Do you see what I see? The role of technology in talent identification

Sharna Wiblen, Kristine Dery, David Grant
2012 Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources  
This paper applies a social constructivist lens to understand more about the ways in which technology shapes our understanding of talent management, in particular the processes of talent identification. Specifically, it examines similarities and differences in the identification of talent across a range of business units at a large professional services firm. The findings show that while objective evaluations of talent based on data and information were possible using talent-related technology,
more » ... managers had subjective and widely different understandings of what constituted talent at the organisation and how to go about identifying it. These different understandings, based on organisational context, personal attitudes, behaviours and past experiences, determined the ways in which the technology and the information it yielded was used. We conclude that the full potential of the talent-related technology and the talent identification processes were unrealised. We discuss the implications of these findings for HR and the management of talent more generally. Abstract: The management of talent is one of the most important challenges facing HR professionals and the HR function. Despite the continued arguments regarding the importance of managing talent in organisations, our understanding of the way in which organisations identify, recruit and retain those individuals that they consider as 'talent' is limited. This paper seeks to explore the ways in which one organisation undertakes the identification of talent and the role that technology plays in this process. Our findings show that individuals considered as talent were often identified via subjective evaluations rather than via any objective evaluations based on data and information provided by the available talent-related technology. We examine why such subjective evaluations seemed to dominate and the implications of this for talent management. We suggest that the extent to which organisations are capitalising on the potential of technology in talent identification may be influenced by managerial and HR behaviours.
doi:10.1111/j.1744-7941.2012.00037.x fatcat:l5qncwlfmfftratsgaqz4qpis4