Talent Intelligence: Beating the Competition to Top Talent

The labor market is as tight as it has ever been recorded, with record job openings spiking to over 11 million. To put that into perspective, since 2000, the year records began being kept nationwide, the average was slightly over 4 million job openings at any given time. 

The shift from the so-called “Great Resignation” into a more friendly “Great Refresh” has done little to rectify the overwhelming number of vacancies in companies across the globe. 

Competition is fierce between companies to attract and retain talent existing primarily in several generations of workers who are finally coming into possession of negotiating power, and making demands of employers that many are finding difficult to field.

How can organizations compete effectively not just to attract talent, but to keep it in the face of relentless attempts from competitors to lure that same talent away? And how can businesses identify and nurture formerly unrecognized talent that could be key to filling positions and providing skills that are currently missing?

The answer is talent intelligence. Benefits of talent intelligence aren’t just present in the context of talent acquisition. They can be accessed and leveraged even before active recruitment begins, and continue to yield results long past onboarding.

[See Using Crosschq to Help Create Your Talent Intelligence Platform]

Talent Intelligence Benefits Companies Great and Small

One mistake many companies make is assuming that if their company is small, they can’t afford talent intelligence, or that if their company is big, they can be competitive without it. Talent intelligence benefits any size of company, and the good news is that the size of the solution is the key to beating the competition to top talent and keeping them from stealing it away once secured.

How to Leverage Talent Intelligence Benefits For Recruitment

Talent intelligence starts with market intelligence: scoping out the competition and getting a feel for their strategy. Where are the weak spots, where are the skills gaps, and most importantly, where will these things be in two years, in five, in ten?

Step one to remaining competitive in a fast-changing labor market is creating a strategic workforce plan. Companies must quantify mid-and long-term talent gaps by mapping employee skills against current and future needs. 

Talent intelligence from a market standpoint can help reveal how competitors are bracing to meet this challenge, and where the most competition will be for talent and skills as a hedge against future requirements.

Once it’s understood where the competition stands, organizations can begin creating their own strategy for talent acquisition and retention in the years ahead. Current organizational needs can be weighed against future projections, and people moved into place to hedge against potential labor market tightness during critical junctures of business growth.

Planning For the Future of the Workforce With Talent Intelligence

The information garnered through talent intelligence initiatives can help clarify what skills to hire for, and what positions are likely to need to be filled in upcoming months or years. Building clear profiles of the best candidates for each position can make recruitment more accurate and lead to lasting hires.

By mapping talent across the organization and finding what is lacking, and scouting competitors hiring practices to see what skills they are recruiting for, businesses can develop a blueprint for their company’s current and future workforce needs. 

Ideally, as needs change and escalate and talent becomes even more difficult to find, key people will have been recruited into the organization to continue learning and development from within. 

This lessens the pressure to find and acquire highly skilled and in-demand talent by creating top talent through nurturing and retention combined with on-the-job skills training or company-paid professional certifications or coursework.

By eliminating the need to frequently recruit top-tier employees, cost savings in recruitment can be realized. Those savings can be put into initiatives designed to increase retention, and train high-potential recruits to continue moving into positions of leadership to become productivity drivers.

Over time, the workforce becomes holistically futureproofed, with enough highly skilled and versatile employees that a loss at any level can be compensated for until the right employee can be cross-skilled or upskilled or an outside hire made without rush, to ensure the best fit. 

Developing packages and policies that get employees to hire and stay must be a key part of any talent recruitment and retention plan. Talent intelligence stands out here as well, helping identify what employees want, need, expect, and demand. Baby boomers are aging out of the talent pool, and their framework is outdated.

Employee retention isn’t a tactic or an initiative: it’s an outcome. Hiring the best people is a useless, costly endeavor if they can’t be convinced to stay. With two out of five employees actively considering quitting (one out of two when Generation Z is isolated), hiring and managing for retention is key to long-term organizational success.

