I spent the last several days working with a client to select a Talent Acquisition solution that will enable and fuel their pipeline of external talent. The two days of evaluation covering multiple vendors was a tough slog filled with equal amounts of delight and disappointment. As in any vendor evaluation, the client was able to get a first hand look at each vendor's ability to fulfill their business outcomes and determine what gaps may exist between stated requirements and product capability.

At the end of the two days, the team of evaluators launched into a spontaneous review of career websites across multiple industries. Taking advantage of the projection system, we looked on screen and walked though the candidate experience as they made their way through the career website, reviewed job openings and finally applied online. Needless to say, the exercise was eye opening.

Short of a few bright spots, the sites that were viewed offered an overall candidate experience that was down right awful. You could tell that little attention was paid to the candidate during the implementation. Instead of being top of mind and the primary driver, the candidate experience was an afterthought that resulted in confusing steps, circular navigation, and no compelling reason to continue with the process.

Given the talent crisis that has been much publicized, corporations must take the necessary steps to ensure the process to apply for a job online is simple and easy. As the war for talent heats up, candidates will have little patience with sites that are confusing and don't follow an intuitive path. They'll also make decisions about that prospective employer simply based on the experience they have on the careers site. Those companies that pay close attention to the candidate experience and make it simple and easy to apply online will produce a significant advantage in attracting and hiring top quality talent.

We run into this question many times when working with Enterprise clients on TM strategies. When asking process related questions during discovery interviews, inevitably the answers come with varying levels of understanding, confidence, and clarity on the state of talent management processes utilized within the organization. To remedy this issue, Knowledge Infusion recommends a three step method to define and transform talent management processes in the organization.

Business Process Transformation is the first step and takes a high level look at your talent management processes and offers the opportunity to rethink, blend, and challenge the way you are doing things today. It is a systematic way of putting down on paper the high-level tasks that a process must accomplish and blending together steps to ensure they meet defined business outcomes. A cross-functional team is typically assembled to do this work to ensure that the traditional HR functional silo mentality of process ownership doesn't influence end-to-end transformation. This work inevitably feeds the software/vendor selection process.

Business Process Design is the next step in the chain. This is usually performed after the software has been selected and the organization has knowledge of what the software can actually do. During this step, processes are refined to a more granular level of detail adding in the enabling technology that will support and drive the process in the organization. Roles and responsibilities, workflow, and other factors are also defined during this step.

Business Process Calibration is the final step in the chain and is performed during the software implementation process. During this step, processes that were refined in the design phase are calibrated to the exact capability of the software. There is usually some element of give and take to ensure the software can accommodate the process. As a result of calibration activities, the transformed TM processes are clearly defined, enabled by technology, and ready for roll out to the organization.

Over the last several weeks, I've been in a number of client meetings where the focus was Talent Management, and more specifically, what to do and how to move forward. As is a pitfall with many large initiatives, the group debating the topic grew almost paralyzed by the ever expanding scope and the almost limitless possibilities being discussed. The longer the conversation went on, the more the group felt powerless to slay the 8 ton dragon they had created. By the end, an intervention was necessary to get them back to reality and begin ACTING on the topic versus just talking about it.

Talent Management is a concept that, if taken in it's entirety, can be overwhelming. It's necessary to not "boil the ocean" when taking on TM. To be successful, you must break Talent Management into its component parts and begin to show steady progress against the initiative. When we at Knowledge Infusion work with enterprise clients to develop their Talent Management StrategyMap, we take the focus of building business capability over time. As part of this process, we develop action plans that break the overall initiative out over a three year period. We try to sequence the actions to begin building capability while also making the entire process manageable, affordable, and realistic. Year one often times is focused on building the foundation by which talent managment can grow. Year two is then focused on building and expanding capability. Finally, year three is focused on true transformation and driving better decision making through integrated processes and better, more robust data.

When you find yourself in the situation described above, don't boil the ocean. Remember that Talent Management can't be solved overnight and that it takes commitment and focus to get it done right.