Talent Intelligence: What You Need to Know to Identify and Measure Talent

Having good talent intelligence—an accurate understanding of the skills, expertise, and qualities of people—is essential for the people decisions that all businesses make. Yet despite its vital importance, most organizations appear to be failing at this critical task. The reason lies in talent measurement: how companies produce their talent intelligence and then use it.

Written by Nik Kinley and Shlomo Ben-Hur—two experts in the field—this book draws on the latest research to show how businesses can transform the value and impact of their talent intelligence to make sure they get the right people in the right roles. When that happens, all their talent management and development activities are built on an accurate understanding of the talent available to them.

Filled with illustrative examples, the book shows how to overcome the stumbling blocks that stand in the way of successful talent intelligence and reveals step-by-step what organizations need to measure, how they can best do so, and how they can successfully implement measurement and use the results.

As the authors explain, knowing what methods and tools to use is just part of the challenge: the bigger issue for many firms is ensuring they know how to use them and make the best use of the intelligence they provide.

About the Authors

Nik Kinley is a London-based independent consultant who has specialized in the fields of measurement and behavior change for over twenty years. He has worked with CEOs, factory-floor workers, life-sentence prisoners, government officials, and children. His prior roles include global head of assessment for the BP Group, head of learning for Barclays GRBF, and senior consultant with YSC, the leading European assessment and development consultancy.

He began his career in commercial roles, before spending the next decade working in forensic psychotherapy. Ten years ago, he returned to working with organizations and since then has worked with over half of the top twenty FTSE companies, identifying and developing talent across the globe. He now specializes in consulting with businesses to help them build their talent intelligence and enhance the performance of their people, and consulting with vendors to help them develop talent and learning-related products and services. He holds a master’s degree in systemic psychotherapy and a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of London.

Shlomo Ben-Hur is an organizational psychologist and a professor of leadership and organizational behavior at IMD business school in Lausanne, Switzerland. His areas of focus are the psychological and cultural aspects of leadership and the strategic and operational elements of talent management and corporate learning. In addition to teaching leadership on two of IMD’s top programs for senior executives, he creates programs for and consults with a wide variety of organizations across the globe.

Prior to joining IMD, he spent twenty years in the corporate world, most recently as vice president of leadership development and learning for the BP Group based in London and earlier as chief learning officer of DaimlerChrysler Services AG in Berlin. He earned his doctoral degree in psychology from the Humboldt University of Berlin. He holds a master’s degree in industrial/ organizational psychology and a bachelor’s degree in psychology and political science from BarIlan University in Israel.