Five Reasons You Need a Talent Marketplace in 2024

Talent Marketplaces are the must have HR solution for 2024. Most leading organizations are either planning, implementing, or already have one. If your organization doesn’t have a Talent Marketplace in play, it’s time to get it on your program roadmap. Here are five key reasons to launch your Talent Marketplace in 2024

Reason #1 – You need to Minimize the Impact of the Talent Crisis

I previously wrote of the intense talent shortage that is likely to grow and not abate. It is not a war for talent, and not just a shortage. It is a crisis that will impact your organization. Business and HR leaders need a way to mitigate the crisis and a well-deployed talent marketplace is an excellent tool for doing so.

Reason #2: You need an AI-enabled Skills Ecosystem

Identifying, cataloging, and tracking skills has long been a goal of talent professionals, but before AI, the work to manage skills often outweighed the benefits. Enter AI’s machine-learning and lexical semantic understanding (i.e., synonym recognition). These capabilities accelerated the focus on skills by their ability to recognize a job requirement, for example, Project Management, and identifying employees who may have a related certification (e.g, PMI’s PMP) or knowledge of related software (e.g., Microsoft Project) even if the employee didn’t explicitly state Project Management on their resume.

As nearly 90% of executives are striving to use skills-based practices to make decisions about work and the workforce these AI-enabled skills cataloging and matching platforms empower HR and Talent teams to provide skills-based solutions like Talent Marketplaces.

Key factors enabling Talent Marketplaces

Adding a Talent Marketplace type solution with AI-enabled skills-matching capabilities to the HR roadmap is a no-brainer. They are a must have for mid to large enterprises. Naturally, there remain decisions on which platform, and how to deploy it successfully, but the decision to implement one should be a simple one.

Reason #3 – The Early Adoption Risk is Over

Dozens of major companies have already deployed a talent marketplace and many more are planning to do so. Among the early adopters are Microsoft whose career connections and talent mobility programs let employees search for open roles and get matched to opportunities. IBM’s version is a Talent Match program that uses AI algorithms to recommend open positions. At SAP, Skills University enables employees to find projects, mentors, and develop skills. Nestlé’s Global Opportunity Marketplace lets employees match to international job openings and Airbnb has an internal mobility program for role-based matches.

Unilever, Schneider Electric, AB InBev, and Nestlé were early adopters of Gloat, one Gloat, one of the leading talent marketplace vendors. Additionally, hundreds of organizations using Workday, Oracle, and SAP are exploring deployment of the versions these providers have added to their Human Capital Management platforms.

2020-2023 can be seen as the early adopter phase and so far, the results only show upside with no major risks from adoption. Of course, there are risks when a program is not well planned and executed, but the talent marketplaces themselves are proving to be a win for companies that implement them. Expect Talent Marketplaces to become mainstream in 2024 and a must-have solution for mid to large enterprises by 2025.

Finally, the increased awareness is catalyzed by the companies like Gloat, Degreed, Beamery, and Eightfold who have been evangelizing talent marketplace solutions, and mainstay HRIS solutions like Workday, Oracle, and SAP are touting talent marketplace features in recent releases.

Reasons #4: Talent Marketplace Products are Maturing

Talent Marketplace products that match employee skills and career aspirations with internal short-term or full-time opportunities have been around in some form since the early 2000s (Fuel50 was founded in 2003). The category really exploded when Gloat entered the space in 2015 and Eighfold started offering related solutions in 2016. Phenom (founded in 2010), Degreed (2012), Beamery (2013) soon joined the party with capabilities of their own. Finally behemoths Workday and Oracle added their talent marketplace capabilities in 2020 and SAP/SuccessFactors in 2021.

Vendors with Talent Marketplace Solutions

Vendors offering Talent Marketplace Solutions

The above companies are by no means an exhaustive list. New companies are joining the skills-ecosystem and talent marketplace arena every year. Even ServiceNow added skills capabilities in 2023. Some, like SkyHive which provides a well-crafted skills taxonomy, are specializing in just a portion of the ecosystem, and others are trying to be a complete solution.

Whatever constellation of systems a company chooses, the results tend to be more dynamic career paths, more effective role-based learning, and the growth of organizational skills and capabilities. In addition, Talent Marketplaces provide a rich set of people-related data, most notably skills data, for business leaders, HR, and workforce planning professionals.

Yes, capabilities and features of Talent Marketplaces shift a little between vendors with some placing greater focus on learning, others on internal or external talent acquisition. Sometimes even the name will change, (e.g., Oracle’s version is called the Opportunity Marketplace, differentiating itself from nemesis Workday.) Overall, this differentiation is good as it encourages innovation.

Reason #5: You can Realize Meaningful Benefits

There are many benefits to deploying a talent marketplace. Gloat customer Mastercard estimated $21 million in savings through unlocked productivity and technology mainstay Seagate estimated an ROI of $35 million savings in external recruiting, terminations, and unlocked hours.

Microsoft reported a significant reduction in external hiring costs and increased employee retention. IBM reported a reduction in time-to-fill for open positions, improved access to talent, and increased employee satisfaction and similar results were reported by early adopters Cisco and Schneider Electric. Overall, companies who have thoughtfully implemented a program are giving glowing reports and there aren’t any signs of naysayers.

Summary

To recap, the five reasons you need to plan for a talent marketplace are:

You need an AI-enabled Skills Ecosystem
You need to minimize the impact of the Talent Crisis
The Early Adoption Risk is Over
Talent Marketplace products are maturing
You can realize Meaningful Benefits

If you already are using Workday HCM, Oracle HCM, SAP / SuccessFactors, or UKG your decision can be even easier as these products already have built in talent markplace solutions or can be augmented with a fit-for-purpose tool like Gloat, Eightfold, Degreed, or Beamery. If you are just building out your skills ecosystem, stay tuned for my upcoming article on tech solutions that enable talent marketplaces.

Eric Wenzel writes and advises organizations on talent programs.
He is a Principal at Talent Domo LLC in Asheville, NC.