Four ways to expand your talent puddle to a talent pool

Do you have a shortage of available talent in your business? Occupational Psychologist, Maggi Evans, offers practical advice on how to turn your small puddle of talent into a much bigger pool. 

Expanding your talent pool: Key insights

• Business leaders are concerned by a seeming shortage of talent in their teams. The worry is that a lack of existing talent will limit growth and success in the future. Occupational Psychologist, Maggi Evans suggest four ways to counter this problem:
• Businesses should identify the talent they actively need to support their short and long-term goals. This precise need should be the focus of any development or recruitment strategy.
• Identify root causes rather than merely fire-fighting. By dealing with systemic issues leaders can minimise the impact of talent shortage in the future.
• Create a management approach that recognises existing talent. Often great people can go overlooked because of poor management, lack of confidence or beliefs about ‘keeping their head down.’ A shake-up of your culture and HR processes can find hidden talent.
• Consider a strategy that goes beyond permanent recruitment. A survey by Mercer indicates four further ways to succeed by ‘borrowing’ talent. 

Read on for more detail about expanding your talent pool. 

To discuss your specific recruitment needs, please contact your local consultant.

Talent puddle versus talent pool: Background 

Have you ever noticed how many of the metaphors of talent are linked to water? We hear about talent pools, talent pipelines, talent flow, talent leakage and waves of talent. Now I’d like to add another to the lexicon: the talent puddle.

I was recently in conversation with an HR director in a global tech business. She was lamenting the limited supply of talent in her business. It seems that discussions about potential always centred on the same five names. Her conclusion was, ‘we don’t have a talent pool, we have a talent puddle!’

Many businesses are suffering from this same shortage. CEOs and HR directors continue to be concerned that a lack of future talent will inhibit business growth. If you find that you have a puddle instead of a pool, what can you do about it? Here are four suggestions to get you started.

Talent is there to be found, but you have to know where to look

Focus on the strategically important talent that is hard to find. 

It is important to spend time considering what talent you actually need in your business, for both short- and long-term goals. What are your future plans? Strategically, what are the skills, knowledge and experiences that you need in your team to deliver these plans? Which of these qualities are likely to be difficult to find? Make these questions the focus of your talent strategy. 

For example, if you need lots of people with a hard-to-find technology background, focus on this, rather than investing time on building talent in easily-sourced areas.

Look for root causes for the puddle

If you have a talent puddle, try to understand why that might be the case. You can then concentrate your efforts on solving the underlying cause and reduce the chances of future talent shortage. 

Some organisations struggle to attract talented people; others are great at engaging and developing them but are poor at retention – the adjacent issue of talent leakage. You may need to do some simple research to understand what the talented people you want are looking for. Take an honest appraisal of how successfully you provide these things. What can you do better, and how can you communicate this to potential applicants?

Identify the hidden gems

Most organisations have more existing talent than they realise. People who are ambitious, motivated, knowledgeable and committed… but who, for some reason, have gone unnoticed.

Talented employees can be overlooked because they don’t have a strong manager or leader to advocate for them. Equally, junior colleagues may not know how to promote themselves. They may think that the way to attract notice is to keep their head down and keep quietly delivering. Talent like this needs support to shine.

As a leader, you can address this by educating your managers on how to recognise, nurture and liberate talent. You should also aim to educate everyone in the business on how to proactively manage their own career. With this approach in place, your standard HR procedures are then more likely to unearth previously hidden talent.  

Broaden your talent ‘eco-system’

Many businesses still think in traditional terms when it comes to talent. The approach is often limited to recruitment of full-time, permanent employees – a ‘buy or build’ strategy. However, this is only one approach and according to Mercer’s Global Talent Trends,  there are four other valuable sources of talent to consider. These are

• Partnership or exchange with other companies
• Use of freelancers 
• Crowdsourcing of activities
• ‘Co-opetition’, or collaboration with the competition for mutual benefit

Tapping into these ‘borrowed’ talent sources can strengthen your organisation’s agility to respond to business need. You will vastly increase your access to talented people with the skills and experience that you require..

Expanding your talent pool: Next steps

Next time you’re sitting in a talent review and you’re worried that a lack of talent is undermining your business, consider this advice.. There is no need to be satisfied with a tiny talent puddle – but you may need to be smarter about how you build your talent pool.