Within the world of human capital strategy, talent acquisition and HR professionals need to get even more strategic and creative for finding and appointing the best-fit talent. One way to do this is through Talent Mapping.
Talent Mapping evaluates and tracks active and passive talent in candidate markets and helps organizations strengthen their talent acquisition, recruitment, development, and succession planning capabilities. Talent Mapping is a strategy companies can employ for long or short-term sourcing needs or diversifying into new business sectors. Talent Mapping is an additional and stand-alone value-add service that Chapel Hill Solutions brings to its clients.
What Is Talent Mapping?
Talent Mapping uses traditional researching and sourcing methodology to map and visualize your competitor’s talent and organizational structures. Often Talent Mapping will track up to three levels of management. These levels can include:
Senior Executive or C-Suite Level Leadership
Heads of Business Units
Vice President or One Level Below The Senior Leadership Team
Analysis of these management levels provides a detailed view of organizational reporting systems and insight into competitor functions. Using this information, organizations can identify key competitors and skills gaps and create functional core competencies to enhance their internal teams and hiring processes.
What To Expect With Talent Mapping.
Talent Mapping data is verified through internal and external authentication. By conducting extensive research, our team can confirm and verify the information and data produced by a Talent Mapping assignment.
When a company engages us for Talent Mapping, this data will remain valid and accurate for up to 6 months. Within these initial 6 months of a Talent Mapping engagement, we update the report constantly with refreshed and up-to-date information, including:
Tracking Candidate Mobility
Career Progression
Internal Restructures
Direct Report Changes
Once the initial 6-month period of Talent Mapping has lapsed, companies can retain us to ensure the data integrity remains current and we continue monitoring talent within niche markets to:
Track specific candidates and talent in a niche role or market
Engage candidates regularly to ensure relationships are active even without an immediate talent need or open position
Access real-time competitive market intelligence
In traditional hiring and recruitment processes, the cost and the length of the entire hiring cycle grow significantly as the time of a search extends. Since Talent Mapping is a continuous sourcing and data mining exercise, it decreases the length of the hiring cycle when a talent need arises and makes the process more efficient and streamlined with a thoroughly researched and vetted talent pool.
Talent Mapping For Succession Planning.
Talent Mapping provides insight into a candidate’s career trajectory, allowing for companies to develop roles better and proactively plan for a future candidate’s career succession within the organization. Companies can leverage Talent Mapping to gain a more objective view for succession planning. Companies will often limit their succession planning prospects to internal talent and fail to look beyond these internal talent pipelines. Talent Mapping identifies alternative external candidates that may be equally or better suited to a role. Utilizing Talent Mapping enhances a succession plan by providing a more comprehensive and holistic view of all talent available in the marketplace.
Using Talent Mapping As A Trial Run With An External Recruitment Partner.
Talent Mapping provides companies the opportunity to conduct a trial run of working with a new executive search firm or external recruitment partner. Talent Mapping allows for both a company and search firm to begin laying the foundation for building a long-term relationship without the commitment of engaging immediately on an executive-level search. We offer Talent Mapping as a stand-alone service to companies looking to survey the talent landscape, or a Talent Mapping project can be turned into a new executive search assignment or placement.
Talent Mapping can be done confidentially and enables organizations to always be “business-ready”. Talent Mapping circumvents the high-cost commitment of reactive and preemptive hiring, decreases the business risks, shortens the time to hire a new employee, and allows for more informed succession planning.
About The Author
With over 10 years experience in search and business operations, Julian is a highly diligent and efficient marketer and operations manager. He is a proven leader who combines creative thinking and strong communications with operational strategy, business development, recruitment operations, and digital marketing.
Julian joined Chapel Hill Solutions to modernize the recruitment industry’s approach. He is passionate about creating a transparent and collaborative relationship with his clients.