🧨 Is Talent Acquisition Killing Your Ability to Hire Top Talent?

When Recruiters Don’t Understand the Jobs They're Hiring For, Everyone Pays the Price

📋 What Does Talent Acquisition Actually Do?

Talent Acquisition (TA) is the function within HR responsible for finding, attracting, and hiring new employees. Unlike traditional recruiting, which often focuses on filling positions quickly, TA is meant to take a more strategic approach — building pipelines of candidates, crafting employer branding, and helping leadership forecast future hiring needs.

TA professionals typically:

• Write and post job descriptions

• Screen applications and conduct initial interviews

• Coordinate with hiring managers on role requirements

• Manage applicant tracking systems (ATS)

• Represent the company in job fairs and outreach efforts

• Make or coordinate job offers

In theory, they’re the bridge between company goals and talent strategy.

🎓 What Does It Take to Become a TA Professional?

The path to a career in Talent Acquisition doesn’t usually require direct experience in the roles being hired for. In theory, common qualifications include:

• A bachelor’s degree in Human Resources, Business, Communications, or Psychology

• Strong interpersonal and organizational skills

• Experience using recruiting software and HR tools

• Knowledge of labor laws and compliance

• Excellent written and verbal communication

While these are important skills, what’s often missing is industry-specific knowledge — especially when recruiting for technical, specialized, or operations-driven roles.

And that’s where the problem starts.

🚧 The Real Issue: Lack of Job-Specific Knowledge

When Talent Acquisition professionals don’t truly understand the jobs they’re hiring for, everything starts to break down — beginning with the resume.

Most qualified applicants know that the resume is their first impression, and they take great care in detailing their experience, tools, certifications, and measurable results. But if the person reviewing it doesn’t understand what any of that actually means, then critical qualifications can easily go unnoticed — or worse, misunderstood.

Without the ability to interpret the resume through the lens of the job, TA teams often:

• Misread titles or industry-specific jargon

• Filter out high-potential candidates who don’t use "the right keywords"

• Confuse unrelated experience with actual job relevance

• Miss transferable skills that hiring managers would immediately spot

And this confusion carries directly into the interview process.

🎤 When You Don’t Know the Job, You Don’t Know What to Ask

The interview should be where a candidate gets to bring their experience to life — not where they repeat what’s already on their resume.

But because many recruiters don’t understand the roles they’re hiring for, they default to generic, surface-level questions like:

• “Tell me about yourself.”

• “What are your strengths and weaknesses?”

• “Where do you see yourself in five years?”

• “What are your salary expectations?”

These might work as openers, but they do nothing to assess whether a candidate is actually capable of doing the job.

Meanwhile, what candidates really want — and expect — are questions that show the interviewer understands their world:

🎯 What Candidates Really Want to Be Asked

When Talent Acquisition lacks job-specific knowledge, interviews are often filled with vague or irrelevant questions that could apply to anyone in any industry.

But when recruiters understand the language, context, and pressure points of the roles they’re filling, the questions they ask sound very different — and instantly signal to candidates: We get you.

Here are some examples:

Leasing Consultant

❌ “How do you handle customer service?”

✅ “How do you handle high-volume tour days when you’re short-staffed?”

➡️ Follow-Up: “What strategies have worked for keeping leads warm if you can’t follow up right away?”

✅ “What’s your approach to converting leads from online inquiries?”

➡️ Follow-Up: “Do you use any specific language or follow-up timing that boosts response rates?”

Property Manager

❌ “How do you stay organized?”

✅ “How do you prioritize unit turns when multiple leases end the same week?”

➡️ Follow-Up: “Have you worked with any software or vendors that made scheduling more efficient?”

✅ “Tell me how you’ve handled a resident crisis during after-hours.”

➡️ Follow-Up: “How did you document the incident and communicate it to corporate or ownership?”

Maintenance Supervisor

❌ “Are you a team player?”

✅ “How do you schedule preventative maintenance across multiple buildings?”

➡️ Follow-Up: “What metrics do you track to ensure nothing gets missed over time?”

