During Talent Management discussion with various customers and the SF Talent Management implementation experience, there was one common question that each one of them had – “How exactly will Talent Search Help us ? ” and their approach to using the Talent Search was more as a Search tool which according to me defeated the whole purpose and philosophy behind the functionality. Yes, it is a Search tool, but the buck does not stop there, and its utility lies in how well the processes are designed “before” and “after” the search activity.

The Central Idea if I may put it for the Talent Search is “Find the Best of the Lot”. It is not only about searching the employees or candidates based on your criteria, but it also about streamlining the process around choosing the best one.

So How does “Talent Search” help ?

In order to streamline the search and “Select the Best of the Lot”. I would put across just 3 Pre-Requisites

1. Consolidate the Information – During the implementation, I think the customer should think ahead in terms of their process to understand “What Information do I use to identify a Talent either internal or external” and the same should be incorporated into your system to ensure these details are captured from the candidates and the employees and are made available readily.

2. Have we completed a Talent Review process – Most organizations consider Performance Review as their central process for identifying talent, however I believe that performance being mostly retrospective in nature does not give you a right baseline to identify your talents. “Potential” being forward looking, is a much better indicator for your talent identification process and should be used in conjunction with the Performance reviews to identify your “Stars”.

3. Competency Based Evaluation – Talents are all about behaviors and skills. Yes, Goals and Targets are required however in order for anyone to achieve them, the employees should be exhibiting the required skills and competencies. Hence without an appropriate Competency evaluation for present and future roles, the identification process again goes back to next available option which is performance which again only tells you how good an employee was but extrapolating the same for future talent identification might not be giving you the correct data. This also applies to the Hiring Process i.e. the candidates are evaluated on the Competencies and skills rather than just their achievements.

With the above 3 processes in place, I believe one can extract the full potential of the Talent Search functionality.

1. Create Criteria using vast amount of information captured i.e. the Competency Rating range, Experience, Talent Flags e.t.c. With Talent data now available form the review process and the competency evaluation done, build the right criteria using the competency score, data and required weight against each criteria. This is important since without this, it comes out to be just a search tool as good as an Excel, and the talent identification goes back to being filtering an excel to find out the right person.

2. Understand the Search Result Page

Based on the Criteria and Weight provided for each criteria, the search result provides the results and ranks them based on the match %. In addition to that the Talent Review result (9-Box) is provided on the search result page for quick view. I would emphasize again on the step 1 here because, Without proper criteria, the search results just churns out name just as in a directory!

3. Analyze

The Analysis tool is the most important step in the talent process where one can have the Side-by-Side view of the selected employees and it gives you the option to compare on all the data attributes that are captured or the performance and Potential attributes of the employees.

Lastly I would say

Without the right tool, any process can become tedious and error prone. With the right tool not being used in the right manner, the process can be made much more tedious and error prone. Hence it is important that one understands the philosophy behind the tool and use it the right way and in a way it was designed to be used.