The clear competitive advantage for any organization is their talent. No matter how modern or sexy your products are, or how much you're leading the industry by today, you will not remain relevant for long if you aren't continuously recruiting the best talent in the market. The best way to be the first to grab this talent is through strategic talent market research strategies.
What is Market Research for Talent?
Conducting market research is gathering data and information on target markets or customers in an organized manner. Market research for talent is the effort to gather data and information, but on specific target organizations (competitors or peer businesses) and their employees. This type of research can be constructed in many different ways.
Client Example:
A former "Client" is a mid-sized technology company that is experiencing a slight decline in their performance. Although their products are good, they have struggled with introducing new products that meet their consumer's needs. At the same time, the number of smaller competitors are increasing and have been much quicker at introducing new technology to the market. If the Client doesn't make big changes soon, they may not remain relevant in the industry for much longer.
As a response to the situation, the Client's Board decided to appoint a new CEO in hopes that she can stabilize the business and improve their performance. As she assessed the organization's processes and structure, she quickly realized that there was a gap in strong Product Management talent and capabilities. Historically, the company never had a formal Product Management function. The "product" responsibilities were embedded in other roles such as technology or marketing, but a standalone organization never existed internally. In essence, they would need to create this function from the ground up.
To address this issue, we decided to conduct deep talent market research in order to gather the following data.
1. First, let's start with understanding how similar organizations are structured and designed.
What are the reporting structures?
How big are the teams in ratio with technology and other parts of the organization?
Does Product report into Technology or is a standalone function?
Is the function more internal facing or external customer facing?
What are the backgrounds of those on the team (strategy, marketing, engineering)?
What are the titles being used to attract talent?
What are the compensation and incentive structures being used to retain talent?
2. Second, let's understand how the Product organizations operate and interact with other functions within the company.
What are the roles, responsibilities, and levels of accountability?
Who has the ultimate accountability for product strategy?
How is the interaction between product, technology, marketing, analytics, and sales?
What are the tools and systems being used?
3. Last, who are the specific Product Leaders in the roles today?
What are their backgrounds and credentials?
Do they have street credibility?
Do they have strong social media presence and image branding?
Gathering this level of data requires an organized method and approach. But the important consideration is how to use the data once you have it.
How Organizations Can Leverage Talent Market Research Data
Start with a short list of target organizations that are relevant to your needs - competitors or similar product organizations. For each business, assess and understand the following:
Type of company / Size of organization / Performance of business
Organizational design and structure of the Product organization
Title of Product roles within the organization
Specific names of key talent / roles
This data is valuable to organizations as they design internal talent strategies. In our above Client example, this information was used to trigger and reinforce key decisions.
How to design the Product organization
Should there be a Chief Product Officer at the C-suite level?
Should he/she report directly to CEO or another Executive team member?
What kind of experience and Leader is needed in this role?
Should other functions be a part of the Product organization (such as Analytics, UX, and Research) or should they be separate peer teams?
Financial planning and implications
How many resources are needed?
Level and title of resources needed
Location strategy to attract and retain talent?
Operating model with Technology and Marketing teams
Who has the ultimate responsibility for Customer Experience?
Who has ultimate responsibility for Product Design strategy?
Who has accountability for Product Marketing?
Hiring Key Talent
Who is the actual key talent whom they want to attract?
How should they engage them in a discussion?
How Market Data Improves Diversity Strategy
Building and maintaining a truly diverse Leadership team is important. In my perspective, this is not limited to diversity of gender and ethnicity but also includes diversity of experience and thought. For example, a larger and complex organization will typically benefit from hiring a Leader who has experience with smaller and entrepreneurial businesses that know how to operate and respond to the market quickly. He/she will bring in a fresh and different perspective that can improve the company's product launch processes.
Client Example:
A former "Client" was doing well and had a history of ongoing strong performance. That said, they realized that they had no succession plan in place for any of the critical roles across the organization. This put the business at risk of losing key talent, key knowledge, and with no backup plan.
After further discussions, we discovered additional points of risk:
The current Leadership team had high tenure within the organization which can mean they are more likely to transition to new opportunities soon.
Among the 12 Executive team members only 2 of them are female and 1 is a minority.
Last, after considering potential internal successors, there was a lack of ready-to-move talent.
Internally, the business started to address the internal succession planning gaps through performance and development programs. Concurrently, we agreed to build an external succession plan for each of the critical roles. We had only one goal in mind - identify one diverse external successor for each of the identified critical positions and engage them into the overall succession plan. To remain relevant and competitive in the market, the organization defined "diverse" factors as gender, ethnicity, industry experience, and market experience.
By using the talent market research approach, the organization can be incredibly thoughtful and strategic as they select who to engage in their succession planning strategy. This approach is certainly not a quick one. It can take months to initiate conversations and then even more months to keep engaged in a dialogue. As you follow their careers, however, you will know each Leader well as opportunities in your business arise. This process can be quite effective and eliminate any gaps in Leadership requirements.
About An McLeod
An McLeod is Founder of HEXA Executive Search. She is an experienced Executive Search Leader and Certified Coach who helps high-growth companies build their leadership teams and bench strength.
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