What is talent mapping?

Talent Mapping, also known as candidate pooling or pipelining, helps organisations to pinpoint exactly where the best talent is working. It is used to analyse talent both internally as well as in competitor organisations.

This process can be used to research very specific teams, or entire sectors. We target the key competitors in your market place and gain an understanding of how they are structured; where responsibility rests, what their pay scales are and who their fast track high performers are.

It is an excellent tool that can be varied to whatever the client needs to learn.

Quite simply, talent mapping is a report that highlights who does what and where, and is an invaluable in-depth analysis of market conditions and competitor activity.

Why is it used?

Talent Mapping is an exceptional process for companies in both times of expansion and growth, and also during a downturn. It enables organisations to measure the skills, competencies and capabilities of teams, board members, entire departments or simply as a name gathering exercise. The most common reason for investing in such research is that it assesses whether the talent needed is recruitable internally or externally.

Some clients use this as a constant service and like to always be aware of movements within competitor organisations. Other companies use it as a one off to check the market place before making a senior appointment, or through times of expansion and organisational change. It enables a company to check what the competition is up to and where the best people are.

There are a lot of variables within the process and clients look for a broad range of information; including salary analysis within a sector, sales teams targets, performance and turnover, board members functions, team sizes, etc.

This exercise can also be used to highlight individuals whose skills are not required during times in a less buoyant economy. For example, a CEO might decide that it is more pertinent to improve financial management and credit control rather than invest in new business development at such a time and will need to plan resources carefully to reflect this change of direction. It will be important to also identify any skills gaps and then decide to train internal staff to fill the void or recruit externally – again, talent mapping makes this process easier to manage.

RECENT PROJECTS:

DEFENCE CONTRACTOR
Our client was keen to learn how their competitors sold large-scale programmes into the Ministry of Defence. We evaluated the top 30 competitors and analysed the routes to market as well as the sales/business development teams within them. The client was then able to use this information to replicate best sales practices across the group and identify target individual to augment his teams. This project led to the organisation appointing project finance, senior commercial and communications staff.

GROWING MARKET RESEARCH COMPANY
We have recently commenced a talent-mapping project with an expanding market research company. They have recently made a number of acquisitions and now need to get a good understanding of how their large competitors deliver work profitably. We are evaluating the operations departments of the target organisation in order to identify key individuals that have the ability to amalgamate the acquisitions whilst retaining key team members.