Instruments > Talentmanagement overview

Talent management is the emerging trend in HR. This is because talents are rejected or they search a bigger stage at another organization. Employees who are selected on the other hand, do not behave the way they suggested during their selection process.

The selection, development and assessment of staff are often not what they could be. Talents are being rejected, and hired staff often behave differently than they did during their selection process. Some employees do not develop themselves in a way you may have expected and assessments are often disputed – with all the consequences that may have.

A lack of time, insufficient experience, fuzzy or inappropriate criteria such as gut feelings - they all come into play. If you really want to know who is sitting in front of you and how to make the most of your staff, you have to know exactly what is expected of them in terms of work and results and what behaviour is desired of them in order to be successful. Creating job and competency profiles are very important in order to learn how to speak and think in the same language, to use the same definitions and to have a mutual understanding. In doing so, you know exactly what behaviour to expect, which tasks need to be performed and what results can be expected. You should know what you expect of the candidate. For a good interview for selection or coaching you should know:

• The expected results
• The place in the organisation
• Responsibilities and powers to grant
• The required competencies and related behavior
• The relation between the talents of your candidate and required behavior

Step 1: Determining key result areas for a position
To begin, decide which key result areas are important to fill the position.

Step 2a: Determining tasks for a position
You can choose several tasks per key result area the employee needs to perform within the position.

Step 2b (optional): Determining key performance indicators for a position
If you want, you can indicate at what level every task within a key result area needs to be performed so you can assess the candidate’s performance exactly. For every key result areas several examples of key performance indicators are given our book From talent to performance.

Step 3: Determining specific competencies for a position
Decide which specific competencies a candidate should have in order to fill the position. We advice to choose between 3 and 7 competencies for a position. To support your choice of competencies, you can look at the tasks (step 2a) you have chosen for the position and see which facilitating competencies are mentioned there. These are the competencies necessary to perform those tasks.

Step 4: Determining required behaviour for a position
Finally, you decide the specific behaviour that is required within the selected competencies. You can choose key behavioural indicators at various levels. We advice to choose about 5 key behavioural indicators for every competency. With these four simple steps you have created a complete job and competency profile for a position.