The world is at a societal and technological inflection point. Business leaders cite talent recruitment and development as top challenges due to talent shortages, long hiring times, and high turnover. Meanwhile, key challenges for engagement and retention include managing employee expectations in line with post-pandemic norms.
We know from research and experience that nearly 50% of top talent leaves within two years, but also that most individuals would happily stay if given the right learning and growth opportunities. But as companies grow and gain thousands of employees, CEOs tend to lose track of their workforce’s abilities. They don’t know what skills employees have already acquired at work, what skills employees are well-equipped to master next, or how certain skills can be used to grow individual careers.
We talk often about the global skills gap, but what's really behind this? After all, the jobs are there and the people are there. It turns out there's not an HR or a workflow problem, but rather a matching problem between the best people and the most critical jobs you need to fill.
Having studied the talent gap for more than a decade, I was intrigued when I learned that there is technology available today that can solve this matching problem at scale. And that's why I was so excited to have the chance to write a book with Ashu and Kamal, who have a company, Eightfold, that makes one of the most promising talent intelligence platforms available today.
That book, DEEP TALENT: How to Transform Your Organization and Empower Your Employees Through AI, is now available everywhere books are sold. You'll leave us with an understanding of how to use talent intelligence and deep learning (AI) to assess skills adjacency (if you are good at skill A, you will also be good at skill B) to open non-traditional pathways for candidates who don’t have the experience doing the exact job needed but have every ounce of capability required. You'll also be able to determine your current organizational capabilities and future needs by taking into account a global dataset of standardized job descriptions and requirements.
Although the future is uncertain, we have reason to be optimistic, because talent intelligence has the potential to facilitate a meaningful career for everyone in the world. If we’re looking, talent intelligence will show us the work to take on next to feed our skills and passions and the careers we’ve always wanted but haven’t known how to find.
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