How to do talent mapping in recruitment ?

What is talent mapping in recruitment?

Talent Mapping is a continuous and iterative process that demands recruiters and HR professionals to be forward-thinking and strategic in their approach to workforce planning

The main components of talent mapping are:

1. Determining Future Talent Needs: Understanding the strategic direction of the company and the types of roles and skills that will be required in the future.
2. Evaluating Current Staff Viability: Assessing whether the current workforce has the potential to meet those future needs, through upskilling or reskilling if necessary.
3. Identifying High Potential Candidates: Not just within the organization and the current employees but also in the broader talent market, to fill any gaps in the current workforce's capabilities.
4. Developing a Strategic Recruiting Plan: Creating a targeted approach for placing the best candidates in specific job roles that align with future business objective

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Talent mapping strategy for recruitment in five steps

It can be difficult to define and identify where to start when you want to implement a talent mapping strategy in your company and your recruitment processes. Here is a list of five steps describing and easy way to implement a talent mapping roadmap.

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1) As-is evaluation and future needs planning

This step is foundational. It involves assessing the current state of the workforce and determining future business objectives and the corresponding talent requirements. This forward-looking analysis is crucial for identifying any gaps between the current workforce's abilities and future needs.

Considering how your company is going to grow and operate in the future, you need to define who are the candidates you will need to hire in the next months and years. You have to be able to answer these questions:

• In what departments will I have to do hire ? When ?
• What are the positions that I will need to fill ?
• What are the positions that I will be able to fill internally ? What are the ones for which I need to hire people ?

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2) Defining the targeted persona for today's and future's desired candidates

By creating detailed profiles for ideal candidates, both for current and future roles, organizations can better target their recruitment and development efforts. These personas can include skill sets, experience, potential for growth, and alignment with company culture and current employees.

This is what we call ICP, or Ideal Candidate Persona. In recruitment, an Ideal Candidate Persona (ICP) is a representation of the perfect candidate for a specific role within a company. It's a detailed profile that includes the experience, skills, and traits that a company deems most important for a particular position.

When creating an ICP, a company typically considers:

• Professional Background: Past job roles, industry experience, level of expertise, and career progression.
• Skills and Competencies: Hard skills, technical knowledge, soft skills, and other competencies relevant to the job.
• Education and Certifications: Academic qualifications, professional certifications, and continuous education relevant to the role.
• Personality and Cultural Fit: Traits that would make the candidate a good fit within the company's culture, work style, and values.

What can help you to create the ICP is the performance of the current top employees. You have to define what are the key indicators that will guarantee the performance of a future employee.

Using Leonar, you will be able to save filter for future candidate's search. For example:

If you know that have to target each year junior coming from the best Engineering Universities, you can set a saved filter on all Engineering Schools

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Imagine you know that you will need to hire a CFO next year. You can start building you network, knowing that these recruitment can be tough. You can save a boolean search that you will be able to use on Linkedin Recruiter or on any jobboards to find your future CFO.

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This is where Talent Mapping starts. Using informations and data regarding the candidates you will have to target, you start building a strategy on how you are going to map the recruitment market and identify the top talents.

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3) Company and market mapping

Understanding the landscape in which the company operates, including industry trends, competitor strategies, and labor market conditions, helps in identifying where the company stands and where it might find the talent it needs. This mapping can reveal opportunities and threats related to talent acquisition and retention.

Regarding company, these are the questions you will have to answer:

• What are my direct and indirect competitors in recruitment?
• Where do the candidate who I aim to hire work for?

The idea is to make a list of companies that you will use to target candidates in the future. A list can be used for different job position. A job position may also require several lists of companies.

In this example above, a recruiter knowing he will have to recruit candidates with Artificial Intelligence knowledge has decided to map and identify all startups working on AI products. These companies will surely be an interesting reservoir of top AI candidates in the next months.

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4) Building strong talent pools and animating a network

Developing a reservoir of potential candidates and actively engaging with them can ensure a quicker and more precise match when roles become available. This includes nurturing relationships with passive candidates and maintaining an active presence in relevant talent communities.

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How to build a talent pool?

• Keep track of all the candidates you have engaged with, whether they open to new opportunities or not
• Start sourcing new potential candidates you will need to outreach in the next months
• Engage Passive Candidates: Reach out to individuals who are not actively job searching but may be interested in future opportunities.
• Add to your network all these candidates
• Add to your mailing list and newsletter list the most important candidates

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Using Leonar, candidates will be automically added to a talent pool. All the time you spent sourcing will be beneficial for future candidates search.

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How to nurture relationships with candidates from a talent pool?

Candidate nurturing is the process of building and maintaining relationships with potential job candidates with the goal of keeping them engaged and interested in the company until the right job opportunity arises for them.

These are examples of what you can do to nurture relationships:

• Regular Communication: Keep in touch with candidates using personalized emails, newsletters, or messages that update them on new opportunities, company news, and relevant industry trends. This keeps your brand on their radar.
• Engage on Social Media: Interact with candidates on professional networks like LinkedIn. Share content that is relevant to their interests and expertise, and engage with their posts and updates.
• Provide Value-Added Content: Offer resources that can help candidates in their career development, such as webinars, whitepapers, and blog posts about industry insights, interview tips, and career advice.
• Personalized Interactions: Customize communications based on the candidate's profile, interests, and career aspirations. This shows that you value them as individuals and understand their unique career paths.
• Feedback Opportunities: Give and request feedback from interactions, interviews, or any other processes the candidates have been through. This can help them improve and shows that you are invested in their growth.
• Invitations to Company Events: Invite talent pool members to open houses, online events, workshops, or seminars. This provides a firsthand experience of your company culture and values.
• Career Path Discussions: Have conversations about potential career paths within your organization. This helps candidates envision a future with your company.
• Stay Organized: Keep detailed records of all interactions with candidates to provide a personalized and coherent experience over time.
• Alumni Engagement: If candidates have worked with your organization in the past, keep them engaged and informed about new opportunities that may interest them.
• Networking Opportunities: Create platforms for candidates to network with each other and with your team members. This can help build a community around your brand.
• Job Alerts: Implement a system that allows candidates to be notified of job openings that match their skills and interests.

