Quiz: How's Your Company's Talent Intelligence Game?

Is your company playing the talent intelligence game? If not, it’s time to get dealt in and start playing for keeps - keeping your employees, that is. When you hire a worker, you need to know they are coming into the company to stay a while.

Without talent intelligence, you could be stuck in a game of whack-a-mole when it comes to recruitment: no sooner do you fill one role than another vacancy pops up. It’s a revolving door of hiring and rehiring that never seems to end.

How do you come out a winner when it comes to talent acquisition? Let’s see where your company fares when the scores are added up.

1. Staying up on current talent trends

Do you know what skills are most desired across your industry, and where the individuals most suited to fill them are being hired? Knowing where to look for talent and what roles are being currently filled can help you determine what you have to offer to secure your own high-value talent.

Currently, soft skills are winning out when it comes to talent evaluation. It’s easier to teach someone how to do a specific task than how to bring proactiveness, perseverance, and personality to work every day. Are you still hiring based on a list of education and certification standards, or are you willing to train the right person, whoever they may be?

Points:

1 - Wait - what are talent trends?

5 - We’re actively seeking to understand and predict talent trends

Crosschq 360 can help you zero in on soft skills during the digital reference checking process, helping you find the right human for the job, not just the right worker.

2. Making data-driven decisions 

Are you using data to help drive decision-making in hiring? What you know about existing employees can be leveraged to help you understand what red flags mean an employee is more likely to quit within six months and highlights that tell you if a candidate is likely to hit your quality of hire goals.

Enterprise organizations may have data scientists on hand to help them sort through data and find patterns. Other companies may depend on AI tools. Building a talent intelligence platform can help you gather useful insights, improve Quality of Hire and reduce repetitive recruitment costs.

Points:

1 - Isn’t analytics… math? What does math have to do with hiring?

5 - We use analytics and quality of hire metrics to drive our recruitment practices

Crosschq Analytics provides reporting across a broad range of metrics to give you all the information you need to improve your hiring stats.

3. Hire strategically to avoid skills gaps

Making strategic decisions about talent hinges on the ability to use talent intelligence to identify which employees are engaging more with their work than others. Collating data about where they excel, and which prior experiences best prepared them for their role will position you to hire the best possible talent.

In addition, understanding where all of your candidates shine as far as strengths go will help you build a clearer picture of where skill sets overlap, and where skill gaps are likely to appear as the months go by. If you are able to figure out what employees are likely to churn, you can lay a plan to retain or replace them and maintain business continuity.

Points:

1 - Who knows what tomorrow will bring? We’re taking things a day at a time.

5 - We are strategically building our workforce to ward against all eventualities

Crosschq Analytics can help you track patterns in employee skill sets and performance, identifying where your company is strong and where vulnerabilities lie. 

[See Talent Intelligence Strategy: Smarter Hiring = Long-Term Retention]

4. Reduce employee turnover

High employee turnover rates can be a severe financial drain. Replacing a worker can lead to direct costs from recruitment to replace them, as well as indirect costs in reduced productivity and damage to morale among remaining employees.

Every employee that must be replaced can change the company culture dynamic, and a revolving door of staff leads nowhere good. Being able to retain top talent is critical to your organization’s success. 

A talent intelligence platform should make it easy to find the patterns in employee loss rates, and you can create exit surveys designed to surface true reasons behind employee flight. 

• Are they leaving due to being headhunted by a company with a better offer? 
• Was there an issue with management? 
• Do you need to revisit your company policy on remote work and flexible hours?

Once you’ve identified why people are leaving, you can take steps to stop the flow of personnel away from your payroll and make your company an even more attractive place to work long-term. In the meantime, you can use an opt-in talent network to keep potential candidates on tap to fill positions quickly when needed.

Points:

1 - We’re not fortune tellers - how can we know what employees will leave?

5 - We are closely monitoring staff happiness and actively working to improve retention.

Crosschq Recruit can ensure that you have a steady source of high-value talent ready and able to fill gaps left by unhappy employees, reducing the time to fill and preventing productivity losses.

5. Build stronger teams

By analyzing employee and candidate personality traits, skills, and experience, you make it easier and more intuitive to build stronger, cross-functional teams. Using talent intelligence to assess employee behavior allows you to identify traits in existing workers who have the potential to be great leaders.

This allows you to look for those same traits in candidates, so you can hire for the skills a role requires rather than the job title, and build teams that mesh different complementary - but not clashing - personality types for stronger cohesion and higher productivity. This allows you to develop a company culture that fits your business vision and goals.   

Points:

1 - What’s wrong with hiring based on the position title?

5 - We want the best employee for the job every time, and are willing to dig deeper.

Crosschq 360 helps you leverage talent intelligence to get the best match for your job opening, its responsibilities, your existing team, and your company’s long-term plans for the future.

So, what level is your organization playing at when it comes to the talent intelligence game?

5-9 points - Rank Newbie: You’re bluffing your way through, and need to gain some expertise or risk running out of cards to play for talent acquisition and retention.  

13-17 points - Savvy Player: You’ve figured out what you need to know, and are taking steps to acquire that knowledge to build a stronger hand.

21-25 points - Tournament Champion: You’ve got the smarts and the skills, and are well on your way to a clean sweep with no need to cheat. 

Talent Intelligence can not only give you a better hand but help you play it just right to land the employees you need. To learn more about how Crosschq can help you improve your talent acquisition game, request a free demo today.