What Is Talent Management? 2024 Career Guide

As a talent manager, you'll be responsible for identifying, attracting, and retaining your company's best and brightest employees. With the job market competitive and the search for top talent fierce, it will be your job to source and recruit talent, onboard new hires, manage personnel performance, and develop careers while also helping to plan succession. It’s a comprehensive role with a real impact on your business’s future. Read on to learn about the career, how to launch yourself in this field, and more. 

What exactly is talent management?

Talent management is the process of developing and retaining employees with high potential. You’ll need to have a keen eye for spotting talent and be able to sell your company to potential recruits. You'll also negotiate salaries and benefits and must be able to handle difficult conversations with rejected candidates, too.

Talent managers also work internally. The job can involve identifying, assessing, and developing talent within your organisation. Plus, you could be asked to help your organisation plan for succession by identifying future leaders and ensuring they have the necessary skills and experience in key business functions.

What are the responsibilities of talent management jobs?

The typical goal for a talent manager is finding the best possible candidates for each position and helping them grow within the company. This can mean recruiting, interviewing, and hiring external candidates, but you’ll also work with organisational managers to identify future leaders internally and help them develop their skills. 

The high-level responsibilities of the role include the following:

• Establishing a high-performance workforce: As a talent manager, you'll be responsible for establishing a high-performance workforce. This will involve attracting top talent, increasing productivity, retaining talent, and ensuring growth and innovation.

• Attracting talent: To attract the right talent, you'll need to identify the skills and competencies that are most important to your organisation. You'll also need to create a recruiting strategy that targets the best candidates.

• Increasing productivity: Talent management develops systems and processes that help employees work more efficiently. You must provide training and development opportunities to improve employees' skills and knowledge.

• Retaining talent: You must create a supportive and motivating work environment to retain talent. You'll also need to negotiate with new and existing staff and offer competitive compensation and benefits packages.

• Ensuring growth and innovation: Encouraging creativity and risk-taking can support growth and innovation. You'll also need to invest time in research and development initiatives.

• Developing staff competencies: In your role, you’ll identify employee training and development needs and create programmes that help them excel.

Why is talent management important and beneficial?

There are many challenges in the current talent management landscape, with cross-industry competitiveness for candidates. Every business wants to bring in the best and brightest and keep their existing employees engaged and motivated.

Talent management addresses these issues by helping identify, assess, and develop the skills and abilities needed to perform a job. By effectively managing talent, you can ensure the right fit for all your roles and that employees reach their full potential. In addition, talent management: 

• Aligns talent management strategy with business culture goals to create better staffing strategies

• Identifies and develops the internal talent pool, which is essential for long-term success

• Helps your company attract and retain top talent from outside your organisation.

• Gives your company a competitive edge in today's marketplace

• Improves employee engagement and motivation to help reduce staff turnover

Required skills for a career in talent management

Certain skills are necessary to build a career in talent management. To start, you need to have excellent communication skills. This is important because you'll be dealing with people from all walks of life, and you'll need to be able to communicate with them effectively. You'll need strong interpersonal skills to build relationships, as you're often the first point of contact candidates have with your organisation. You’ll also need to be collaborative and open to other perspectives as you’ll be working closely with other coworkers. 

You must be able to think strategically. You’ll need to see the big picture and understand how different factors impact the overall goal. To align your talent management strategy with the larger business objectives, you’ll need to think holistically. To be successful, you’ll need to gather information and build a strategic framework leveraging best practices in talent management.

Employers will also be looking for highly organised and detail-oriented individuals. In addition to interacting with people internally, across departments, and as external candidates, you’ll be responsible for managing a lot of data and information and have multiple streams of work running simultaneously. 

Alongside these core skills, you'll need:

• Proficiency with Microsoft Office Suite and HRIS software

• Interpersonal, counselling, and negotiation skills

• Presentation skills

• Leadership skills

• Analytical and critical thinking skills

• Knowledge of recruitment methods, employment law, and regulations

• Competency with full-cycle performance management programmes

Talent management courses and programmes 

As a talent management professional, you'll find that the field is constantly evolving. Consider pursuing an online talent management course to stay ahead of the curve and boost your resume. These courses cover job analysis, performance management, and training design and delivery. Many professional organisations also offer certification programmes to help you demonstrate your expertise in talent management. The Association for Talent Development (ATD) has several online offerings available to India’s talent managers.

Job titles of talent managers

A career in talent management can be very rewarding. As a talent manager, there can be a variety of job titles; here are some positions and their annual base salary in India, per Glassdoor as of November 2023:

• Talent acquisition specialist: ₹5,70,000 [1]

• Talent acquisition manager: ₹14,84,115 [2]

• Talent acquisition consultant: ₹6,81,535 [3]

• Organisational development manager: $21,14,249 [4] 

Consider an online talent management course

If you're interested in taking the next step into a career in talent management, consider taking an online course on Coursera. The Managing Talent course is a popular option for those looking to learn more about this field. The course covers topics such as recruiting, selecting, and developing employees.