Tapping into the next talent generation

Chris Phillips

Abstract
Purpose Business has always been dependent on talent to drive performance. But as the war for
talent heats up the competition for talented employees is at an all time high. Driving widespread
adoption of a talent management mindset and utilizing the second generation of the web are vital to
success. The purpose of this paper is to outline methods that organizations can use to attract and retain
talent to beat the competition.
Design/methodology/approach The paper demonstrates the efficiencies that can be gained by
focusing on a talent management system implementation at DeticaDFI.

Chris Phillips is based at

Taleo, Windsor, UK.

Findings Talent is defined as an ability or quality possessed by a person in a particular field or activity.
In business it is also recognized as the only true and sustainable competitive advantage. As the
criticality of attracting and retaining the best people has increased, so has the necessity to manage
talent holistically on a unified and business-centric talent management platform. Talent management is
evolving to become a series of complex HR processes combined to make sure you have the right staff, in
the right role, doing the right things.
Originality/value Talent management is emerging as a fundamental element of business
management. With this in mind, this feature will look at the need for talent management and how
organizations need to adapt their mindset and processes if they are to attract and retain the next
generation of talent.
Keywords Recruitment, Business performance, Skills, Assets management
Paper type Case study

usiness leaders have instinctively known that top talent drives superior performance
whether that realization is evident in an outstanding sales representative who
consistently exceeds quotas or in a brilliant engineer who develops the next product
innovation. Over the past half a decade, the way business leaders think about talent has
evolved. Now, talent is a priority issue in the boardroom. Accordingly, leaders are looking to
HR to provide processes, policies and technology to acquire, retain and optimize talent in
the organization. In fact, one study of executives (CFO Research Services and Mercer
Human Resource Consulting, 2002) found that:

Eighty-two percent believe that human capital has an impact on profitability;

Ninety-two percent think that human capital has a significant effect on customer
satisfaction; and

Seventy-two percent believe that human capital has an impact on innovation and new
product development.

Business leaders now acknowledge that talent drives performance in the form of better
customer service, higher sales performance, product and service innovation and business
process improvement, as well as strong management and leadership. CEOs are realizing
the significance and impact of aggregated workforce talent. For example, in the IBM 2006

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STRATEGIC HR REVIEW

VOL. 7 NO. 3 2008, pp. 26-31, Q Emerald Group Publishing Limited, ISSN 1475-4398

DOI 10.1108/14754390810865784

CEO Study, 41 percent of CEOs indicated that employees are the best source of innovation
within an organization.
Increasingly, executive teams are looking at the assembled workforce and even their
external talent pools as corporate assets that can be effectively leveraged to create more
business value. Figure 1 shows the evolution of the Talent Age and the increasing view of
people as assets. Yet, at the same time, the current workforce climate is one of the most
turbulent and challenging to find and retain the top talent within.

Adopting a talent management mindset

To manage this complex environment, HR departments have turned to technology to
combine and optimize the elements of the process. High dissatisfaction rates for the first
generation of talent management solutions indicated companies were struggling to attain
the value they were expecting. This was due to a combination of technology limitations and
the practice of HR being the owner of all content and talent management initiatives. This has
in turn meant the widespread adoption of talent management processes and technologies
by managers is often difficult. Their opinion of the business value has been low, even as
participation has increased.
A new approach is required to empower the business to effectively manage the next
generation workforce. This can be achieved by new talent management technology
platforms, which improve business results by optimizing the acquisition and retention of
human capital assets. Such ideas have led to a Performance 2.0 approach to talent
management, which shifts the focus away from integration and systems, and concentrates
on empowering talent and the management of talent through unified processes and
transparent technology. The goal of this approach is to drive widespread adoption of a talent
management mindset throughout the organization by providing business users with the
talent information that is relevant to solving their business challenges, in the format they
prefer, through easy-to-use technology. Business users want talent management solutions
that are as intuitive and consistent as flipping a light switch, using the telephone, or visiting a
consumer website.

Talent management a daily activity

This new talent mindset approach, acknowledges the central role of managers and
executives in making talent management decisions as an integral part of an organizations
daily business management activities. Tapping into the new generation of talent and
Figure 1 Evolution of the Talent Age

VOL. 7 NO. 3 2008 STRATEGIC HR REVIEW PAGE 27

 . . . the traditionally policy-driven HR department is emerging

as an agent of change . . .

optimizing the acquisition and performance of human capital assets requires that
companies do the following:
B

drive talent management processes and practices throughout the organization to identify
and align key talent to business initiatives that will create the most value;

holistically manage both internal and external talent pools to attract and hire the best
talent; leveraging alternative talent pools, such as contract workers and older workers can
do this, and developing and retaining the key talent they already have;

provide key information and insights to the executive leadership teams about how current
and future workforce issues will impact future business performance;

identify and build ready pools of local top talent that they can mine at any given time to
support new business initiatives; and

implement integrated and flexible talent management processes and systems that can
adapt to rapidly changing business needs.

