Blog

19/04/2024

By Chris Andrews – Managing Director

A talent funnel is ‘a sequence of processes which optimise the flow of desired talent into an organisation‘.

Let’s look at one of those processes in more detail – market mapping. The market mapping processes can be more easily reviewed when broken into separate stages, and we have outlined the stages below. For each stage we have listed some questions you can use as prompts to start the process:

• Ensure you know what skills are looking for.

This is more of a pre-checklist as your target skills would have been confirmed in an earlier process (Workforce Planning), however it is important to know what you are looking for in the market, both in terms of core functional skills. Also, which skills are transferable and what kind of ambition levels and risk profile makes sense for your organisation?

• Where are they and what are they doing?

Where are your target skills today? Mapping can be a literal geographical search of the planet for the skills you need, as well as a review of the company types and sizes where your targets may be sitting. Are the skills available in sufficient numbers for your goals? Are they found in a single person, or should we be splitting them out? Will this be the case next year or the year after? How many do we need to start with us every year (therefore how many more do we need to attract into the top of the funnel)? Is it a transient or permanent workforce?

• What is attractive to them?

Once we have identified where are key skills are, we can test to see what they want in an Employer. Do they want flexibility (role/location/hours?), training, base salary, bonuses, challenges, innovative tech, inspiring managers, shares…? Will this change over time? Does your employer brand speak to them? If so is it in the right way? Knowing and meeting the behaviours of your target skills is key to aligning your employer brand with their goals.

• What is your competition doing?

Who else is hiring these skills and are they doing it better or worse than you? Will they impact salaries and availability by creating competition? What can you take from their process to improve yours? What are candidates telling you about them? Is this all being fed back into your workforce plan, employer brand and hiring manager training? Will demand increase to the point where building the skills internally is a better option that you should have started 2 years ago?

We build, operate and improve talent acquisition funnels for growing companies. Contact us today to chat through our services.