Talent Intelligence Platforms: The Next Big Thing In HR Tech

These days the market is inundated with a plethora of HR Tech options with solutions championed by AI. Almost every vendor flaunts their offerings, expatiating the salient AI features of their product. And how it would successfully address our concerns relating to people management. And the fortuitous arrival of Generative AI seems to be the 'next-gen' nascent technology within the HR Tech landscape. It will offer use cases limited only by the fecundity of our imagination. The often cited main benefits of AI tools, as Sir Humphrey Appleby would say, "thereby releasing their overlords for the more onerous duties and profound deliberations that are the inevitable concomitant of their exalted position." 😃😃

Given the rapid innovations in product capabilities, purveyors do not fit into one category. It leads to misapprehension about the categorization due to overlap. The absence of clear demarcation makes it inscrutable and incomprehensible for lay people to understand the product offerings. Here expert HR Tech analysts can disabuse the nuances with a lucid explanation of HR Tech options.

I regularly follow articles, podcasts, webinars, and videos by Josh Bersin to stay informed about the updates. He is the cognoscente, virtuoso, and HR analyst of outstanding merit. He mentions in his trends report for 2023 that "We would suggest this is the next big thing—and we call this effort 'talent intelligence'." It intrigued my interest in this area leading to my writing this article. In September 2018, LinkedIn released its 'Talent Insights' tool, and I first came across this concept around January. 

So, what is Talent Intelligence? The Practitioners, HR Tech Analysts, and Vendors define this concept in multitudinous ways. The book 'Talent Intelligence' by Toby Culshaw define it as:

"Talent Intelligence is the augmentation of internal and external people data with the application of technology, science, insights and intelligence relating to people, skills, jobs, functions, competitors and geographies to drive business decisions."

This comprehensive definition underscores the significance of Talent Intelligence practitioners and remarkably covers numerous areas of their work.

Considering the trends, rapid changes in the external environment essentially compel HR professionals to hire new employees with unique skills. And design new ways to organize new pay structures and career pathways. Wherein talent intelligence will be an essential prerequisite for devising effectual talent strategies. 

To successfully tackle this, the research carried out by Josh Bersin suggests an integrated conflation of what they consider the 'Four Rs': Recruiting, Retention, Reskilling, and Redesign. Holistically, the talent intelligence teams can help us to hire the so-called 'purple squirrels' considering location, skills, pay model, work arrangements, and numerous other factors. And also provide valuable career pathway suggestions and perspicacious insights to implement upskilling & reskilling initiatives. Seemingly we can develop this team by effectively melding expertise from sourcing analytics, skills analytics, workforce planning, and people analytics.

Josh suggests that there is a massive market for talent intelligence platforms. These are AI-driven data platforms with applications beyond recruitment. We can deploy them for sourcing, internal talent matching, and succession management. We may also utilize them for assessments, job design, and skills analysis since the vendors equip them with skills taxonomies. Using skills inference technology, we can effectively use our people data to identify skills gaps and design bespoke career pathways to close them. Also, recommend successors and mentors and even benchmark comparisons with other organizations. As Linda Sharkey says, "Companies that collect and effectively analyze their talent data are much more likely to experience better business outcomes."

The purveyors of talent intelligence platforms include Eightfold, Retrain, Beamery, Phenom, SeekOut, and iCims. You may check out other vendors at G2, Trustradius, and Selecthub. 

■ Benefits of implementing a talent intelligence platform. 

● Harness the untapped potential of our people data:

Our employees are generating immense data every day, [e.g., Recruitment Data (ATS, CRM), Communications Data (Active & Passive Listening), Appraisals Data, Learning Data (LMS, LXP), ONA, etc.] Now we have the latest tools to make sense of it by leveraging cutting-edge technology such as machine learning and deep learning. In addition to internal data, talent intelligence can utilize external data sources in this process (e.g., employee profiles, labour market vendors, industry groups, etc.). We can also manage and derive actionable insights from contingent talent data to facilitate better decision-making. The purveyors equip these solutions with a granular universal talent data set. It helps us leverage the full potential of our employee data in manifold ways. 

