Talent mapping is a proactive approach used to forecast long-term hiring needs and subsequently cultivate organisational support for new roles over time. Putting your organisation’s goals top of mind, it builds a competency map to achieve these goals by assessing the current skills in the business, identifying the gaps and recruit and / or develop the skills needed to close these gaps. This technique can appear straightforward, but as a business expands, it becomes more challenging to foresee its scaled hiring requirements. It calls for corporate leadership, HR specialists, and recruiters to all have a seat at the table.
An organisation may have an excellent internal talent acquisition team, perfectly capable of doing the talent mapping exercise themselves – however, there are times when it can be a much better idea to engage an executive search firm to manage such a project.
There are few reasons for this:
- Your internal talent acquisition team might not be excited to take on an exercise that won’t result in an immediate benefit even if it can be strategically beneficial in the long run. It might interfere with their current hiring objectives and, consequently, the performance metrics of their team members.
- Recruitment talent mapping can be complex. The majority of businesses find it challenging to attracting top talent, maintaining compliance while dealing with high employee turnover rates, and streamlining their hiring procedures, especially during phases such as the great resignation.
- Additionally, talent mapping demands devoted time and effort which comes at a cost and loss of commercial value. Talent mapping calls for dedicated, deliberate preparation and workable strategies.
The benefits of using an executive search firm:
- Stronger ability to hire top candidates from the marketplace. Executive Search consultants are in a better position to hire the best candidates in the market, including non-active job seekers.
- Streamlined hiring processes with the latest software and assessment tools. An executive search firm might have specialised tools to do this better whereas enterprises may be constrained by a legacy system. Overall, their processes are geared towards finding and screening the best candidates and matching skills with a particular role and environment in an unbiased and inclusive manner.
- Competitor intelligence. Businesses make significant investments in learning their competitors’ marketing tactics, operational procedures, etc. But when it comes to hiring methods, they overlook or rather undervalue the importance of conducting competitive studies. An executive recruiter can gather important data and assist you in identifying strengths that can be used as a counterbalance to the deficiencies of your competitors. This can greatly improve your employer brand.
- You can get a competitive edge on a worldwide scale by working with international executive search agencies like AIMS International with specialised global industry practices, where Consultants share industry knowledge across borders.
- Cross-pollination of skills. In many instances, skills and competencies can be effective when recruited across industries. Consultants or teams who work in multiple industries understand how top talent from a different industry can make the difference between a great or average hire in a market where talent is scarce.
Contact Ashleigh Ball at [email protected] for all your talent mapping needs.
