You might have heard of “business roadmaps” while planning strategies for your organization but what is talent mapping? The process of talent mapping refers to how businesses develop a deeper understanding of the human resources they currently have at their disposal and make predictions regarding the future needs of the company. Talent mapping in recruitment precedes the hiring stage and focuses on an assessment of the needs of the organization so that the hiring can proceed accordingly instead of rushing through the hiring process at the last minute when the organization’s demands suddenly increase.
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What Is Talent Mapping?
Talent mapping is the process of gathering data from various sources within the organization and assessing the talent needs for each wing of the company, both in the present and for the immediate future. Just like a physical map gives us an overview of the area around you, a talent map can be used to lay out all the information regarding your workforce in one place. It focuses on a realistic assessment of your workforce and the existing talent that you hope to retain, allowing you to plan ahead for your hiring needs but also aiding in devising retention strategies for the maintenance of your workforce.
Understanding what talent mapping is and how it works, not only gives you a good idea of your own plans for the job roles in your organization but also allows you to set plans for internal mobility in place, which is useful to show top talent how they can hope to grow within your organization without seeing opportunities outside. Lever reports that 74 percent of disengaged employees keep an eye out for new job opportunities while 48 percent actively work to look for new roles. 56 percent of companies believe their efforts to leverage existing talent are insufficient and acknowledging this issue is the first step to making a change. Talent mapping in recruitment needs to be considered just as seriously as a company plans for business or product scaling.
The talent mapping process is often outsourced to be handled by external firms and agencies but it can be handled internally as well, just as long as the organization is able to spare resources to set up a talent acquisition team that can focus their energy on recruitment planning. While planning for long-term needs, there will also constantly be roles opening up within an organization as some team members move out or are not a good fit for the organization and have to be terminated. Hiring on a need basis is inevitable no matter how much planning is involved. However, with a team constantly updating the job descriptions, exploring new hiring platforms, and dedicatedly refining the testing and hiring processes, the quality of candidates hired also improves drastically.
Benefits of Talent Mapping—Should You Prioritize It?
Once you’re able to answer the question, “What is talent mapping?” you might next wonder, “Should I really invest in talent mapping for my organization?” Yes! You’re company will not grow without its people and even if you do find some level of success, it will remain unstable. The benefits of talent mapping include:
- Speeding up the time taken for hiring, from making a job posting to onboarding an employee
- Improving retention of existing hires
- Using internal mobility to retain talent and maximize their full potential
- Attracting top talent that is a good fit for the organization
- Diverting existing workforce towards roles aligned to their capabilities rather than firing
- Efficient hiring at the right time to ensure your workforce is not pushed beyond the working capacity
- Identifying gaps in the workforce and steps required to close the loop
- Prioritizing the roles that need to be filled first rather than multiple simultaneous ill-fitting hires
- Allowing hiring to keep up with the company’s growth rather than expending resources and hiring too soon
- Allowing existing job roles to be updated constantly and new roles to be created according to the needs and growth of the company
Talent Mapping Process—Redefining the Hiring Cycle
Prioritizing talent mapping in recruitment is essential for your company to scale up steadily but that does not mean you have to spend all of your budget on it in one go as well. If your company is not in a position to fund a complete overhaul of your hiring process, then it is alright to start small and dedicate some time to at least consider your organization’s current workforce and future needs so you can slowly begin setting aside resources for a more significant investment and update later in the fiscal year. Awareness is the first step and the rest can be staggered over time.
Create Ideal Candidate Descriptions (ICDs)
Every job role might have a different set of criteria that make a candidate right for the role but every company will also have an all-encompassing set of values and descriptions that will make a candidate a good fit for the culture of the company. All the hiring that happens within the organization should follow the template to ensure all hires match what the organization is looking for in their employees while also considering the needs for every job role. For this to happen uniformly, the company needs to spend some time identifying the ideal candidates they want in their organization and setting up a detailed overview of these qualities in every domain.
Following this, an ideal candidate template can be created for each job role as well, to make it easier for the recruitment team to tell if an applicant should be considered for further processing. From managers to the employees themselves, feedback can be gathered to understand the job role well and ensure that the right skill sets and qualities are being prioritized for the talent mapping process.
