverse candidate pools. For example, posting roles on platforms like TechLadies, PowerToFly, or local market-specific boards can drastically diversify inbound applicants.
• Design Inclusive Job Descriptions: Avoid jargon, gendered language, or “nice-to-haves” that unintentionally shrink the pipeline. Tools like Textio can flag biased wording and help optimize postings for broader appeal.
• Diversify Interview Panels: Representation at the interview stage signals seriousness about inclusion and reduces bias in decision-making. If you’re interviewing a woman for example, consider having a woman in the room.

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Ten tips to promote DEI in your workplace

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3. Employee Referrals

Referrals consistently deliver faster, higher-quality hires, with some companies seeing up to 30% of successful new hires from referrals. They come with a verifiable track record and also strengthen culture because they’re already connected to your team.

In a global context, referrals are especially powerful: distributed employees often have trusted networks in markets you’re just entering, making them natural talent scouts.

How to develop your referral program:

• Turn Employees Into Talent Scouts: Provide role descriptions and examples of your ideal candidate to guide employees.
• Reward and Recognize: Bonuses help, but recognition goes further. Public shoutouts or quarterly referral awards motivate employees to keep participating. Even highlighting a single employee referral story can boost momentum.
• Expand Globally Through Networks: Remote employees bring local reach. Encourage them to tap into their regional networks and professional communities, helping you access talent pools that may otherwise be invisible to traditional recruiting channels.

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Referrals are a fantastic way to bring in skilled talent that fits your company’s unique culture, because employees naturally recommend people they believe will thrive in your environment. With the referrer knowing both the organisation and the candidate, there’s already a built-in check for alignment before they even apply.

Rachel Kiggel, People & Culture Specialist at Playroll

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4. Data-Driven Hiring & AI Tools

AI is reshaping recruitment, with 72% of recruiting leaders believing it will improve quality-of-hire measurement. For companies hiring across borders, AI tools can be a powerful asset. It helps you spot which sourcing channels, job boards, and candidate behaviors perform best in each region, insights you’d struggle to gather manually.

But it’s not a silver bullet. No algorithm can replace the expertise of a seasoned recruiter or EOR with established global connections and an understanding of the cultural nuances that make or break a hire. The real power comes when you use AI for scale and efficiency, while relying on human judgment for context, connection, and trust.

How you can use AI tools to your advantage:

• Use Data to Optimize Job Ads: A/B test job postings to learn which formats attract better candidates.
• Track Funnel Health: Monitor drop-off from application to offer to spot weak points. If most candidates exit after a skills test, it may be too long or misaligned.
• Leverage AI Screening: AI tools auto-rank resumes to surface qualified candidates faster. Modern ATS platforms can cut screening time in half while reducing human bias.

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5. Candidate Experience Optimization

A bad candidate experience can cost you top talent and the proof is in the numbers: 36% of applicants have declined an offer due to a negative process. Positive experiences, even for those not hired, reinforce your brand.

For global teams, candidate experience must also account for cultural differences. Timely communication, respectful rejections, and localized onboarding show candidates they’re valued.

How to optimize your hiring process:

• Simplify Applications: Keep your application forms short. Ideally it should take under 7 minutes to complete. In some cases, a more detailed application can help deter unqualified applicants, you’ll have to use your judgment based on role seniority.
• Communicate Consistently: Even quick rejection emails are considered good etiquette when it comes to candidate experience. Both successful and unsuccessful applicants will be far less likely to share negative reviews if they feel respected.
• Gather Feedback: Post-interview surveys uncover friction points. Have a chat with your successful applicants to find out what works and where the gaps are in your interview process.

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What are the challenges of hiring international employees?

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6. Internal Mobility & Upskilling

If you’re finding it tough to fill a niche role through external recruitment, it’s often worth looking closer to home. Around a third of organizations now retrain existing employees for hard-to-fill positions, which not only saves on hiring costs but also strengthens retention. When people see opportunities to grow inside the company, they’re far more likely to stay.

And when you’re expanding globally, internal mobility carries even more weight. Moving trusted employees into new offices can help bridge cultural gaps, set the tone for company values, and create local leadership pipelines that are already aligned with your mission.

How to ancourage mobility:

• Map Skills and Gaps: Maintain a database of employee skills to align with workforce planning. Companies like Unilever treat skills as an asset they manage and grow.
• Create Internal Marketplaces: Make internal roles transparent. For example, Microsoft’s talent marketplace boosted retention by giving employees access to cross-team gigs.
• Invest in Upskilling Programs: Provide structured internal training opportunities for hard-to-fill roles. This will both help you fill the role and make your team feel like you’re interested in their career development.