Top Five Talent Intelligence Benefits

Using talent intelligence from the earliest stages of recruitment through bolstering retention has multiple benefits. Each benefit has wide-reaching effects throughout an organization.

1. Better quality of hire

While talent intelligence can’t serve as a stand-alone predictor of quality of hire it can provide insights into correlations that may prove reliable. Knowing what attributes employees who are successful share can help drive decisioning around hiring for leadership positions or into teams where stressors are high and teamwork is vital.

2. Better retention

Talent intelligence garnered from post-hire employee tracking, surveys, assessments, and feedback can help provide metrics relevant to longevity, including the drive to excel and advance, and loyalty to the company, its vision, and its goals. Employees who demonstrate similar visions and are aligned with the same values are more likely to stay with a company long-term.

3. A futureproofed workforce

Intelligence related to skills drives futureproofing of the workforce, setting the stage for the next phase before the current one is even complete, and keeping pieces moving across a board in order to set up for a successful next play. By identifying high-potential talent and assigning greater responsibility (and rewards), talent can be molded and loyalty assured. This helps prevent critical asset losses at crucial junctures in the future of the company.

4. Lowered cost of acquisition

With talent intelligence, employee recruitment becomes more data-driven. The odds are better of selecting the best candidate and understanding what will be required to get them to stay long-term. The fewer employees leave in their first year, the lower costs will be for recruitment and the overall cost of hiring goes down.

5. Shortened time to hire

With intelligent talent sourcing and screening, the time to hire can be significantly reduced. By gaining clarity on the attributes and skills top candidates should possess, screening can be completed more quickly, and hiring managers don’t have to get bogged down in stacks of resumes. Examples of this are Crosschq 360 digital reference checks and Recruit talent sourcing.

Using Talent Intelligence Tools

There are three key areas where talent intelligence tools can streamline the recruitment process and help organizations secure top candidates even in the face of stiff competition. 

Pre-hire candidate assessments and reference checks

One of the biggest problems recruiters and HR departments face is the time-to-hire issue. In a competitive market, candidates are likely to walk away if the hiring process drags on for longer than two weeks. 

However, the median time to hire across 15 popular industries is more than thirty days up to nearly fifty days. How many top candidates are hired away from under a company’s nose simply because the other organization has its pre-hire processes running more smoothly?

Crosschq 360 provides a way to drastically cut the time required for candidate assessments and reference checking, helping bring time to hire to a minimum. This not only helps secure the best candidates before the competition can cut in but reduces the amount of time the organization must struggle with the empty role. 

Candidate referral networks

Finding talent that is prescreened, has already opted into being recruited, and can be onboarded quickly can be a lifesaver when a key employee leaves abruptly. Being able to visit a repository of workers motivated to make a move can help fill critical roles quickly and without fuss.

In addition to traditional hiring funnels, consider a referral network that can provide high-quality talent that is set up for fast hiring with the preliminaries already completed. Combined with a robust talent map from within your organization, replacing a high-value employee is easier even during a skills shortage. 

Crosschq Recruit provides a ready-to-move pool of opt-in talent with clear skill sets, attributes, and more. With ATS and CRM integration, this qualified talent pipeline allows prospects to job match with speed and accuracy and a faster time to fill for minimally impacted workflows.

Quality of Hire and retention analytics

Understanding how new hires perform and grow in their first days, weeks, and months after onboarding can provide invaluable insights into how hiring decisions are impacting company productivity and revenues. 

Here is where talent intelligence can truly shine: by delivering insights into the workforce as it evolves, and providing actionable data that speaks to future hiring based on new hire performance and retention metrics.

Crosschq Analytics supports closed-loop measurements for accuracy in reporting on Quality of Hire measurements and retention analytics while providing robust DEI assessments to help support diverse team building.

Are you ready to beat the competition for the best talent on the market? Contact us for a free demo of Crosschq today.