In today's fast-paced world, talent mapping has become an essential tool for any company looking to improve workforce planning and stay ahead of competitors. Gone are the days of reactive hiring strategies where you fill positions as they open up – proactive hiring strategies are now essential. In order to achieve maximum growth, companies need to make sure they're hiring the right talent while keeping an eye on the organisation’s long term goals.
In this blog, we'll be breaking down what exactly talent mapping is and how your business will benefit from implementing this recruitment strategy.
What is talent mapping?
Talent mapping is a proactive approach to recruitment that aims to identify a company's long term hiring needs and potential candidates for these future vacancies. This internal assessment involves evaluating and mapping out the company's existing workforce, their performance, skills gaps, and readiness for development and growth.
When done properly, hiring managers will be able to identify high-potential employees whose growth and development aligns with the company's strategic priorities.
Benefits of talent mapping
Company's will be able to reap many benefits from talent mapping, including:
Identify skills gaps
One of the essential parts of talent mapping is assessing your existing employees in terms of their current abilities and skills gaps, and strategically evaluating how they will develop in the future. You'll also need to analyse the skills and experience required for each potential role. This combination can help businesses gain insight into what areas and skills they may be lacking in and how best to fill these gaps.
Better succession planning
It's important to always keep one eye on the future, especially when it comes to internal promotions. By identifying candidates that have the potential to fill key positions within the business, you'll be able to curate a highly skilled talent pool that's ready to step up once these positions become available in your organisation. A stronger succession plan will lead to less uncertainty in regards to your company's growth and future.
More efficient recruitment
Talent mapping can also help recruiters develop more efficient hiring strategies. By taking a proactive approach and identifying your company's long term hiring needs, you won't have to waste time marketing the role and starting from scratch. You'll have a solid talent pipeline that will help you secure the necessary skills for the role before the vacancy even pops up.
Hiring managers will also be able to use their resources more efficiently with this strategic approach to recruitment. Instead of wasting your time and energy on unnecessary hires, you'll be able to make insight-driven choices as to what positions will drive the most growth for your company.
Competitive advantage
Companies that implement talent mapping will also gain an edge over their competitors, especially when it comes to promoting and hiring the best talent. With talent mapping, you'll have a pool of talent that's ready to fill any positions as soon as they arise. Recruiters will also be able to respond quickly to any changes in the market or industry instead of having to start the recruitment process from scratch.
Increased retention rates
The last thing your business needs is its best talent leaving due to dissatisfaction with the company. HR managers can ensure that their existing employees remain content and satisfied with their experience at your organisation by using talent mapping.
Through assessing the skills of your current workforce, companies can ensure that they have the best training and development programmes put in place to help support your employees. This added support will then lead to an increase in job satisfaction, loyalty, and retention.
How to start talent mapping
In order to start talent mapping, you'll first need to evaluate the skill level of your current workforce. An effective and efficient way to do so is to use skills tests. Skills tests are an excellent way of assessing an individual's skill level as well as any skills gaps they may have.
With skills tests, a candidate will be presented with a set of skill-specific questions that they will be expected to answer. How well they perform on the skills test will be able to provide insight into a candidate’s or current employee’s existing abilities.
Aside from assessing each candidate's skill levels, you'll also need to analyse the current and future needs of the business. By compiling all this information together, you'll then be able to identify what skills and roles will drive the most growth for the company.
Once you have finished mapping out your workforce and your company's long term requirements, you'll be able to implement the necessary strategies to help strengthen your business's existing and future talent pool. You'll need to identify potential candidates for each role using methods such as internal recruitment, referrals, and external recruitment.
After establishing a highly skilled talent pool within your organisation, it's important that they receive the right level of support to help them grow. This can include additional development and training programmes to help fill in any skill and knowledge gaps your employees may have. Don't forget to track their progress in the meantime to ensure that their development is keeping up with the company's own growth.
Conclusion
Talent mapping is an excellent tool if you're looking to shift towards a more proactive approach to hiring and developing talent. By identifying candidates for potential key roles within the company, you can establish a highly skilled talent pipeline that will be ready to step up to the plate as soon as these positions become available.
Reactive hiring strategies are soon to be a thing of the past. If you want to keep up with the rapidly changing market trends, talent mapping will help to ensure that you're retaining and hiring the best talent in the industry while staying ahead of all your competitors.
If your company is looking to start talent mapping, why not use our skills tests to support the process? Our skills assessments are able to measure a candidate's skill level across a variety of different fields, making it easier than ever for you to evaluate and compare potential hires or current employees. Interested? Contact our team today and we can help you find the right skills tests for your company.