External talent mapping can play a vital role in helping decide a company’s current and future hiring decisions. It is the process of researching and mapping who is out there in the marketplace that could potentially fill any skill or talent gaps within an organisation and ultimately will help fill these spaces in a more calculated and strategic manner. Essentially this external research could help identify crucial candidates from an organisation’s main competitors who could fill key roles within their organisation and furthermore will allow them to carry out various hires now or in the future. Talent mapping does not involve engaging with candidates – it is only the process of identifying them.

External talent mapping is generally carried out by an external recruitment partner that might be a specialist in a certain area of business and they will be able to map out a good overall view of the current marketplace in this area of specialism according to your criteria, i.e. job title, seniority, location, diversity, spoken languages, specialisms etc…

External talent mapping isn’t just about putting together a list of potential candidates for a role, it’s all about Insight and Competitor Intelligence and in accumulating this marketing intelligence you will gain more awareness of your competitors’ proficiencies in addition to identifying professionals out there in the marketplace; talent maps can in some instances contain hundreds, possibly thousands of candidates or for more specialist roles only a few dozen. Talent mapping of this nature is possibly one of the most overlooked approaches that organisations can use.

So what is the process?

Once the talent mapping criteria have been agreed upon the recruitment partner will start to build the Talent Map in Excel, Google Docs or a similar system. The data is generally obtained from LinkedIn, online searches, websites and online media and is usually mapped out with the identified professionals’ names, job titles, companies they work for, specialisms and location detailed in the map; although you can go into a lot more detail if required. In some instances, a target list is built, agreed upon with the client and used to find professionals from specific companies and industries.

What are the main benefits?

• Future hiring time and costs will be greatly reduced
• Significantly improved competitor and market knowledge
• Stronger ability to hire the top candidates from the marketplace
• Greater ability to identify talent to fill your niche and more senior positions
• Much ameliorated market diversity and specialism knowledge
• Improved future hiring strategies – more strategic and defined

In conclusion

Even though many businesses still adhere to the more traditional hiring techniques, today many organisations are seeing the merits in external talent mapping and using this more holistic approach to their talent acquisition strategies. Building and retaining this intelligence can give businesses a significant advantage over their competitors and will greatly improve their future hiring power.

At Research Partners we have many years’ global external talent mapping experience and have a firm understanding of how this practice can help future-proof your business. Why not speak with us in more detail to find out how we can help your organisation future-proof your talent acquisition strategies?

Or simply put, why not trial talent mapping today? Commitment-free.

We are offering different trial options catered to the needs of businesses who have little or no experience using research firms for hiring, pipelining and search support. Do get in touch with us today to start a complimentary or extended talent mapping trial.