Global management and strategy consultancy firms face substantial talent demands, usually at all levels, across all functions and across the world. What’s more, diversifying the talent pool has become a top priority.
Talent pipelining is an effective solution to address these challenges, as it generates large volumes of high-quality, diverse candidates over time. It not only satisfies current talent needs but also future needs in line with company growth plans.
Developing a strong talent pipeline is a long-term investment which provides a competitive advantage in a global labour shortage and secures the right people to drive growth and innovation.
What is talent pipelining?
- A talent pipeline delivers an ongoing supply of qualified and motivated candidates
- Candidates are kept ‘warm’ and can be brought forward with less cost and time per hire
- An effective talent pipeline needs continuous updating and feeding
- A talent pipeline is continually evolving, with candidates carefully managed by the talent acquisition team
What are the advantages of a talent pipeline?
What does a talent pipeline look like?
- Assessing talent needs - the first step is an analysis of current and future talent requirements, while monitoring labour market trends
- Talent mapping – next is a comprehensive map of potential candidates, qualified against a desired set of skills and ranked according to suitability
- Talent assessment – a robust candidate assessment process then evaluates experience and fit
- Talent engagement – the talent team are brand ambassadors throughout the process, nurturing candidate relationships and understanding their motivations
Talent pipelining generates data
Talent pipelining generates candidate and market data that’s not available online, providing valuable insights that inform hiring decisions and allows firms to plan for their future talent needs.
This data encompasses:
Case studies
A big 4 consultancy firm faced a talent shortage for their in demand global Salesforce practice. They were scaling up rapidly and planned to make an additional 1,000 hires, covering multiple roles from certified Solutions Architects to Sales Directors. By building various talent pipelines across 13 EMEA countries, they successfully filled multiple hard-to-recruit roles over a 2-year period.
A leading strategy firm built various pipelines across their fast-growth functions; Private Equity, CMT and Finance & Risk, in multiple geographical locations including the UK, Germany, France, South Africa and the Middle East. These pipelines brought forward over one hundred qualified candidates for consideration by the talent team over a year, from a map over a thousand.