Leonar will help you in several ways to perform candidates nurturing with some key features:

• Leonar keep track of all the discussions you had with candidates on all channels, and with all the recruiters of your team: Linkedin messages, inmails, emails, whatsapp messages...
• You can define a messaging sequences to regularly send updates, invite candidates to event, share new information
• This messaging sequence can be set through all channels
• You can personalize the messages you will send to the talent thanks to AI

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5) Setting the right talent acquisition channels and tools

Utilizing the most effective channels and tools for talent acquisition ensures that the effort to attract and engage with potential candidates is efficient and effective. This could involve leveraging technology, such as applicant tracking systems, social media, professional networking platforms, or traditional recruitment methods, depending on where the targeted talent pools are most active.

By Talent Acquisition Channels, this is the key areas you can work on:

• Building strong relationships with universities where you want to target candidates
• Purchasing access to the relevant jobboards
• Developing your employer branding onsite and offsite, including your social media presence
• Organizing your Talent Acquisition team to meet your recruitment goals
• Contracting with the right recruitment agencies, specialized in your industry

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The key tools you will probably need to implement for designing the best talent acquisition and talent mapping processes:

• An ATS (Applicant tracking system) to manage all inbound processes
• A Recruitment CRM or Automation Software to improve the sourcing and outbound recruitment processes, and be able to better work on talent mapping

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How Leonar can help you with your talent mapping strategy?

What we have seen is that Leonar can help you in many ways to perform your talent mapping strategy:

• You can map the companies you are willing to target
• You can map the universities and educational background
• You can set boolean search you will use when you look for candidates (for job titles, keywords...)
• You can build talent pools
• You can nurture these talent pools

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Why talent mapping is mandatory for recruiters in 2024?

Talent mapping is a strategic process that is essential for organizations looking to align their workforce capabilities with their long-term business goals. By effectively mapping talent, organizations can ensure they have the right people with the right skills in the right positions at the right time, which is crucial for maintaining a competitive edge and achieving long-term success.

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Who should implement a talent mapping strategy in recruiting processes?

Talent mapping strategy in companies

The implementation of a talent mapping strategy in recruiting processes typically involves multiple stakeholders within an organization, each playing a critical role:

1. Human Resources (HR) Leaders: They are often at the forefront of developing and overseeing talent mapping strategies. HR leaders work to align the strategy with the organization's broader human capital and business objectives.
2. Talent Acquisition Team: Recruiters and talent acquisition specialists execute the day-to-day aspects of talent mapping, such as identifying, attracting, and engaging with potential candidates. They apply the strategy to fill current vacancies and build pipelines for future needs.
3. Senior Executives and Department Heads: Executives and managers define the strategic direction of the organization, which shapes the talent mapping strategy. Their insight into future business needs is vital for understanding what skills and roles will be required.

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Talent mapping strategy in recruitment agencies

For recruitment agencies, talent mapping is both a service and a strategic approach that enhances their ability to effectively place candidates with clients. The process may differ slightly from in-house strategies due to the nature of their work and the variety of clients they serve. Here's how recruitment agencies might implement talent mapping:

1. Understand Client Industries and Sectors: Recruitment agencies need to have in-depth knowledge of the industries and sectors they serve. They should be aware of market trends, the competitive landscape, and the specific talent demands of those sectors.
2. Client Relationship Management: Agencies must work closely with their clients to understand their unique business strategies, culture, and future needs. This helps in creating a tailored talent mapping strategy for each client.
3. Candidate Profiling: Agencies should maintain comprehensive profiles for candidates, not just based on their current skills and experiences but also on their career aspirations and potential for growth. This enables agencies to match candidates to clients not only for immediate needs but also for future roles.
4. Talent Pooling: Recruitment agencies should build diverse talent pools of both active and passive candidates. They need to maintain relationships with these candidates and understand where they might fit with various clients over time.
5. Succession Planning Support: For their clients, agencies may provide assistance with succession planning, identifying candidates who could step into critical roles in the future.
6. Market Intelligence: Recruitment agencies should continuously gather and analyze data regarding talent availability, salary benchmarks, and hiring complexities, which can provide valuable insights for both the agency and its clients.
7. Advisory Services: Agencies can offer strategic advisory services to clients, helping them understand how to align their workforce strategies with their long-term business objectives.
8. Continuous Learning and Adaptation: The agency's recruiters and consultants need to stay informed about the best practices in talent mapping and apply this knowledge to refine their strategies continually.
9. Technology Utilization: Recruitment agencies often leverage advanced recruiting technologies, such as applicant tracking systems (ATS), customer relationship management (CRM) tools, and data analytics platforms to support their talent mapping efforts.

By implementing a talent mapping strategy, recruitment agencies can add significant value to their services, ensuring that they are not just filling vacancies but are also helping their clients build a workforce that can adapt and evolve as their business needs change. This strategic approach can also help agencies differentiate themselves in a competitive market by demonstrating a deep understanding of their clients’ industries and a commitment to long-term partnership and success.