Talent acquisition 2.0: How talent mapping leads to better hires and long-term retention
Hiring managers are facing a unique challenge as the workplace landscape continues to evolve.
63% of recruiters admit their biggest issue is a talent shortage. It doesn’t help that the best candidates are usually off the market in about 10 days.
To further complicate matters, both businesses and talent are navigating a looming recession. With inflation reaching record highs, workers are focused on job security and financial stability.
While candidates still value flexibility and work from home policies, talent is also looking for financial stability while companies focus on cost cutting measures.
This is where talent mapping comes in.
The long-term talent acquisition strategy helps hiring managers attract, organize and retain top talent cost effectively while avoiding the need for expensive emergency hiring.
Here’s what you need to know:
Talent mapping explained
Talent mapping is a process that helps your company map the best candidates to the appropriate job roles to ensure your current and future talents’ needs are being met. It’s a long-term strategy that involves understanding your composition of talent, evaluating future hiring needs, reviewing whether your current staff meets those needs, and finding talent in your industry that would be a good fit for future recruitment.
If done correctly, talent mapping reduces the need for third-party hiring services and increases talent retention, which offers significant cost savings.
Why talent mapping matters and how to get started
While talent mapping is definitely a long-game type of strategy, the benefits greatly outweigh the time investment. Thinking strategically about hiring leads to a larger talent pool of diverse candidates with impressive skill sets.
Finding the right talent also means higher talent retention rates, which is surprisingly cost-effective. One bad hire can cost a company almost $15,000.
Talent mapping works well with a Direct Sourcing talent acquisition strategy, which enables companies to find top talent through an internal candidate pipeline.
Some important steps in the talent mapping process include:
- Creating a candidate persona. Personas are a way to identify and understand exactly who an ideal hire would be. Candidate personas include skills, education, experience, interests, salary expectations, and personality identifiers – such as whether they’re open to relocation or where they spend most of their time. For tips on how to create a persona, check out our latest downloadable.
- Building a passive candidate database. Passive candidates are employees who aren’t currently looking for jobs. They’re excelling in their fields and are usually open to new opportunities once approached. Having a database of potential passive candidates to reach out to in case of an opening increases the chances of a good fit and long-term retention.
- Investing in the right technology. Talent Acquisition tech, like TalentNet’s intuitive Direct Sourcing platform, can improve the speed and scalability of your hiring practices. The right platform should enable managers to quickly find, organize and connect with candidates. TalentNet includes AI-enabled job matching capabilities and an upcoming integration with GPT-3.5 that will allow curators to optimize job descriptions.
- Post meaningful jobs. Building your talent community means posting meaningful jobs that match candidate expectations.
It’s also important to build your talent community by posting meaningful jobs that attract serious candidates.
Candidate experience matters
The idea that candidates should feel lucky to land a job interview is a thing of the past. With talent shortages and higher expectations, many candidates would rather be unemployed than employed by the wrong company.
The stats speak for themselves.
Almost 60% of candidates have had a bad recruiting experience, and 80% of that group admitted they’re not hesitant to spread the word about it.
Creating a positive candidate experience helps potential hires build brand loyalty, increasing the chances they’ll become consumers of your product and re-apply for future positions. But even one negative experience can damage your company’s brand.
How to enhance your candidate experience
- Make sure your application process isn’t too long and complicated. The idea that serious candidates will sacrifice their time for you isn’t true anymore. Fill out your own application to understand how candidates feel.
- Build relationships. Communication is an essential part of the candidate experience. Even if a candidate isn’t chosen, it’s important to send them an email regardless. Otherwise, potential hires will feel like they’re yelling into the void – and likely won’t bother trying again.
- Plan out your ideal journey. Figure out who your ideal candidate is and how you want each touchpoint to be like.
Direct Sourcing allows companies to enhance a business’s employee value proposition by optimizing the hiring process, increasing communication with candidates and leveraging brand power to attract candidates who are already engaged with the organization.
Building a better hiring strategy
Talent mapping doesn’t just ensure your company has a solid talent pool, it protects your brand and builds important relationships in your field. As top talent demand better candidate experiences, organizations need to change the way they view talent acquisition. Proper talent acquisition tools, like TalentNet’s platform, can help streamline the talent mapping process while quickly connecting you to qualified hires. See how by booking a demo.