All companies ultimately rely on talent data. The amount of data a talent acquisition team has to work through to shortlist just one candidate is enormous and ultimately makes the hiring process long and tiring. Talent intelligence can help. 

Talent Intelligence has distinguished itself as a central aspect of intelligent recruiting, with more and more organizations utilizing it for faster and better talent management. 

Talent intelligence gives your team more time to build connections, develop strategies, and deal with the “human” aspects of recruitment while handling tedious tasks that recruitment professionals would otherwise do. 

Growing companies need to hire more people and then work through a volume of job applications to select the best-qualified individuals and add the most value to the organization.  

The processes used to sort and make decisions around talent are varied; some companies use assessments, others rely on interviews, many look at years of experience, while some have no structured process at all.  

All companies ultimately rely on talent data. The amount of data a talent acquisition team has to work through to shortlist just one candidate is enormous and ultimately makes the hiring process long and tiring.  

Yet, after all the hard work, chances are the candidate might turn out to be a wrong match for the company, which will cost the company again. 

But what is talent data, and why should organizations strongly consider moving away from antiquated talent data practices? 

Talent data can be defined as information and insights that an organization has available on its talent in its talent management system.   

This includes data related to recruiting, onboarding, learning, performance, compensation, succession, and workplace collaboration. In modern workplaces, this can consist of diversity and behavioral data associated with the talent. 

Talent data has been used for a long time and relied upon heavily for making strategic hiring decisions; however, modern organizations are finding it challenging to deal with talent data, and some of the significant issues they are facing include:  

• Inconsistent and irrelevant data gathered from different sources 
• Analysis paralysis slows down the whole process 
• Overreliance on unvalidated data  
• Excessive or poorly organized data 
• Stale data, which is of no use for today 
• Zero focus on talent transformation, adjacent talent, or career progression

Talent data solely cannot be relied upon to make decisions for the modern workplace. Today’s workplaces consist of individuals from diverse backgrounds. Each individual has a different skill set, history, and personality traits. 

 When managing diverse organizational talent, it becomes crucial to be able to take your talent data and extract insights out of it to make talent management as smooth as possible. 

This is when Talent intelligence comes into place. 

Talent Intelligence: Looking beyond the numbers 

Talent intelligence is the process of data collection and analytics to assess and improve talent quality, candidate experience, and key recruiting metrics with the help of technologies such as AI and Machine learning, thereby eliminating the possibility of human error. 

Talent Intelligence has distinguished itself as a central aspect of intelligent recruiting, with more and more organizations utilizing it for faster and better talent management. 

Talent intelligence gives your team more time to build connections, develop strategies, and deal with the “human” aspects of recruitment while handling tedious tasks that recruitment professionals would otherwise do. 

Talent intelligence data includes everything from the micro-level to the macro-level, such as: 

• Employment history, skills, salary, education, work performance/ performance reviews, benefits data, conversation history, social media history, etc. 
• Benefits offered salary, HR sponsored programs, company culture, employment levels, open job requisitions, etc. 

This data is then analyzed, processed, and presented to you in a form that helps you make the right recruitment decision.  

Fast-moving organizations are leveraging the power of talent intelligence in various ways, including: 

Staying ahead of emerging market trends:  

Organizations are utilizing talent data, both internal and external, to predict the upcoming market trends.  

One of the best examples of this could be how most organizations use talent intelligence to identify emerging talent hotspots from where they can hire quality talent that is diverse and suits their business needs. 

Making strategic decisions about talent:  

Talent intelligence is also helping organizations in hiring, managing, and creating a workforce of tomorrow. 

It shows you where your employees excel and where they need improvement; it maps out their career and prepares a path for any reskilling/upskilling needs for the future. A carefully planned workforce helps an organization boost its progress, and if the workforce is left unchecked, hiring and firing become a routine that costs a lot.  

Understanding employee needs, matching their skills with projects, their expertise with departments, and their ambitions with company vision are some of the best uses of talent intelligence. 

Manage talent acquisition costs:  

Talent intelligence is also being used to manage talent acquisition costs by avoiding human error and hiring the right candidate.  

Hiring the right candidate results in a long-term association and reduced attrition rates, ultimately resulting in positive returns. 

Reduce turnover rates:  

High employee turnover rates are a financial drain. On average, replacing a worker costs 30-50% of their annual salary, which soars up to 150% to replace mid-level employees and increases to a whopping 400% when sourcing high-level, specialized employees.  

You can reduce employee turnover by understanding which roles are most affected and why. This means identifying common reasons workers give for leaving.  

Identify talent needs:  

It is also helping to monitor and notify about some urgent hiring or management needs. For example, tracking who’s likely to leave or retire, which might create a gap that urgently needs filling, is a good signal to start putting the wheels in motion. 

 It also guides organizations to prepare for the future workforce needs, such as the skills needed for tomorrow, which reskilling/upskilling existing employees can then fulfill. 

Diagnose talent patterns: 

Knowledge is power. Once you know the sorts of talent you already have on your team, you can utilize them to the very best of your ability.  

For instance, by tracking seniority and expertise, organizations create a more effective mentorship scheme or analyze their leadership needs. 

Improve productivity and manage teams:  

Talent intelligence is helping HR professionals identify individuals who need help improving their productivity and areas where efforts are not necessary anymore.  

Once this is identified, HR Teams can resort to internal mobility strategies in motion and reallocate employees to more relevant projects that suit them. 

These are only some of the ways in which organizations are utilizing talent intelligence, and the results of doing so are exceptional. Talent intelligence has so far helped organizations 

• Reduce recruitment agency spend by 75% 
• Save on Job advertising spend by 30% 
• Eliminate recruitment tools spend by 75% 
• Save time on manual tasks by up to 90% 
• Minimize hiring time by 20% 

Talent Intelligence platforms like Draup help you identify job roles, evaluate relevant personality requirements and make efficient hiring decisions.  

Draup comes with a proprietary Reskilling Navigator that helps HR executives avoid the most common pitfalls when it comes to workforce planning and reskilling for the future.  

 Draup for talent enables HR leaders and Hiring Strategists to dive deep into various trends in hiring and engagement to empower their recruitment with data collected from over 4,500+ Job roles spread across 33 industries, 7,000+ universities, and 30,000 skills.