What is Talent Intelligence?

By Abhishek Kathpal | Updated 10 August, 2022

Due to the increasingly competitive nature of the recruitment industry, companies often adopt different strategies to improve their talent acquisition. As a result, talent intelligence is gaining traction among recruiters. Using this approach equips recruiters with enough data to drive decision-making.

What is Talent Intelligence

Talent Intelligence meaning and definition

Talent intelligence is understanding and predicting the behaviors of potential and current employees. Using technology, talent acquisition teams collect and analyze data to develop predictive models. As a result, companies can identify high-performing citizens, anticipate employee turnover, and predict and fill skill gaps.

Recruiters know the labor market is vulnerable to trend shifts due to volatility. For example, the COVID-19 pandemic transformed how recruiters and job seekers view jobs. After the pandemic, companies were still ready to offer remote roles and hire contingent staff. This means job candidates will consider remote and flexible work options before applying for a job. Therefore, recruiters can leverage talent intelligence to predict these trends.

Talent acquisition professionals gather information on their workforce by using surveys. Surveys help companies measure employees' engagement levels, identify improvement areas, and track changes over time. Also, analyzing employee interaction on social media using platforms helps companies identify employee behavior patterns in employee behavior, helping them develop insights into what drives engagement.

The Role of Talent Intelligence in recruitment

Recruiters have always relied on intuition for hiring new employees, leading to an inefficient hiring process. However, they can shape how they hire in a data-driven approach when they have insights into candidate qualifications, skill level, and cultural inclination. As a result, the data pool hastens candidate outsourcing, reduces cost, and improves efficiency.

The Benefits of Talent Intelligence

There are many benefits to implementing talent intelligence within a company. Some of them include:

  1. Increased Efficiency: By understanding the strengths and weaknesses of each employee, companies can better optimize their workforce.

  2. Improved Morale: Employees feel appreciated when their strengths are recognized and utilized.

  3. Reduced Training Costs: When employees are placed in positions that are likely to excel, the training process is shorter and less costly.

  4. Maximized Productivity: Companies can achieve greater productivity levels with the right team.

  5. Enhanced Customer Service: Talented employees create satisfied customers.

  6. Competitive Edge: Companies that implement talent intelligence gain a competitive edge over those that do not.

  7. Attraction and Retention of Talent: Talented employees want to work for organizations that invest in talent intelligence systems.

  8. Cost Savings: Using talent intelligence can lead to significant company cost savings.

  9. Improved Decision Making: Talent intelligence systems provide data that enhance decision-making processes.

  10. Greater Insight into the Workforce: Talent intelligence provides a detailed overview of the workforce, which is beneficial for strategic planning purposes

How Does Talent Intelligence Work?

Talent intelligence is all about using technology to identify and track high-performing employees. It's like an extensive data analysis for companies, where all the relevant information is collected and sorted so that employers can see who the top performers are and what makes them successful. The company then uses this information to develop training and development programs to help other employees reach the same level of success, increasing productivity.

Strategies to implement Talent Intelligence in Recruitment

Companies can use a few strategies to implement talent intelligence in recruitment. One is to create a system that measures the effectiveness of the recruitment process and makes changes accordingly. Another is to create a database of potential candidates and track their progress over time. Some companies have also successfully used specific tools which help them identify top performers, assess individual skills, and predict future performance. They can also help identify potential problems with the team and recommend solutions.

One example of a company that uses talent intelligence is Google. They use a tool called 'People Analytics,' which helps them track employee data such as how long someone has been with the company, their skills, and how they perform in their job. This data helps them make better hiring, firing, and promotions decisions.

Using Talent Intelligence to Improve Recruitment Efforts

Companies often hire data analysts to collect relevant information and draw conclusions to make better recruitment decisions. Alternatively, they use various technologies like Candidate sourcing Tools, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) to identify recruitment trends and patterns, software that can work on a large number of candidate profiles quickly, or even platforms like LinkedIn to study employee history.

Information that is Considered Talent Intelligence

Competitors' open roles and requirements to fill them are valuable knowledge to develop strategic plans to beat them. Also, competitors' pay range and benefits can be leveraged to attract highly qualified candidates. Understanding why people leave their roles in the company and industry at large helps devise ways to increase customer retention. Even when employees leave, finding out where they work next helps companies compare themselves to other companies.

In recruitment, it is essential to know which channel competitions are using. It is also necessary to understand the channels that perform best for specific industry roles and monitor which channel provides candidates of the highest quality. Recruiters should also measure how long it takes to fill skill gaps to enable proper recruitment decision-making.

About the Author

Abhishek Kathpal

Abhi is the co-founder at Longlist.io. Funded by US based OnDeck, Longlist is currently enabling 50+ businesses to increase their candidate and client reach outs, automating the workflow across stages.