The power of the talent marketplace: 5 key benefits for your organisation

These days, employees rarely stick to one job track. Instead of climbing the corporate ladder in one department of one company, they’re likely to move between roles and industries to build their skill sets. Human resources (HR) teams can capitalise on and engage with this career convention by utilising a talent marketplace to provide mobility opportunities and encourage employees to take charge of their careers.

A talent marketplace is an internal job board or platform where employees can seek new opportunities within their organisations. It can either be a static job board (like craigslist) or a dynamic platform that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to match employees with opportunities based on skills and interests. Talent marketplaces help employees find and apply for jobs, participate in training programs, network with colleagues from different departments and even land promotions.

Introducing a talent marketplace to your organisation can:

With 1 in 5 workers considering changing jobs, focusing on employee engagement is key to overall retention. According to McKinsey, two of the most important drivers of job satisfaction are interpersonal relationships and having an interesting job. A talent marketplace addresses both points by giving employees unique learning opportunities and a way to engage and build relationships with others across the organisation — not just co-workers on their team.

Companies can work faster and more efficiently when the right people are paired to the right projects, and a talent marketplace can facilitate these connections. When employees learn new skills from other teams, they are able to apply these to their original roles, creating a domino effect of higher customer satisfaction and more streamlined operational performance.

More than one-third of professionals pointed to upskilling/reskilling current employees as their top way to address skills gaps. As Benjamin Franklin once said, “Tell me and I forget, teach me and I remember, involve me and I learn” — and that’s where talent marketplaces come in. Having access to new people, ideas and material can lead to creative boosts, a renewed sense of purpose and inspiration.

By using a talent marketplace to pinpoint opportunities that interest them, employees can easily see where they want to go and how they need to get there. When presented with tangible examples, managers can more easily understand what their team members are trying to achieve and how to support them.

In addition to improving visibility into open projects or roles, talent marketplaces can help remove mental barriers associated with insecurity about qualifications — for instance, while men tend to feel confident applying for roles if they have 60% of the needed criteria, women typically won’t apply unless they meet all the job requirements. An AI-powered talent marketplace can help address this imbalance by sending job recommendations to employees whose skill sets are deemed to meet specific needs, thereby circumventing barriers associated with self-evaluation that may otherwise hold back candidates from applying.

Companies with successful talent marketplaces include:

Talent marketplaces can be key tools to manage talent, increase employee engagement and help your employees identify new career paths within your organisation.