Heard of Talent Engagement Portals before? No? Don’t be too disappointed in your business know-how radar — they are, after all, VERY new. In this article, we provide a quick insiders’ guide to their role, why they matter, and why you need one for your business.
Talent is everywhere and yet hard to source
Unless you work for a well-known brand—like Amazon, Canon, Disney, or Rolex—your business is probably struggling right now to source the talent it needs. No surprises why. In the last decade, the talent industry has seen digital innovation running at a pace that’s created more new job roles than in any period before it.
Add to this the impact of a global pandemic and a generational review of priorities that’s led to the largest outflow of workers (a.k.a. ‘the Great Resignation’) since the industrial revolution in the 18th century.
All this, at a time when businesses are realizing that perpetual annual reorgs are unsustainable, and something NEW is needed when it comes to resourcing strategy.
A gig-working economy, driven by digital, equipped by digital
The remarkable thing about the age we live in is that the balancing act of supply and demand is equally impacted by digital technology.
On the buy-side, consumers are procuring more of their products and services online; partly because they can. Not only that, they enjoy a better standard of service and service personalization that high-street retail and in-person commerce can’t compete with.
On the supply side, it’s become easier for businesses to source their resources, assets, technology, and raw materials on-demand.
The talent industry is not shielded from these trends. Before we dig into the business case for talent engagement portals, what exactly is it?
What is a Talent Engagement Portal?
A talent engagement portal is a new form of cloud-born software platform designed to oversee the end-to-end talent management lifecycle online. It lets businesses reach out to candidates, manage procurement, address candidate qualifications, screening, background checks, etc. It then serves up tooling to manage candidates (including timesheets, expenses, payments, etc.) until we get to the end of the lifecycle with off-boarding, or whatever the end-game happens to be.
As the term suggests, a talent engagement portal is all about engagement. It’s not simply a question of reaching out to candidates, it’s also about creating ‘sticky qualities’ to your talent portal that makes candidates want to return. What we’re talking about, then, are ease of use tools, great UX, and most of all, profoundly frequent and ‘good-fit’ opportunities to make money.
So what are the stand-out reasons for moving to an ‘early adopter’ stance? Here’s our take:
1. Talent on-demand without the agency fees
Thanks in no small way to the rise of gig working, the talent industry has gone on-demand—and global. It’s now possible to reach out to contractors around the world through talent engagement platforms and go direct for talent.
The notion of finding talent direct (direct sourcing or direct hiring) is unsurprisingly appealing to anyone looking to cut down on staffing agency fees.
2. Faster, better quality talent sourcing
A talent engagement platform is all about engagement. When brands create an environment that allows registered candidates to shine, show their talents and experience, build credentials, trust, and confidence in their abilities, etc. they generally find the quality of candidates improves, and accessibility to talent increases. Activities like background checks and skills testing can be pre-performed prior to stepping into a hiring procurement.
3. A talent resource-pool that keeps growing and returning
Once a talent engagement portal has reached a point of critical mass, it becomes progressively easier to find and onboard talent faster and at lower risk. There’s no need to delay procurement by going through the tedious ‘let’s produce a purchasing order,’ pre-vetting, or performing background checks. Many of the steps found in traditional contingent workforce hiring are either removed or simplified.
Final thoughts
It would be difficult to argue that the spend economies, time to hire, and access to talent benefits aren’t persuasive. That said, with all these solid reasons to invest in a talent engagement portal, there are additional benefits to consider.
- More work output –
- Better compliance risk management – Producing background checks and conducting vetting prior to hiring means those checks can be more thorough. Candidates that want to work for your brand are more likely to be prepared to go through more hoops to achieve their goals.
- A greater diversity opportunity – One of the highlights of talent engagement portals is that they can be tailored to appeal to the broadest audience of talent. For example, there exists a great opportunity to better engage audiences like neurodivergent candidates who require more emotional support. As a relatively untapped community of talent, it’s thought that one in every fifteen people is neurodivergent, and this number is growing.
Looking for a better way to recruit, manage and engage your contingent talent?
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