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The pros and cons of hiring international employees

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7. Global Talent Acquisition

With global regulations shifting constantly – from rising H1B visa fees in the U.S. to tighter border controls in Europe – the old playbook of relocating talent is becoming harder and more expensive. At the same time, workers themselves are pushing for remote-first opportunities, giving companies more freedom to meet talent where they are instead of moving them across borders.

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Get in-depth hiring guidance in 180+ markets

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But with this opportunity comes complexity: compliance, payroll, benefits, and misclassification risks can sink global expansion if not managed carefully. That’s why global talent acquisition requires both strategy and the right infrastructure.

How to hire borderless talent:

• Hire Where Skills Are Scarce: Instead of competing in oversaturated local markets, go where the talent actually lives and bring them on as remote employees. This opens access to specialized skills while cutting time-to-hire.
• Leverage Employer of Record Solutions: EORs make it possible to hire compliantly in any country without setting up local entities. They handle contracts, payroll, and benefits so you can focus on building the team rather than wrestling with red tape.
• Localize the Experience: Tailor pay, benefits, and perks to local expectations. What matters most to candidates in Brazil or India may look very different than in Germany or the U.S. Getting this right shows respect and increases offer acceptance rates.

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Ready to build your borderless team?

Hiring globally doesn’t have to mean wrestling with compliance, payroll, or entity setup. Partner with Playroll and we’ll have you onboarding talent in 180+ countries – quickly, compliantly, and without the overhead.

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How to Build and Implement Your Talent Acquisition Strategy

It’s one thing to know the strategic pillars of talent acquisition, but another to bring them to life in a way that’s measurable and sustainable. Here’s a framework for turning ideas into execution.

Step 1: Assess Your Current Hiring Needs

When you’re struggling with filling a position, it’s easy to jump straight into sourcing new talent without first diagnosing the problem with your hiring process. Are you losing people to competitors, burning too much money on the wrong agencies, or struggling to retain new hires? Without accurate data, you risk solving the wrong issue.

• Look at Funnel Health: Analyze each step of your hiring process from time-to-hire, to cost-per-hire, to where candidates drop out. Once you’ve identified the gap or bottleneck, you can take targeted action to optimize and get your hiring back on track.
• Compare Against Industry Benchmarks: Use external data from sources like SHRM, SmartRecruiters, or Playroll to see how your numbers stack up. If your time-to-hire is twice the industry average, or your offer-acceptance rate lags peers, that’s a signal your process needs recalibration.
• Map Out Upcoming Roles and Risks: Look ahead at projected hiring needs and potential talent risks. This includes replacing ineffective roles, closing skills gaps in emerging areas, and resourcing for expansion into new markets.

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Hire Like a Local With Playroll

Once you’ve mapped out your upcoming roles and global talent risks, the next step is execution. As your local partner, we’ll handle compliance, payroll, and contracts so you can hire the right people, in the right way, anywhere in the world.

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Step 2: Define Clear Talent Acquisition Goals

Hiring can’t be “do everything, everywhere.” When goals are vague, recruiters chase volume instead of impact, and hiring managers grow frustrated. Clear goals turn hiring from reactive firefighting into business alignment.

We recommend making use of the SMART method when you’re creating your goals. Let’s say you want to grow your technical team, for example:

• Specific: Be clear about what you want to achieve. Instead of saying “grow the engineering team,” define the role type (engineers) and geography (EMEA). This clarity helps recruiters know exactly who and where to target.
• Measurable: Put numbers to your ambition. “15 engineers” is a concrete target you can track week by week or month by month. Without a number, it’s impossible to know whether you’re on pace or falling behind.
• Achievable: Goals should be ambitious but realistic. If your team typically hires 3–4 engineers per quarter, aiming for 15 over 9 months stretches the team without setting them up for failure. Pressure-testing achievability avoids demoralization later.
• Relevant: Tie the goal back to business strategy. If scaling product development is a priority for the company, then expanding engineering capacity in EMEA is directly aligned.
• Time-bound: Deadlines drive accountability. Committing to “9 months” prevents the goal from drifting indefinitely and gives you milestones to plan against.

This means your goal shifts from “hire technically skilled talent” to “hire 15 engineers from the EMEA region in the next 9 months” – much more measurable and attainable.