Evaluate Both the Company as well as Competitors
A thorough review of the existing workforce and a constant update to these records is always beneficial. Consider each employee and their past experiences, their time at the organization, their productivity levels, their growth potential, and all the other facets that detail their time within the organization. This provides a firm basis to assess whether you want to maintain these employees within these roles or consider moving them to other duties. Employees who are due a promotion will need to be provided with active updates on such details, reassuring them of their employer’s interest in their well-being.
Along with internal reviews, organizations should also consider what their competitors are doing and their strategies as well. Firstly, this will help them match up to what the industry standard is and provide competitive offers to potential recruits, to maintain firm footing within the industry. Additionally, this will also help them devise new strategies and develop a more comprehensive approach to talent mapping in recruitment, adding details to their long-term plans and defining what is necessary for them to invest in over time.
Actively Engage With the Hiring Team
Having a team that knows what talent mapping is can be very beneficial for the company but this department cannot work in isolation to plan for the recruitment needs of the company. Yes, they may be able to devise an efficient strategy for diverse hiring and keep profiles of potential candidates ready for each role but without knowing where the company is headed in the next two years or what choices the leaders are going to make for the future of the company, they will never be fully prepared to assist the organization. If they aren’t in constant contact with the managers who oversee the new hires, they will not be able to plan ahead for the skill gaps in their current workforce or be aware of in-demand skill sets and talents that they need to prioritize for future hires. The entire organization needs to be aware of what talent mapping is and how they can individually contribute to it as well.
Choose Appropriate Management Technology
Meetings spent bent over physical documents are more and more becoming a thing of the past and technology is constantly advancing to simplify the process of data assessment for everyone. Various forms of management technology can help consolidate employee data and get an overview of the workforce at a glance. These tools can also provide various statistics and data points that can be used to get the most benefits out of the talent mapping process. Ensure that you are aware of all the information these management tools can offer and check that the recruitment team is fully trained in making the most of the platform that you choose to invest in.
Generate a Candidate Pool
An inevitable step and outcome of talent mapping is the creation of a database of potential candidates that could suit your company’s needs when hiring opportunities open up in the future. This can ensure that ideal candidates are found for every role and at a much quicker pace than restarting the hiring process from stage one. This database of passive candidates creates a reliable pool of candidates to draw from, making the hiring process a much more efficient one. Generating a reserve of candidates can take place in many different ways.One way is to identify sources where the best candidates at your organization were currently hired and tap into the resources to get a sense of the candidates available through the same platform. If there are other similar candidates actively looking for jobs via the same channel, consider prioritizing that platform during recruitment. Also, explore niche platforms where those with the necessary skill sets display their capabilities and regularly turn to those platforms for hiring as well. In many situations, asking existing employees to bring in their contacts for job openings also provides a reserve of resumes of candidates who might be of the same caliber as your employees so do not dismiss that avenue while considering your candidate pool.
If you have multiple talented candidates applying for a role but only a few job openings, consider prioritizing these candidates during the next hiring cycle, just to check if they are open to taking up the role. Not only will this help cut done on the process of identifying and interviewing candidates all over again but will also ensure your company builds up its reputation as a space for opportunity.
Refine Existing Job Roles
The talent mapping process is a dynamic one and needs to keep evolving with time and the active needs of the company. While a plan for the long-term is what the talent mapping journey is for, there will be new tangents that come up and the recruitment team needs to be able to adapt to meet the requirements of the company. Even without any unexpected changes, companies should consider their existing job description and refine them to reflect the actual role within the company. An employee who gets hired for one task often finds their assignments expanding over time and this should be reflected in the job role as well, both so new hires are aware of their role and so the recruitment team knows to look for those additional skills.
Organizations need to carefully look into talent mapping examples and techniques to get a good sense of what strategies they can adopt for their organization. Practices like the 9 Box Grid are available to break down the hiring process even further, so it is essential for the recruitment team to get a good sense of the strategies that competitors are using and develop their own unique approach in addition to it.