What is a talent audit and how can it help your company succeed

Maximizing employee potential

March 18, 2023

As companies scale, it is important to pause for a moment and take time to evaluate current internal resources and business needs before hiring additional talents. Talent auditing has become a significant topic for all businesses as it shows key insights into the current status of an employer and enables the development of a long-term recruitment strategy. A talent audit will help you to:

  1. Identify existing talent gaps in your organization
  2. Determine the right skillset required for new roles/employees
  3. Identify skills that need to be improved on within your existing staff
  4. Increase diversity within your organization

What is a talent audit?

A talent audit is a way to analyze data concerning the strengths, weaknesses, and gaps in your professional team's capabilities. This helps you understand what kind of people you need to hire so that you can reach your business goals. It also helps you understand in depth where there are talent gaps in your current employees' skillsets so that you can train them or search and hire someone who can fill those needs.

While a talent audit is usually handled by the HR team, it is equally important for everyone within a business. Talent audit results help leaders and teams align the recruitment process and strategies to reach company-wide goals. Simply put, it's a great way to understand the future of your business and industry.

Benefits of a talent audit

It’s important to know where your weaknesses are so that you can improve on them. If your organization doesn’t know the depth of what its current problems are, then how can you expect to support them?

Conducting a talent audit is key for maturity so you can enact processes and position yourself for whatever challenges the future may present.

This way, if your business faces a critical shortage of workers in the future because of changes in the global workforce, or if a new technology makes some jobs obsolete, then you'll already have addressed these issues by having a clear plan in place.

Understanding your existing talent function

You might think that your company's success is all about the products you sell, brand recognition, or how quickly you can move from idea to market. But when it comes down to it, the function of your organization's talent is what will keep it afloat—or sink it into oblivion.

A talent audit can help you understand the current state of your talent and determine whether or not it needs to be improved. A quality audit includes the following:

  1. The number of people currently employed in your organization, including both full-time and part-time team members.
  2. How many employees are in each department and what their roles are, if applicable (e.g., sales team members).
  3. The number of new hires over the past year.
  4. The number of employees who left voluntarily or were terminated due to poor performance over the past year.

Identifying gaps between current resources and business needs

Identifying gaps in talent function can help companies save money as well as improve performance by making use of different types of training or courses when necessary.

Planning for future recruitment process needs

It's always a good idea to assess for the future. You don't want to be surprised by changes - it's all about having a plan in place so that when your business grows or develops in an unexpected direction, you can be prepared and ready to roll with it.

You should always consider how your business might grow in terms of employees or projects, new customers, new markets, industries, etc. You need to know how many people will be needed at each stage of this growth—for example: do you need more designers? Or more marketers? If so, then how many? And what skills do they need? Do these people already exist within the organization or must they be hired externally?

Similarly with projects: if there are certain things coming up that will require extra time from existing employees (e.g., launching a product), then these details should also be outlined in advance so that everyone is on board with their responsibilities going forward.

Identify potential recruitment needs before they arise

Imagine having a big project on the horizon. The people that are going to be involved in this project need to meet certain skillset demands, so you decide to plan the recruitment of these individuals before the project even starts. You'll be able to find a great level of talent and make sure your team is strong.

It's like having a crystal ball: you can see what might happen and take steps accordingly. Being proactive is important in business because it helps avoid problems down the line and lets you focus on your core competencies instead of dealing with issues as they arise. It also gives everyone time to prepare for what's coming next!

Building strategies for resourcing.

Now that you have the information you need, it's time to put together a process plan. First, build a recruitment strategy that aligns with your overall business strategy and reflects your company's culture. Look at ways to attract high-performing candidates who are interested in working for your team; this might include posting job listings on industry websites or even targeting college campuses near where your business headquarters are located.

Next, develop talent management programs that allow employees to grow their skills over time while also helping them maintain their passion for work. The goal here is twofold: firstly, keep employees engaged so they will continue contributing positively in the long term, and secondly, retain valuable employees who may otherwise leave due to boredom or burnout. Finally, create a succession planning framework so managers know what skills they need in order right now as well as which ones they'll need down the road—this keeps everyone focused on meeting strategic objectives while also preparing them for future leadership roles within the business network.

Conclusion

All in all, the bottom line is that talent audits can be great tools for businesses of all sizes. They don’t just help you understand your team, but they give you the opportunity to plan ahead and spot potential talent recruitment needs before they arise. In short, they help your company create a solid ground to conduct your recruitment process before your first job post goes live.

A talent audit is one of the benefits that hiring an embedded recruiter provides you. Here at Cerecaptio, we provide talent auditing as part of our RPO / Embedded recruiting service model. If you would like to learn more about our talent audit services, get in contact with us!

Cerecaptio

We help ambitious companies scale to their full potential by offering consultancy and talent services, built with competence in mind.

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