Today’s business climate is incredibly complex and further complicated by:

• Market volatility. Unrelenting changes in the economy, technology, society, and the climate have created a state of flux and compulsory adaptation for organizations. One of the biggest drivers of this change — and new opportunities — is AI. Your organization must be agile and ready to adapt to varying market conditions at a moment’s notice. This requires a deep understanding of your workforce, the labor market, and the competitive landscape.
• It’s a skills-based world — and those skills are changing faster than ever. Within three years, nearly seven in ten CEOs anticipate that generative AI will increase competition, drive changes to business models, and require new skills from workforces, according to PwC’s 2024 global survey of CEOs. Increased organizational transformation creates a greater need for finding talent with new and emerging skills — and the capabilities to learn new ones.
• Persisting labor challenges. You can’t hire your way out of a labor shortage, especially as technical skills become more specialized. Organizations are turning to skills-based employment models to help hire for potential, and upskill and reskill employees to build a workforce ready for anything.
• Retaining top talent. As you aim to do more with less, spikes in turnover are increasingly expensive — and untenable. The cost of replacing an employee can range from half to two times the employee’s annual salary. As organizations remain hyperfocused on budget, losses in productivity from voluntary turnover and the added strain on remaining employees only compound problems.
• Ethical and responsible use of AI. Generative AI, like ChatGPT, is creating new possibilities in how work is done. Ethical and responsible use of AI is possible if you and your vendor understand how to deploy it and mitigate risks.

A new approach to talent

For years, the operating model in HR has centered on the job. Within this framework, the job and, more specifically, the requisition informed every part of the talent life cycle — who to hire, what they should do, and which programs, policies, practices, and technology to implement.

The typical process went something like this: once a requisition was created, it became HR’s responsibility to fill it. As HR practitioners, it was your responsibility to maximize the exposure of a single job to as many people as possible and find the best candidates to present to the hiring manager — an “inside-out” approach. This process was designed in service of the organization with the hiring manager as the customer.

Once the role was filled, it was on to the next requisition, where you had to start from scratch. In this approach, everything revolved around job descriptions. Employees only did what their job description dictated, and historical data drove decision-making.

Talent-centered design helps reframe the process, the discussion, and, ultimately, the decision. Instead of starting with a job description, this model is built around talent. It uses AI and real-time data to answer questions like: “What is this person interested in?” “What skills do they have?” “And how do those skills, interests, and strengths align with our organization’s needs?”

Rather than broadcasting one job to as many people as possible, this method exposes one person to as many opportunities as possible — an “outside-in” approach. Likewise, instead of employees operating within the narrow confines of their job descriptions, talent-centered organizations match a person’s unique skills to projects, gigs, jobs, events, volunteering, and more. While this process is also being done in service of the organization, there is a heavier focus on the talent (applicant/employee) as the customer.

This new approach allows for speed and agility rather than inefficiency and rigidity, as it uses real-time data — not historical data — to reveal what someone can do and where to deploy them. It’s also done in the framework of expanding opportunities and identifying all possibilities within an organization, rather than making a decision through the lens of a single job. Instead, you’re finding the best possible fits for your talent to showcase their skills and help them grow.

Even better, with this enhanced visibility into talent, you move from order taker to strategic adviser who can help ensure the organization has the talent and skills it needs for ongoing success.