Talent Identification: Better Match Individuals to Roles

Talent identification is the process of understanding which individuals have the attributes to succeed in a specific role or context. Learn how to answer your critical 'who' questions faster and more accurately.

TL;DR: Effective talent identification goes beyond skills to match individuals' behaviours, knowledge, experience, and interests with specific roles and contexts. This approach helps HR leaders answer critical 'who' questions faster and more accurately, ensuring better role fit and higher talent ROI. By focusing on context-specific talent, companies retain high performers and make informed decisions about hiring and development.

Research published in the Journal of Occupational and Organisational Psychology found that behavioural fit, the alignment between an individual's characteristic patterns and the demands of a specific role context, is a stronger predictor of sustained performance than skills or qualifications alone. (JOOP)

Talent identification in most companies is narrowly focused on pinpointing the skills, capabilities, and potential of top talent. Unfortunately, this approach can result in investing in the wrong people - or putting top talent in the wrong roles.

Talent identification is much broader than most organisations realise. It is the process of accurately identifying a person's behavioural strengths, depth of technical knowledge, relevant career experience, and personal interests - and how those attributes allow them to be more or less successful in a specific context.

The term 'talented' is often used to describe people, but it commonly lacks context. You may be talented in a very specific area of HR because of your skills or experience, but you may not be very talented in finance or sales. When we talk about identifying talent, we are talking about the fit between a person and the context they are operating in.

What Does Talent Identification Actually Mean?

Everyone operates better in a particular context. The role of HR is to maximise the fit, because both the person and the context in which they operate are constantly changing.

The aim of effective talent identification is to help you build a capability that allows you to answer the 'who' questions faster and more accurately than the business leaders asking them. Everyone has an opinion, and most talent decisions are based on opinion. But to be respected, you need facts - fast.

What 'Who' Questions Do Business Leaders Ask?

Business leaders typically ask 'who' questions when it comes to talent, and HR is expected to deliver these answers as the custodians of the people data. Here are the most common questions:

Who should we hire? Who has the skills, experience, and attributes to be effective in this position?
Who are our high potentials and future leaders? Who can we develop to do something they are not currently doing?
Who has scarce or emerging skills that will help us adapt in the future?
Who could successfully transition to a more complex level of work faster than the average person?

All of these questions have one common thread: the need to identify if a person's talent and the requirements of the role - the context - are a good fit.

What Are the Four Enablers of Accurate Talent Identification?

There are four enablers that will help you build the capability to answer questions about your business' talent quickly and accurately.

Good quality data: People data is usually not accurate, complete, up-to-date, or accessible. The starting point is knowing what data is relevant. If you have 100 people and 100 data inputs, that is 10,000 data points to manage. Cutting the list down to 15-20 makes it manageable.
Efficient processes: The eye-roll is the most common reaction HR gets when asking employees to complete talent assessments. Processes need to be designed so the benefit clearly outweighs the cost of participation.
Cultural adoption: If you want people to do something, make it easier to do the right thing - and harder to do the wrong thing. The right thing is using an evidence-based approach to talent identification.
Embedded technology: The right tools reduce friction in the right areas. Technology can speed up or enable a dysfunctional result if the first three enablers are not in place.

What you need to know about the person

To answer the 'who' questions, begin with the part of the answer that is most stable. People do not change very quickly. There are four data points that allow you to answer almost any talent identification question:

The four data points for talent identification

Behavioural attributes: Certain behaviours work better in certain roles - approachable people suit sales, detail-oriented people suit finance. Behavioural attributes can be observed and assessed using validated frameworks.
Technical or functional skills: The price of admission for many roles - proficiency levels range from beginner to expert. Technical skills are seldom the differentiators of high performance, even in specialised roles.
Experience: What a person has done and how it compares to what you need them to do - measured by relevance and depth. Prioritise high-value experiences that are difficult to get.
Interests: What type of work a person enjoys - fuels discretionary effort and internal motivation. Someone might have the attributes, skills, and experience but not enjoy the conditions of the role.

What you need to know about the context

You need to know the same things about the context as you do about the person in order to get the right fit - but how you get that information is very different.

Many HR managers make the mistake of asking business leaders what behavioural attributes are needed to be successful. This undermines your credibility because you should know - and secondly, business leaders do not know what attributes they are looking for; they only know what success looks like. Use well-researched competency frameworks to become the authority.

For technical skills, this is where you ask the manager - it is their area of expertise. For experience, define types of experiences rather than specific ones, and prioritise high-value experiences that are difficult to get. For interests, consider what type of people enjoy this type of job.

Building the capability step by step

You are never going to be able to answer every 'who' question quickly and accurately, but you can build the capability to answer the critical ones. Start by compiling your top 10 list of 'who' questions that you hear most often, check them with your business leaders, and then follow these steps.

The four-step capability build

Create a data platform: Identify what data you need, what you already have, where it is, and how to consolidate it. Determine what you still need to collect and how to keep it current.
Design a process: Decide who you need data from, how often it needs updating, and how to incentivise participation. Adopt a reuse, reduce, and recycle mindset - can you use one data point to answer multiple questions?
Create a culture of evidence-based conversations: Build the skills in your HR team to provide evidence-based support. Train line managers to ask the right questions and respect data-backed answers.
Scale with technology: Use technology to scale the right processes, collect the right data, and facilitate the right conversations. Make it a consumer experience rather than an HR compliance exercise.

TalentPrint - Behavioural Strengths Assessment TalentPrint uses a forced-ranking methodology to assess 18 behavioural clusters, giving you accurate, bias-reduced data on each person's strengths. Combine it with role profiles to answer your critical 'who' questions with confidence. Explore TalentPrint

Frequently Asked Questions

What is talent identification in HR? Talent identification in HR is the process of accurately assessing an individual's behavioural strengths, technical knowledge, career experience, and personal interests. It focuses on how these attributes align with the specific demands and context of a particular role or organisational need, moving beyond just identifying general skills.

Why is accurate talent identification crucial for growing companies? Accurate talent identification is crucial because it helps growing companies avoid costly hiring mistakes and improve employee retention. By ensuring a strong fit between individuals and roles, companies can significantly increase their return on talent investment and build more effective teams, especially in dynamic environments.

How does talent identification differ from traditional skill assessment? Talent identification differs from traditional skill assessment by considering a broader range of factors beyond just skills, such as behavioural fit, personal interests, and the specific context of a role. It aims to understand how a person's complete profile aligns with the environment they operate in, rather than just what they can do.

What are the key enablers for effective talent identification? Key enablers for effective talent identification include having good quality people data that is accurate, complete, and accessible. This data allows HR leaders to move beyond opinions and provide fact-based answers to critical 'who' questions, ensuring better decision-making for hiring, development, and succession planning.