The world we live in is exceedingly competitive. Businesses are under pressure both to survive and ultimately, to thrive. In order to exist and grow in a competitive environment, a business needs to capitalize on every possible advantage. Possessing quality talent is one huge competitive edge that translates to better productivity, innovation in the workplace, increased revenue, and a stronger employer brand.
This is something that many businesses are beginning to make a priority. Consequently, recruiters are leveraging all available resources and inroads to ensure businesses continue to hire quality talent. One of the many tools available to the modern recruiter is talent intelligence, which this blog explores in detail.
“Talent wins games but teamwork and intelligence wins championships”
– Michael Jordan
Table of Contents
What Is Talent Intelligence?
In the business world, and elsewhere, the word intelligence now implies being in possession of valuable data and information that can be analyzed and interpreted to make decisions. In principle, the same is true of talent intelligence. It providers recruiters with valuable and extensive information on candidates, which enables them to make better hiring decisions. This makes it an extremely useful tool for professional recruiters.
How Do These Tools Work?
These systems gather data on existing talent pools and an organization’s former employees alike. Depending on the nature of your system, you may also be able to gather intelligence on passive candidates and the talent of your competition. These tools are limited to gathering data, however, they analyze it into actionable information. The addition of refinements can efficiently identify who wants to work for you, who will be a good fit for you, and how motivated is someone is when working for you.
Talent intelligence tools gather data on a micro-scale, delving beyond the surface data you get with Applicant Management Systems. They explore a number of metrics, including salary, skills, employment history, and education. They also examine HR analytics – work history, benefits structure, prior performance reviews, and even social media activity. The result is a much clearer picture of prospective candidates and a fair preview of potential incoming talent.
External Use Cases
We have examined how these tools can help you gain information on the aspects that motivate (and demotivate) your workers. Likewise, we have touched on how these tools gather and collate microdata. The uses of talent intelligence tools are not limited to just your own workforce, however. For example, IT companies can use it to gain valuable information on their competition.
Any organization can determine if a competitor is hiring and what benefits they offer. This insight makes your own hiring immediately more competitive. It also promotes greater success when sourcing your candidates directly and through partners like IT staffing agencies.
These tools might also track senior employees after they leave your business. Thanks to deep analytics, they can inform you of the best hiring channels in order to source higher-quality candidates. A talent intelligence tool can also identify any skill gaps your business might have, along with the salaries and benefits your competitors offer for these skills.
The Advantages of Using Talent Intelligence Tools
Talent intelligence systems offer several advantages to recruiters. They help keep recruiting costs low and ensure a better quality of hires. They also offer a number of other advantages including:
Predicting and Preparing For Market Trends
The ability to predict future trends in the labor market and to prepare for them is invaluable to a professional recruiter. COVID-19 has sent shockwaves through the global economy. Many are convinced the economic impact of COVID-19 will linger long after the disease been brought to bear, as is the case in manufacturing staffing agencies. However, one shift in the hiring market is of particular importance.
COVID-19 has necessitated remote working, and as a result, the labor market has had to adapt. Many employers are now ready to offer remote working flexibility even after the pandemic. Talent management and intelligence tools can help recruiters stay ahead of the curve by helping them predict and capitalize on new hiring trends.
Stronger Talent Acquisition and Allocation Decisions
Talent management and intelligence tools offer insights into employee engagement. More than that, they offer insights into the factors that influence employee engagement. For example, it can highlight areas where your team excels and what work/academic experience is best suited to building out a team. This gives you information on the skills, experience, and education workers require for specific roles, helping you make better decisions concerning your talent acquisition strategies. At the same time, this information can also help you to allocate and redistribute your talent better throughout the business. You can strategically deploy your talent where their skills and experience are most needed.
Keeping Hiring Costs Low
With accurate information on the costs associated with each stage of hiring, professional recruiters can optimize talent acquisition. For example, intelligence tools offer information on which hiring channels saw the most traffic and attracted the best-quality candidates for mortgage recruiters. Your mortgage firm can use this data to prioritize your spend and acquire talent more efficiently. With enough information, you can reduce the costs at each stage of the hiring process, keeping hiring costs to a minimum.
Keeping Employee Turnover to a Minimum
High employee turnover is a bad situation for any recruiter. Not only does it reflect poorly on your employer brand, it also implies that you aren’t hiring the right candidates. Employee turnover is inefficient, causes gaps in continuity, and can amount to significant costs in both time and money in finding a replacement. Employee intelligence tools let recruiters identify the areas that are seeing the most turnover. They can also consolidate the various reasons for leaving effectively. Both these metrics will give you actionable information on how to tackle employee turnover in specific areas and keep it as low as possible.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is talent intelligence?
Talent intelligence refers to the gathering and analysis of deep data relating to employees and candidates.
How artificial intelligence helps companies recruit talented staff?
AI and ML can help sift through large volumes of data, sort them, analyze them, and offer actionable information to make better recruiting decisions.
Can AI help with performance management?
AI can analyze various elements of performance like work hours, tasks completed, and time consumed to help teams better manage their performance.
How is AI used in recruitment?
AI has various use cases in recruitment, including in finding candidates, analyzing candidate data, creating talent pipelines, identifying recruiting trends, and much more.