● Effective Hiring & Workforce planning:

A resume may reflect a blinkered view of the actual potential of a candidate/employee. The Talent Intelligence platform can fill the gap by identifying missing skills and validated skills using various sources of talent data (internal & external). The provenance of up-to-date data sets is cutting-edge talent engines. It enables prompt tracking ebb and flow of demand and supply of different skills and capabilities based on geographies and other parameters. Also, figure out where we can find in-demand skills and talent while minimizing costs and improving the efficiency of hiring processes. 

To devise a robust workforce plan from the perspective of future talent and skills requirements, we get comprehensive insights into our talent, market, and industry. It helps us analyze multifarious scenarios to a T, consonant with our strategic projections. Essentially helping us to track, update and evaluate job profiles for emerging skills. According to our organization's strategic requirements, we can develop those skills and talent through bespoke reskilling and upskilling initiatives. It also helps us to benchmark against other companies.  

● Better Career Management:

For career pathway suggestions from AI tools, we can capitalize on the skills taxonomies. Concomitantly also create a compelling employee experience in the process. Talent intelligence platforms use neural networks and algorithms. It considers immeasurable data points beyond human capabilities to create bias-free, data-driven insights for employee growth and development. It understands the skills owned by our employees and provides recommendations bespoke to every employee. Providentially, coming up with suggestions that the employee couldn't have previously imagined they have potential in specific domains. Which essentially creates a range of options for employee movement within the organization, paving the way for enhancing employee engagement. 

● Maximizing our skill set by identifying and leveraging adjacent skills:

One of the salient benefits of implementing talent intelligence platforms is to understand and develop skills in general and adjacent skills in particular. It recommends suitable career pathways to upgrade skills in specific domains. Especially those that employees may have otherwise overlooked or missed. Implementing various bespoke reskilling initiatives can help us to achieve actual employee potential. We can successfully address employee concerns about professional career growth and development opportunities within the company. (According to Gallup research - it was the most cited concern among 87% of millennials.) Especially by identifying complementary skills to employees' existing attainments. We can encourage and enable their growth within the company as per their learnability. We can also hire considering adjacent skills, especially for emerging skills, while enhancing our available talent pool. Given our projected strategic requisitions, it can become the mainstay of our future-oriented talent strategy.

● Developing an Inclusive Workforce - by being an Equal Opportunity Employer:

The appreciable benefit of implementing talent intelligence platforms is an opportunity to position ourselves as an equal-opportunity employer and improve our employment brand. It can also be a part of our ongoing ESG initiatives and DEIB efforts. To foster a culture of inclusion, we can get bias-free talent insights. To effectively manage candidate segments, it can also help us identify appropriate talent pools within specified locations. We can approach them according to our requirements, to create a proper mix of employees. For all our employees, we can design inclusive hiring practices, training & development opportunities while minimizing bias and discrimination. 

Many solutions provide an option to anonymize candidate/employee profiles by removing numerous indicators (e.g., name, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, etc.) to facilitate impartial judgments and bias-free decisions. It ensures fair opportunity for every employee to succeed regardless of their background. It culminates in providing equal opportunities to various segments of candidates and employees, thereby enabling a culture of inclusion.

On balance, we can say that regardless of the HR initiative, one must deliberate on the following concerns before commencement:

Why are we implementing this?

Who will benefit from this?

How many resources will it require? (e.g., Human, Financial, and other)

How long will this take for implementation?

What is it that we are trying to achieve?

What will be the perceived business value for each stakeholder?

Is this in line with our HR strategy?

How does this help in achieving overall organizational strategy?

Conclusion :

As suggested by various HR Tech experts, successfully implementing talent intelligence platforms will indubitably improve the process of talent acquisition and talent management. Remarkable insights gained in the process will be the cornerstone of developing our talent strategy to achieve the goals and objectives of our business. Josh Bersin suggests that although it is a new domain, many large companies are proceeding in this direction. He says that typically they progress from 'sourcing intelligence' to 'people analytics' to 'skills and career intelligence' to 'talent intelligence.' The benefits of implementation are not limited to talent acquisition and cover a vast array of talent management across the organization. We can conclude with the following quote:

"Organizations need more than data. They need insight about their people to be competitive in world markets. This is because people are often the only source of competitive advantage."

— Paul Turner 

(Make Your People Before You Make Your Products, 2014)