Adopting this business-centric approach leads to the following results:

B

empowerment of talent by providing tools that managers can use across the entire
employment lifecycle from a compelling engaging candidate portal that provides
candidates with up-to-the-minute information on their status in the hiring process, to
on-boarding solutions that get a new hire productive more quickly, to innovative career
planning capabilities to enable employees to see dynamic career paths and have new
internal employment opportunities pushed to them on a regular basis;

empowerment of managers by providing a single, holistic view of talent management

information and processes in a method that is easy to interpret one screen, one click
and easy to use collaboration and communication tools;

empowerment of executives by providing talent scorecards on the talent available and

providing them with key decision support information to aide business choices; and

empowerment of HR to drive a talent management mindset and practices throughout the

organization, by providing timely support to executives, operational tools to managers
and personalized self-management tools to employees.

HRs developing role

As talent is becoming an organizational goal, rather than the HR niche, the HR function is
undergoing a major transformation. HR is moving from effectively managing HR processes
and the HR budget, to helping business leaders understand how to effectively leverage the
assembled workforce and external talent pools to drive business value.
The advent of efficient technology support and outsourced service models has allowed HR
to master specialized tasks such as recruiting, compensation management, payroll and
benefits. HR departments are becoming talent departments. They are shifting their attention
to business impact issues such as employee turnover and engagement and quality of hire.
HR talent management initiatives include providing strategic decision support,
implementing advanced performance management technology suites and coaching the
entire organization. In this way it is pushing ownership of talent management throughout the
organization and sharing responsibility with line and senior managers.

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These changes to talent management ownership are illustrated in a survey by Bersin &
Associates (see Figure 2), with the findings showing that 75 percent of respondents have
started to develop a comprehensive talent management strategy.

Tapping into talent

Key to this collaborative approach to talent management is the use of eRecruiting and Web
2.0 functionalities. The online experience of web browser access, interactive interfaces,
social networking, collaboration and community are now commonplace with candidates.
Today, Internet users are old and young, male and female, skilled and unskilled. The use of
the web for recruiting is no longer confined to professional and salaried positions.
Increasingly it is also being used for recruiting for hourly jobs.
To engage with this new global talent pool, and maximize internal mobility and retention,
companies must use the next generation of applications to establish a consistent automated
talent management process. This targets both active jobseeking applicants, but more
importantly, higher value passive candidates. Such a process enables organizations to
source, match and manage candidates through a variety of online sourcing tools, for
example company websites, jobsites and social networking sites creating a global talent
pool. Into this can be fed other sourcing data, such as recruitment agency information and,
in doing so, information can flow unimpeded between all parties.
In todays Web 2.0 environment, consider the following techniques for pooling talent:
B

Internal mobility. Make sure to publicize the internal openings to your team and offer the
opportunity to them to apply. Often the most hidden gems are already with your
organization.

Referrals made by new employees joining the firm. This is by far the best referral method.
Those people assuming they are high quality individuals can bring with them top
performers from their past company.

Referrals at large. However, do not expect the same quality that referrals made by new
employees will bring.

Your corporate candidate database. Those people were attracted to your company at one
stage and will respond when the timing and opportunity are right.

External databases of non-jobseekers that can be supplemented by a social network

component. This will help to increase responses for hard to find positions and unfamiliar
companies. These are typically described as the hidden candidates.

Recent applications on your website or from job boards. Do not disregard this channel; in
quantity you can find quality. Although these candidates are rarely passive or hidden,
they may be high quality but require additional screening and assessment.

