Finding the right people to drive your business forward has always been tough. After all, you need every employee to be a perfect match to maximize your efforts’ efficiency.
Sourcing doesn’t have to cause you severe headaches, however. If you anticipate your staffing needs and know your talent pool in advance, recruitment will be a piece of cake. No rash decisions, no settling for an okay candidate, no unexpected openings.
To achieve this level of recruitment zen, you need a good sourcing strategy – and talent mapping should be an integral part of it. So, let’s take a deep dive into what it is, when you need it, how it can benefit your business, and how to do it right.
What Is Talent Mapping, Exactly?
Talent mapping, essentially, means you thoroughly analyze:
- Your current workforce and staffing gaps;
- Your future needs;
- Your competitors’ talent acquisition and management;
- Existing talent pool.
And here are three signs you need it:
- Your business consistently underperforms. It loses out to competitors, doesn’t reach the set goals, or doesn’t operate at full capacity.
- You prepare for its expansion in the short or long run. Whether it’s a new local project or an office in another country, you know you’ll need to hire one or several more teams.
- You’re thinking strategically. You want to plan for the positions that don’t need sourcing yet to fill them promptly later on.
3 Reasons You Might Want to Delegate It
Don’t rush into hiring another in-house recruiter just for the sake of doing talent mapping. There’s another option you might want to consider first: delegating it to another company.
Here are the three most common reasons why businesses choose to outsource this set of tasks:
- They don’t have anyone with the right talent mapping skills. If there’s no one well-versed in this field at your organization, it’ll take time for your recruiters to learn the ropes.
- They need the local market knowledge. Let’s say you run a company in the U.S. and you plan to open an office in Ukraine. You know very little about the local job market or how to scout for professionals there – but a local recruitment company does.
- They need to get it done fast. Doing it on your own will take a long while (probably, months). Companies that specialize in this field, on the other hand, can have everything done in as little as 10 days.
Does this hit home? If so, outsourcing is likely to be a better fit for your business. If you want to weigh in on your talent mapping options, a good place to start – https://develux.com/talent-mapping
How Does It Help Enhance Your Sourcing Strategy?
If you aim to find the best talents for the house team, there are 4 major benefits that mapping brings to the table:
- You’ll understand your internal sourcing potential. Sometimes, there’s no need to bring in someone from the outside to close a gap – you can reassign or promote one of your employees.
- You’ll identify your exact staffing gaps. You need to know what you’re looking for to recognize a perfect match. Mapping helps you understand what skills your business lacks, which translates into more precise candidate requirements.
- You’ll have a roadmap for hiring. Thanks to talent mapping, recruitment doesn’t have to be only reactive. This means your performance (and the team’s morale) won’t suffer because of a significant staffing gap – and you won’t have to settle, either.
- You’ll be able to find the best of the best. You’ll do your fair share of research on suitable specialists, both actively seeking a job and not. Since this means a larger talent pool, you’ll have more choice – and a higher chance of hiring the perfect candidate.
Here’s How to Do Talent Mapping Right
Alright, you’re sold – you need it to build a strong sourcing strategy for your business. But how do you make sure it’s done right? Here’s your guide.
1.Take Stock of Your Current Workforce
Sourcing is a journey from point A to point B. But you need to understand not just where you aim to get – but also what resources you start this journey with. Here are 7 questions that’ll help you assess your current workforce:
- How well do your current employees perform?
- What background do they have?
- Who has the potential for a promotion?
- Who would be better off filling another position?
- Who shows warning signs and/or consistently underperforms?
- What skills does your business lack right now?
- What departments need more support?
The best way to approach this task is by using the performance-potential matrix. It’s designed to help you group your employees into nine categories based on their performance and potential.
2. Turn Your Attention to the Future
Now, it’s time to think about your business in one, five, and ten years – and what your business objectives mean for your staffing needs. Here are five questions to ask:
- How do you see your business grow over the next year, five years, ten?
- What goals have you set for the business as a whole?
- What major changes and expansions do you plan for?
- What skill sets will you need at different stages of your project or your business’ growth?
- What departments will have to be expanded?
3. Gather Competitor Intelligence
This step is here for two reasons. First, you can learn from your competitors’ best practices and mistakes. That’ll help you enhance your sourcing strategy to rival theirs. Second, your best match for a position might be currently working for your competitor.
Here are three things that should be on your “to-analyze” list:
- What departments they have and what their organizational chart looks like;
- Who they hire: their skills, education, and experience;
- How they find their candidates and retain their employees.
4. Map Out the Existing Talent Pool
This step is all about identifying all the specialists that would be a great fit for your current or future staffing needs. That includes not just those actively looking for a job, though. You should pay attention to those already employed, too – and make an offer they can’t refuse.
But how do you do it? Well, these three tools will come in handy:
- LinkedIn Talent Insights – for working with LinkedIn;
- DataMiner – for scraping data from websites;
- Tweatbeaver – for searching on Twitter.
Make sure to revisit your previous connections – these contacts are already warm. For example, keep in touch with the suitable candidates that you interviewed in the past. Look into professional connections you’ve made in the industry, too.
If you’re looking for a professional in another country, remember to do your fair share of research on the local job market. That includes any local alternatives to LinkedIn (like XING in the German-speaking market), average salary, expectations towards benefits, etc.
5. Keep Revisiting It
Your strategy shouldn’t remain static. It’s not a “write once and use forever” thing – all because it goes out of date fast.
Why? The pool of candidates never stops changing, and neither does your current workforce. You need to keep track of all those changes – and document them properly, too.
Final Thoughts
Talent mapping isn’t an overnight endeavor – it’s a continuous, long-term commitment that you need to make. But it’s worth the investment: when done right, it’ll ensure that you have the right people working towards your business goals at every step of your journey.
This remains true only when it’d done right, though. So, if you’re not sure you have the resources or talent mapping skills for it, it’s always better to turn to the experts in the field.
