22 May 2017

HRMC Botswana managing director, Mr Stuart White says at least 94 per cent of recruiters use or plan to use social media for recruitment.

Speaking at the first strategic talent acquisition seminar recently, Mr White said statistics showed that the youth spent most of their time on social media.

“Statistics show that 90 per cent of those born between 1980-2000 check their smartphones even before they get out of bed and 80 per cent of job hunters use their smartphones to look for jobs,” he said adding that the rest of the world had moved to recruiting in the digital age, hence the need for Botswana to catch up quickly.

Convener of the seminar, Progressive Institution chief executive officer, Mr Mmoloki Mmolotsi said he brought together industry leaders and recruitment experts from leading brands and organisations in a unique one-day seminar designed to help recruitment practitioners take their talent acquisition strategy to the next level by offering industry best practices.

Mr Mmolotsi said some of the key outcomes of the seminar innlcuded helping participants revolutionise their talent acquisition function, advancing their talent attraction strategy, championing excellence at every stage in their recruitment cycle, networking and sharing knowledge on the industry’s best practices

.He said with today’s fast changing human resource trends, talent acquisition had emerged as an area of focus from a strategic human resource standpoint.

“Staying up to date on recruitment trends and practices can be a formidable challenge faced by recruitment managers in their effort to attract a steady stream of the best talent to their organisations,” he said.

He noted that to meet business growth, talent acquisition strategy must continue to expand beyond being tactical and reactive to being proactive and seamless process which efficiently source, assess, select, hire and retain the best candidate in such a competitive environment.

“This seminar is designed to help you take your talent acquisition to the next level by offering best practices and lessons learned from industry leaders, recruiting gurus and case studies of leading brands and organisations in how to recruit effectively,” he said.

Some of the industry leaders who attended the seminar included Debswana, First National Bank Botswana, De Beers, Top Talent Solutions, Botswana Accountancy College, Botswana Development Corporation and Careerpool.

Topics that were discussed included e-recruitment: the case of Debswana, transparency: cornerstone of recruitment, job boards and their role in recruitment, best practice for strategic recruitment: the case of De Beers as well as how to innovate at the interview stage of recruitment: lessons from Heineken. ENDS