Talent Intelligence: Everything You Need to Know to Get Started
Talent shortages in the US have risen to historical levels, with nearly 69% of employers having difficulty filling open positions – the highest in the past ten years.
This is the exact reason why the recruitment industry has become an ever-changing and increasingly competitive place. There’s more pressure than ever on companies to operate in a swift and intelligent way.
As a result, talent acquisition leaders and HR teams are always trying to adjust their strategies with the help of progressive tech innovations and methodologies to respond to the ever-fluctuating hiring needs rapidly and stay ahead of the curve.
Talent intelligence is quickly becoming one of the most crucial solutions that are helping hiring managers in giving them talent insights on how to make better recruiting decisions.
But what does the term talent intelligence imply, and why should you bother leveraging it within your talent strategy? Read on to find out!
What Is Talent Intelligence?
Talent intelligence is more than a process where organizations collect and analyze data to discover talent patterns. These patterns can tell businesses what makes their business and company culture successful, their workers happy, and later use all this information to achieve a distinctive competitive edge in the market.
In a nutshell, talent intelligence enables talent acquisition professionals to mine valuable data and leverage it to make better and more informed hiring and retaining decisions.
You can do this by collecting data on:
- Internal and former employees
- The company’s existing talent pool
- Assessing passive candidates and their demands
- Your competitors and their hiring best practices
This information can then be analyzed and used to prepare detailed reports that highlight specific essential questions such as:
- Who’s passionate about your industry?
- Which candidates are willing to be a part of your company?
- Which candidate has a higher chance of being a good fit for your company?
In one whitepaper, Toby Culshaw, Head of Global Talent Intelligence at Philips, and Alan Agnew, Global Head of Strategic Capabilities and Talent Intelligence at the company, explain howtalent intelligence has helped Philips achieve outstanding hiring results:
“It has provided the platform and opportunity for talent acquisition and human resources to play a leading strategic role in business strategy, earning the credibility it has long craved and a much-coveted seat at the table.
During the next phase of development, we hope to see talent intelligence beginning to impact on the top line by working in partnership with our sales and bid teams, using talent and insight into our competitors’ talent as a competitive advantage.”
Now that you have a fair idea of talent intelligence and which fundamental elements it usually encompasses, let us look at how it can transform the hiring process for accelerated business growth.
Benefits of Talent Intelligence for Recruiters
1. Stay Ahead of Emerging Labor Market Trends
As talent acquisition professionals, we all know that the labor market is highly volatile and susceptible to frequent shifts.
For instance, COVID-19 has caused a significant transformation in how employers and job seekers perceive work and adapt to the new normal. Gartner’s 2020 survey reveals that close to 82% of businesses are willing to continue or even increase offering remote work even after the pandemic subsides – a scenario nobody would’ve imagined until only two years ago.
That means there’s a higher probability that job seekers will look for flexible work options, and companies will look for people with remote work competencies shortly.
HR leaders can easily leverage talent intelligence to stay ahead of such emerging trends.
Talent Tech Labs’ 2021 report explainshow AirAsia, one of the leading airline networks in the Asia Pacific region, was able to transform its business model, enter new markets, and hire for roles outside its traditional centers of expertise throughout the pandemic by leveraging artificial talent intelligence capabilities.
With a robust talent intelligence program at their disposal, HR leaders can easily have info to hand, with the help of which they can then evolve company processes in time to ensure employee satisfaction and stable productivity.
2. Make Strategic Decisions with Ease
Another essential aspect of human resource management where talent acquisition leaders and their teams can effectively utilize talent intelligence is strategic decision-making, hiring fresh talent, retaining existing employees who are a valuable asset, or strengthening the employer brand.
Talent intelligence tools can help reveal which employees are more engaged with their day-to-day work and which aren’t. These tools can also highlight the specific areas in which such employees stand out and which professional experience or skill/s helped them get past others in their respective roles.
Naturally, once you know what experiences and skills your top employees possess, you will have the upper hand in molding your hiring strategy accordingly to attract the best hires in the market.
In addition to that, with a better understanding of your workforce’s talents, you’ll also be able to delegate tasks more strategically to capitalize on your team members’ strengths.
Another case study highlighted in Talent Tech Labs’ report explains howIntel increased its number of decisions per day by turning disparate data into intelligence with HiredScore’s enterprise matching system.
3. Manage Talent Acquisition Costs
Another report showed that most talent acquisition leaders expect their overall recruitment budgets to shrink in the post-pandemic era. Therefore, cost-effective hiring is now more critical than it ever has been!
This is where talent intelligence can prove to be extremely useful.
By drawing in data about the costs associated with each stage of the recruitment process, you can effectively optimize your strategy to save capital.
Gaurav Chattur, Managing Director at Catenon APAC, talks abouthow businesses can optimize costs through talent intelligence in 2021:
“As businesses evolve and embrace newer ways of operating, setting up new functions or teams in the company is required. However, HR leaders may not be sure about the right compensation for relevant skills required in these new roles.
Salary benchmarking (which forms an integral part of talent intelligence) helps in determining the market value of talent in a scientific way. It is a process that tells you where your organization stands in terms of compensation and benefits in the market. It is a process through which HR leaders identify the market rate of internal job roles by matching their job descriptions, requirements, and responsibilities to that in the external market.”
4. Reduce Employee Turnover
On average, replacing an existing employee costs companies 30-50% of their annual package, which soars up to 150% to return mid-level employees and a whopping 400% when it comes to replacing high-level employees that hold specialized or high-impact positions.
This problem can be easily countered if talent acquisition leaders carefully assess and figure out which roles are most affected by attrition and why. Knowing these factors can help improve your company’s employee churn rate and boost retention in the long run.
Predictive analytics-led talent intelligence framework can reveal which of your employees are at an increased risk of leaving the organization before they hand in their resignation letter.
The benefits mentioned above only touch the surface of what talent intelligence has in store for human resource management, or rather business development as a whole.
By leveraging this technique in your day-to-day hiring operations, you can begin to see positive results in no time. But how exactly can you make optimum use of this state-of-the-art analytical model?
How to Leverage Talent Intelligence to Boost Your Recruitment Efforts
The first and foremost step to leveraging talent intelligence in recruitment is collecting relevant information.
You can either consider hiring a data analyst to make better sense of and gather data or do it in-house by harnessing various technological innovations such as:
- Candidate Sourcing Tools
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Systems to identify hiring trends and patterns
- Advanced Analytics to delve deeper into and make better sense of your website traffic
- Artificial intelligencesoftware solutions that can help recruiters index a vast number of candidate profiles quickly
- Job Portals such as LinkedIn can help you scour employee histories
These are only a few options available today in the vast sea of talent intelligence solutions.
The HR team should constantly look to expand their tech stack with state-of-the-art innovations and be on the lookout for industry trends and best practices their counterparts are following to attract top talent.
To know more about how you can make talent intelligence-backed recruitment bear positive results for you within no time, get in touch with us at Recruiter.com .
Our advanced talent software indexes over 150 million profiles from various professions and industries.Your ideal candidates are only a step away.
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