Identify talent needs

- Each year businesses develop goals to achieve their overall business strategy. These goals change frequently throughout the year. Being able to react quickly to changes and competitors and industry trends is critical to your company's success. An effective talent management strategy also needs to be able to respond to changes in business needs. The strategy starts with knowing what talent is needed to achieve business goals. You need the right people with the right skills in the right roles. Your company may be expanding into global markets, developing and launching new products, or selling to new types of customers. All of these changes will require new or different types of leaders and most likely team members with new skills. As business goals are being set, HR and business leaders should work together to identify what type of new roles will be needed and how many people it will take to fill those roles. Look ahead and try to anticipate what might be needed throughout the year. As you grow globally, new types of leaders and team members will be needed who can succeed in a global environment. You may need more leaders to support the business goals, more engineers with experience in new areas, new teams focused on innovation, or a new customer support organization. So how can you determine what roles and skills are needed? Start with your business goals. If you're in the business, spend the time to identify new teams, leaders, and jobs that are critical to your success. If you're in HR, work with the business to understand which functions, departments, and roles need to be added or changed to support the business. It's typically the role of HR to document what types of jobs are needed. This information is turned into job descriptions used to recruit external candidates and identify internal employees who could take on these positions. Next, figure out what new skills are required. Each business goal will require teams of people with certain skills. Identifying the required skills is critical knowledge you'll need to hire the right people and develop your existing leaders and employees. Global teams may need people who speak other languages or have strong collaboration skills. Sales teams might need experience in selling to different types of customers. Finance teams may need to be able to work with a new level of complexity given the business goals. So document the skills and experiences which are fundamental to the role and be as specific as possible. Start by identifying what success looks like in each role. That means there needs to be agreement on what each role or team needs to accomplish. From there you can identify the skills and knowledge associated with success. You may also identify work experiences that are critical for someone to be successful in the role. Bottom line, you'll save time and money by knowing what you need. Your talent management efforts start here. Do it well and you'll be able to hire the right people with the right skills to achieve your business goals.