Figure 2 Maturity of talent management strategies

VOL. 7 NO. 3 2008 STRATEGIC HR REVIEW PAGE 29

A talent management focus at DeticaDFI

DeticaDFI is part of Detica Group plc, a UK-based business and technology consultancy
that works with many leading government and commercial organizations and is a publicly
traded company listed on the London Stock Exchange. DeticaDFI is a specialist consultancy
delivering information service, knowledge management and solutions to senior
decision-makers in the US government. It helps clients address their complex challenges
and requirements in the areas of homeland security, defense, information technology and
fraud and security.
For DeticaDFI, flexibility is imperative in times of growth and change. Finding a talent
management solution that easily adapts to structural and workflow changes was essential.
DeticaDFI looked at six vendors before choosing Taleo for this mission. DeticaDFIs former
system was unable to adapt to the needs of a growing security-sensitive organization.
Duplicate entries of applicants and the inability to consolidate supporting documentation
were just some of the problems. It selected the Taleo system as it was a specialist system
built by industry experts, compared to other systems that were more like customized
customer relationship management software.
Importantly, Taleos flexible system provided options for handling DeticaDFIs legacy data.
Eric H. Elmore, PHR, recruiting manager at DeticaDFI, comments:
One major concern surrounding a proposed change in vendors was how to handle our legacy
data. We initially went the conventional route and populated the system with our candidate,
requisition, and related records, only to discover a better solution a custom tab that links the
user to the backup of the legacy database was created. This way, the older data is still easily
accessible, but Taleo is populated with more timely and relevant information, making it ultimately
more usable without sacrificing any compliance or security considerations.

Gaining efficiencies and advantage

Cost and compatibility with existing systems were extremely important factors in the
software selection process. The company attributed a saving of approximately 40 percent to
the Taleo implementation verses customizing the old system. Being a metric driven
organization, DeticaDFI now has the ability to track and report recruiting activities and return
on investment. Some common metrics it analyzes include number of hires, number of
interviews, cost per hire, time to fill and recruiting efficiency. It has seen the time to fill posts
decrease from 77 days in 2006 to 50 days in 2007, and reports increased efficiency in the
workplace, even with more open requisitions. Recruiting efficiency is at 10.5 percent in 2007,
compared with 26.3 percent the year before.
As is common in the consulting arena, DeticaDFI relies heavily on unique talents for
specialized positions, such as linguistics analysts. The system has helped the company find
candidates for those hard-to-fill positions by matching skills to positions without using
third-party recruiters. Elmore comments:
Our recruiters were finding the same candidates as our external recruiting through the networking
in our database. We are saving a 20 percent placement fee with each candidate we hire.

Opening up opportunities to find talent

Focusing applications through an online channel means candidate data can be stored in a
structured format. As such, candidate data can be more easily compared with a job
description. This is essential when considering global applicants, each with their own
cultural style of applying for jobs. Candidates can be contacted in real-time about their
progress or directly amend their details online. The need for companies to respond before
the competition is critical with high-value applicants, who often have a short shelf-life in the
recruitment market.
Taleos ability to manage the recruiting and screening requirements are also key to the
efficiency of the system. Candidates who apply for work in the government and
defense-contracting arena have a high level of expertise in a given practical area. In

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addition to screening and filtering for skills and education, DeticaDFI can now also screen for
security clearance.
Capturing candidate information in an online format from multiple sources enables a shortlist
to be created automatically, by matching candidate skills to job requirements. Its automated
nature also reduces the likelihood of hiring decisions being influenced by irrelevant and
potentially discriminatory information. This structured candidate information then becomes
the database for both internal and external talent pools, and the basis for programs such as
internal mobility.

Empowering the organization

This success has led to HR at DeticaDFI asking more business performance questions, such
as:
B

What value do we add to business leaders in delivering their business objectives?

How do we help align talent to business strategy/objectives?

How do we develop a talent management strategy in a pragmatic way?

How do we improve the effectiveness of line managers?

How do we increase the productivity and job satisfaction of employees?

To provide best value for an organization, the traditionally policy-driven HR department is

emerging as an agent of change, driving ownership of talent management throughout the
organization. The responsibility for talent management must now be shared between HR
and senior and middle management. Empowering HR in this way will enable the overall
business to meet its goals.
In summary, Performance 2.0 presents a radically different view to how organizations drive
talent management and acquire the human capital assets to meet their business goals. It
empowers businesses to effectively manage the next generation of workforce with next
generation talent management processes and practices using a consumer-orientated
approach to optimize the acquisition and performance of employees.

References
CFO Research Services and Mercer Human Resource Consulting (2002), Human capital management:
the CFOs perspective, report, CFO Research Services, Boston, MA.
IBM (2006), Expanding the innovation horizon:the global CEO study 2006, IBM Global Services,
Somers, NY.

About the author

Chris Phillips is senior director of international marketing at talent management company,
Taleo. He is responsible for product marketing, product management and marketing
communications throughout Europe and Asia. A graduate of the University of Cambridge,
Phillips brings more than 17 years marketing leadership experience in the IT industry,
having worked in several senior marketing director roles worldwide. Chris Phillips can be
contacted at: cphillips@taleo.com

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