Talent Marketplace: The Next Evolution of Internal Mobility and Career Intelligence

Sixty-five percent of organizations post internal positions for all employees to see. This may seem like a significant number, but only 33% of employees who searched for a new job in the past year turned to their own organization first. Simply put, posting jobs on internal career sites is no longer enough for companies hoping to retain top talent.

“Our company’s purpose is to help a billion people find the right job, but we go one step further to make sure the right job continues to be the right job,” said Tom Tate, Director of Product Marketing at Phenom, during a recent webinar. With talk of a looming recession, effects of The Great Resignation still at play, and hiring challenges present in every industry, HR must be ready to meet all challenges head on when it comes to attracting and retaining talent.

To do this, hundreds of global organizations are leveraging our Talent Experience Management (TXM) platform to not only help candidates find and choose the right job, but also ensure that current employees are evolving into tomorrow’s top talent.

Jesus Latorre-Socas, Lead Product Manager at Phenom, joined Tate in the webinar to answer all questions talent marketplace and discuss why utilizing one is imperative for companies hoping to stay relevant in today’s competitive market.

View the entire webinar on demand here, or continue reading for the highlights.

What is a Talent Marketplace?

A talent marketplace is an internal platform built to connect employees with opportunities.

Lack of a quality employee experience is a factor that played heavily into The Great Resignation. Employee experience is not one size fits all, and in today’s market there’s a huge need to upskill, reskill, and redeploy talent so that employees not only feel like they belong at their organization, but that they can grow and evolve there as well. And a talent marketplace can do just that.

In fact, in a report from Garter®, they predict that “by 2025, 20% of large enterprises will have deployed an internal talent marketplace to optimize the utilization and agility of talent.”

Through a talent marketplace, employees can access opportunities like:

Internal Mobility: How employees move throughout an organization into new roles
Career Pathing: Various long-term internal job and learning opportunities that an employee can consider
Gigs: Internal short-term projects and opportunities that upskill employees, while supporting the needs of the business
Mentoring: Connecting employees with the right individual relationships that will facilitate growth at the organization
Learning and Development: Providing employees with the right learning experiences to get the skills needed to evolve

A talent marketplace can also be used for internal networking. Using AI, employees can join unique Employee Resource Groups (ERG’s), internal events, and alumni networks that match their profile and interests so they aren’t just “connected with jobs, but are also connected with people,” Tate said.

At Phenom, for example, new employees are given onboarding buddies and can join virtual coffee dates. This allows them to meet someone besides an immediate team member or manager.

“It’s easy to leave a job,” Tate said, “but it’s hard to leave a relationship.” Using an intelligent talent marketplace to enhance feelings of belonging increases employee satisfaction and overall retention.

It’s important to keep in mind, however, that “a lot of times we tend to focus on just the employee — but it’s not just the employee role that’s changing,” Latorre-Socas stated. “Multiple stakeholders’ responsibilities have shifted, and that’s where this talent marketplace opportunity comes into the picture.”

With this in mind, Tate highlighted three aspects of employee redesign that companies need to consider when building a personalized talent marketplace:

Needs of the enterprise: What key skills gaps, competencies, and behaviors need to be filled, and how can they remain connected to their purpose as an organization?
Needs of the team: What are they delivering, are succession plans in place as they evolve and move forward, and do all personalities fit within teams? Are the right opportunities open? What skills need to be filled?
Needs of the employees: These needs are very individualized and include psychological safety, growth, transparency, flexibility, career goals, and work-life balance.

Talent marketplaces are built with the intention of helping employees stay engaged. How organizations utilize their talent marketplaces will be the differentiator between success and failure.

What is a Skills-Based Talent Strategy?

Skills have become a common language shared across the enterprise, as the topic impacts talent acquisition teams, the employee experience, and talent agility.

So how can organizations leverage the skills needed to move employees up in their existing roles — and beyond? By shifting from a job-driven to a skills-driven strategy.

A skills intelligence platform enables the collection, mapping, and management of a large collection of skills data — all while generating actionable and meaningful insights. Skills are simply data that exists everywhere — in Human Capital Management (HCM), an LMS, ATS, on LinkedIn, in resumes, etc. But unfortunately, these skills don’t always talk to each other.

That’s the challenge, according to Tate and Latorre-Socas.

Employee skills are not all living in one place, but an intelligent talent marketplace can create full employee profiles that highlight skills and skills gaps. Those skills gaps “provide a roadmap for employees to pursue the right internal learning opportunities and experiences,” Tate said.

Skills are changing quickly, and an intelligent talent marketplace that utilizes a skills-based talent strategy can be the key to unlocking employee growth.

How is Career Pathing and Internal Mobility Changing?

The reality of career pathing and internal mobility is that it’s not always linear or one-size-fits-all. To make sure the employee journey is unique, there needs to be a two-way conversation between a manager and employee.

And AI is helping this change.

With an AI-powered talent marketplace, organizations can offer their employees an experience that is:

Personalized
Automated
Empowering

Companies can now use AI and machine learning to make tailored job recommendations for employees based on their profile, experience, location, skills, existing job title, assessments, and interactions with the talent marketplace.

For example, employees interested in writing can take on a short-term gig to write a blog post for their marketing team. This both helps another team in the company and boosts their own skills that they can utilize in the future.

How Can AI be Leveraged to Your Advantage?

So, how does this all tie together? What’s the value of a talent marketplace, and how can AI be leveraged to your advantage?

By creating an intelligent talent marketplace that personalizes, automates, and empowers each individual employee, your company can:

Boost employee retention
Increase employee engagement
Adapt quickly to economic and social challenges
Enhance workforce intelligence
Decrease cost to hire

The Employee Journey

At the end of the day, it’s all about the employee’s journey.

By taking the information covered and putting it all together, you’ll be able to shape an employee experience that is truly meaningful. Building a flywheel — as represented in the image below — that keeps your employees learning and evolving over time can only be done with the help of a talent marketplace.

If you can create an experience that allows employees to build connections, develop their skills, get recognized for their work, master roles, and make meaningful transitions within the organization, you’ll build a group of talent that’s in it for the long haul.

Want to learn more about helping your people learn and evolve? Watch our full webinar on-demand.

Maggie Blehar

Maggie is a writer at Phenom, bringing you information on all things talent experience. In addition to writing, she enjoys traveling, painting, cooking, and spending time with her family and friends.