✅ “What’s your response protocol for a major plumbing leak on a holiday?”

➡️ Follow-Up: “How do you keep the office or residents updated while you're troubleshooting?”

Front Desk Supervisor

❌ “Tell me about your leadership style.”

✅ “How do you handle overbookings during peak check-in hours?”

➡️ Follow-Up: “Do you have any preferred phrases or offers you use to de-escalate guests?”

✅ “What role do you play in coaching new hires on guest service standards?”

➡️ Follow-Up: “Can you share how you deliver feedback without discouraging new team members?”

Housekeeping Manager

❌ “What motivates your team?”

✅ “How do you balance daily room cleaning targets with call-outs or unexpected deep cleans?”

➡️ Follow-Up: “What’s your approach to adjusting staff assignments in real-time?”

✅ “How do you handle inspection failures?”

➡️ Follow-Up: “What system do you use to track recurring issues or retrain staff?”

Event/AV Technician

❌ “Are you good under pressure?”

✅ “How do you troubleshoot AV malfunctions 10 minutes before a high-profile event?”

➡️ Follow-Up: “What’s in your go-to kit or checklist for last-minute emergencies?”

✅ “Which equipment brands or systems are you most comfortable setting up and managing?”

➡️ Follow-Up: “Have you ever had to adapt to unfamiliar gear under pressure?”

Licensed Agent

❌ “What’s your long-term career goal?”

✅ “What’s your strategy for generating new leads in a slow market?”

➡️ Follow-Up: “Have you found certain platforms or community events more effective than others?”

✅ “How do you handle pushback from clients during price negotiations?”

➡️ Follow-Up: “Can you share how you position your value while maintaining rapport?”

Transaction Coordinator

❌ “Are you detail-oriented?”

✅ “What’s your process for managing contingencies and critical deadlines?”

➡️ Follow-Up: “How do you keep all parties informed and on track when timelines shift?”

✅ “Have you used DocuSign, Skyslope, or Dotloop — and how do you track deal progress?”

➡️ Follow-Up: “What’s your preferred way to flag missing documents before they cause delays?”

Property Accountant

❌ “Tell me about your Excel skills.”

✅ “What’s your process for reconciling CAM charges across multiple properties?”

➡️ Follow-Up: “Have you worked with tenants or property managers to resolve discrepancies directly?”

✅ “How do you prepare for audits related to security deposits or trust accounts?”

➡️ Follow-Up: “Do you maintain checklists or automated systems to reduce errors during audit prep?”

✅ “Which property management software are you most proficient with — and why?”

➡️ Follow-Up: “Are there features you’ve found underutilized that helped streamline your reporting?”

Accounting Specialist

❌ “Do you prefer independent or team work?”

✅ “How do you handle reconciliations for banquet deposits or group bookings?”

➡️ Follow-Up: “Have you had to correct misapplied payments between events or departments?”

✅ “Have you managed payroll accounting for hourly tipped staff?”

➡️ Follow-Up: “What’s your method for ensuring accurate reporting for tax and compliance purposes?”

✅ “How do you track deferred revenue from event bookings?”

➡️ Follow-Up: “Do you collaborate with the sales/events team to ensure accuracy before month-end close?”

When Talent Acquisition Fails, Everyone Pays

At the end of the day, if your Talent Acquisition team doesn't truly understand the roles they're recruiting for, you're not just missing out on top talent — you're actively pushing it away. This isn't just a recruiting problem. It's a business problem. The longer it goes unaddressed, the more it costs you in time, reputation, morale, and revenue.

Here’s what’s really at stake:

• 🚪 Top candidates walk away when interviews are generic or disconnected from their expertise.

• 😤 Hiring managers grow frustrated with weak shortlists and poor screening.

• 🧲 You attract the wrong talent, leading to costly bad hires and higher turnover.

• 💼 Your employer brand suffers, especially in tight-knit industries where word travels fast.

• 💸 It gets expensive, fast — lost productivity, lost trust, and lost momentum.

If you want to hire the best, you have to start by understanding the work. Because when the first impression is clueless, the best people don’t stick around for the second impression.