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Step 3: Choose the Right Strategies for Your Organization

Not every company needs the same mix of talent acquisition strategies. The mistake many leaders make is trying to do everything at once – spreading recruiters thin across too many channels and tools. The key is focus: pick the few strategies that best fit your stage, budget, and growth priorities.

• Match to Your Stage: A startup scaling from 20 to 100 people might get the most impact from referrals, strong employer branding, and global hiring via an EOR. An enterprise with thousands of employees on the other hand, may focus on internal mobility, AI-driven analytics, and structured DEI programs.
• Select 3–5 Core Plays: Focusing on 3-5 different initiatives will help you either perfect your hiring strategy or work out that you need to try a different approach. Any more than that and your efforts will be stretched too thinly to make any of them work well.
• Review Quarterly: The right strategy for you today won’t be the right one in 18 months. Revisit your picks every quarter to ensure they still align with your current business priorities.

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Step 4: Build the Infrastructure

Even the best strategies fail without the right systems, governance, and guardrails underneath. Many hiring teams stumble here: they pick flashy strategies but don’t invest in the building blocks to scale them. Infrastructure and careful planning is what turns intent into repeatable execution.

• Tech Stack: At minimum, you’ll need an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) that handles multi-country workflows, analytics dashboards to track funnel health, and collaboration tools to keep recruiters and managers aligned. On top of that, you’ll need a workforce management tool that can keep up with your global team.  
• Compliance Layer: In global hiring, compliance is non-negotiable. Payroll, tax, benefits, and worker classification vary by country, and mistakes can lead to heavy fines or legal risk. Partnering with an EOR keeps you compliant from day one, without the cost and delay of setting up local entities.
• Playbooks & Policies: Codify the rules of the game into a resource that your hiring team can refer back to. From job description guidelines and interview scorecards to DEI frameworks and compensation bands. Clear playbooks reduce bias, speed decisions, and make scaling smoother.

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Skip the Infrastructure Build With Payroll

Why spend months setting up local entities, payroll systems, and compliance frameworks when you can go live globally in days? With Playroll’s EOR solution, you get ready-made infrastructure: compliant contracts, automated payroll, localized benefits, and peace of mind in 180+ countries.

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Step 5: Execute and Communicate

Execution often breaks down not because the strategy is wrong, but because communication is poor. Hiring managers and recruiters work in silos, candidates get mixed messages, and leadership doesn’t have visibility. All you need to do to mitigate the risk of this happening, is to get everyone on the same page. Here’s how:

• Roll Out Across Stakeholders: Share playbooks, goals, and tools not just with HR but with hiring managers and leadership. Everyone has a role in delivering the candidate experience.
• Train and Enable: Don’t assume people know how to run a structured interview or write an inclusive job description. Offer training, templates, and enough time to make adoption easy.
• Keep Messaging Consistent: Your employer brand should show up the same way in a LinkedIn post, a job description, and a final offer call. Inconsistency breeds distrust among candidates.

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Check out our free job description templates

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Step 6: Measure, Iterate, and Scale

The best hiring teams treat talent acquisition like a product: ship it, test it, measure it, improve it. Too many organizations stop at tracking time-to-hire and cost-per-hire. To get better, you need a more holistic view of your processes and the discipline to act on the data.

• Track Beyond Basics: Measure quality-of-hire, retention, and candidate satisfaction alongside speed and cost. This gives you a true picture of whether your hires succeed.
• Review and Adjust Regularly: Run quarterly reviews of sourcing channels, funnel conversion, and hiring outcomes. The next step is to then shift resources toward what mechanism delivers the best outcome.
• Scale What Works: Once a strategy consistently delivers (e.g., global hiring through an EOR or referral programs), double down and formalize it.

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Expanding Talent Acquisition Globally with Playroll

With tight markets and constantly shifting labor regulations, persisting skills shortages, tightening visa pathways, and top candidates preferring remote-first roles, access to global talent pools is now a strategic necessity. Plus, every country comes with its own rules on payroll, compliance, and classification – and getting it wrong can mean fines, delays, or worse.

That’s why the infrastructure behind your hiring matters as much as the strategy itself. EOR solutions like Playroll let you hire and pay talent in 180+ countries without the friction or cost of setting up local entities. Think of it as adding a local HR partner wherever you need one, whether that’s bringing on a developer in South Africa or a sales team in Brazil.

If building borderless teams is on your horizon, book a demo with our team and see how global hiring can become your simplest but most effective competitive advantage.