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Managing Talent Groups with SAP
HR PASSION. SAP SPECIALISTS.
When managing the acquisition of talent through
internal and external recruiting, and development
of talent into key positions and jobs through
succession planning, talent needs to be managed
and engaged differently based on your specific
processes as well as the needs of the talent that
you are working with. SAP supports internal and
external sourcing and development through the
E-Recruiting and Succession Planning modules.
Succession Planning in the context of SAP
supports the identification of key jobs and positions,
the identification of potential successors,
measurement of potential successor readiness,
and identification of activities needed to make
ready that talent. Though SAP E-Recruiting is
seen as a powerful tool to source applicants
internally and externally, it can do much more;
its integration to SAP HR, analytical support,
and use of functionality such as Talent Groups,
Job Families that are shared with Succession
Planning and Enterprise Performance Management
make it an ideal solution for supporting talent
2
Managing Talent Groups sourcing and development. This article will not
focus specifically on the Succession Planning
module, but will focus on techniques within
E-Recruiting and Succession Planning to support
sourcing of talent from within and outside the
organization.
This article is based on the functionality of SAP
E-Recruiting 6.0 and Succession Planning
within ERP2005/ECC6.0. When recruiting
with E-Recruiting, most of applicant tracking
is usually done against a requisition. Within
Succession Planning this would be done against
a Succession Plan, and for talent sourcing and
development that is not against a specific key job
or position, either a Talent Group or Job Family
can be used. You may recognize the names of
some new SAP PD objects here. They will be
Though SAP E-Recrui t ing is seen as a powerful tool to source applicants internally and externally, it can do much more.
defined in the next section. The article is divided
between sourcing for typical recruiting efforts
and identification, development, and sourcing of
internal talent.
This article focuses on the mechanics of sourcing
talent internally and externally. Assessing succession
bench strength and current capabilities/potential
of your workforce versus significant business
risk such as the aging workforce is both critical
and supported through the Talent Development
Specialist role released with ERP2005 (now
known as ERP6.0) Enhancement.Package 1
Though the PD objects mentioned in this article
are all key to workforce analytics, discussion of
the analytics themselves is beyond the scope of
this article.
3
The Recruiting Talent Pipeline
4
TALENT GROUP
EXTERNAL CANDIDATES
INTERNAL CANDIDATES
TALENT GROUP
TALENT GROUP REQUISITION
EXTERNALAPPLICANTS
INTERNALAPPLICANTS
APPLICATION GROUPS
SOURCED BY RECRUITER
CANDIDATES
APPLICANT APPLIES
APPLICANTS
THE TALENT POOL
The Requisition Sourcing Process
Applications against a specific requisition can
come from a lot of different sources based on
the sourcing need, as well as the needs of the
candidate. Candidates that apply directly may do
so online as a result of seeing a job ad, or they
may send their information to the organization in
paper or electronic form and have it submitted
on their behalf. They may be giving their
information to the organization for the first time;
the candidate may have registered at the organizations
career site or previously applied for a job and
asked to be considered for other openings. The
candidate may have shown up in a search of the
talent pool against the requisition requirements,
and the recruiter may have invited them to apply
for the position. Candidates may have come
from a more generic recruiting effort such as
“XYZ University 2006 Recruiting Drive”, and
some pre-screening activities may have occurred
before moving them to a specific requisition.
are sourced into the talent pool and assigned to
talent groups according to their potential and
communication with talent can be used for faster,
look at how generic recruiting efforts and
unsolicited applications are grouped together
under application groups, before being managed
looking at how candidates apply directly against
requisitions and the different options offered.
5
Sourcing the Talent Pool
6
TALENT GROUP
EXTERNAL CANDIDATES
INTERNAL CANDIDATES
TALENT GROUP
TALENT GROUP
THE TALENT POOL
SAP HR
NEW HIRE
RECRUITER
CANDIDATE
MANUALENTRY
MANUALENTRY
MANUALENTRY
RESUME PARSER
FAX EMAIL PAPER MAIL
EMPLOYEE
Overview of Talent Groups
We define a talent group as group of candidates
with similar properties or that need to be handed
in a common way. It is up to customers to offer
those candidates specific services. A talent group
is seen as the result of the current company
recruiting strategy and the talent needs of an
organization, so talent groups will change over
time. The assignment to a talent group is not
necessarily a qualitative judgement on the candidate.
Talent groups are static; this means talent groups
are not be derived for candidates dynamically.
This will be more or less a manual action
performed by a person and not an automatic
assignment. A candidate can belong to multiple
talent groups at the same time and is not aware
of her or his assignment.
The talent groups can be created, changed and
deleted depending on the needs of the recruiting
strategy. Each talent group has an owner who has
the authorization to control all administrative
aspects of the talent group. Recruiters need
authorization for a specific talent group in order
to assign and reassign a candidate to a talent
group or view the assignment. Talent groups can
be used to search in the talent pool and address
the corresponding candidates via various Talent
Relationship Management activities.
Talent groups are a very generic tool for the purpose
of segmenting the candidates into different
groups. Customers can create any kind of talent
7
groups based on their needs. Different companies
will use the concept of talent groups in different
ways. The examples below show what kind
of talent groups can be created, what purpose
they can serve. In theory we could imagine a
company that wants to use all of the examples
simultaneously.
Recruiters and Succession Planners can use
membership of a talent group as search criteria
(e.g. include candidates with an engineering
degree that belong to the “high potentials” group.
This can be done when finding candidates for a
requisition, for succession planning, or for general
TRM activities. They can only search based
Alumni Status4
Career Aspirations5
Application Integrity6
1 Skill Pools
Experience Level2
Performance Level3
ta lent groupssort
on talent groups where they are a support team
will list which talent groups they belong to, but it
will only show the recruiter the talent groups that
he or she is a support team member on.
1. Identify Talent Groups by Skill Pools
Company A identifies talent groups with its skill
pools. These are pools of people with certain
skills (e.g. IT, legal, and oil exploration). Each
skill pool has an own skill pool manager who
is responsible of making sure there are enough
people in his or her skill pool.
2. Identify Talent Groups by Experience Level
Company B may want to use talent group
reflecting experience level. Currently, the career
page divides applicants over three broad groups:
trainees, graduates, experienced professionals,
each with their own set of questions. Behind the
screens different recruiters deal with different
groups of applicants.
8
3. Identify Talent Groups by Performance Level Company C wants to use the talent pool for
career and succession planning in that it wants
to earmark certain candidates as short listed for
position types A, B, C, etc. A variant of this is
to distinguish “performers”, “top performers”
and “high potentials”. Career managers actively
attempt to further the careers of certain groups
of candidates. The authorization concept is very
important in talent groups, as managers and
recruiters should not necessarily see who is being
considered for high potential talent groups.
4. Identify Talent Group by Former Employee Status Company D would like to define a dedicated
talent group to keep in touch with its former
employees. Dedicated events are organized for
the alumni. Special questionnaires are used to
collect information from the alumni.
5. Identify Talent Groups by Career Aspirations
Company E wants to use the talent group to
attract people interested in certain functions
(e.g., management, administrative). Talent group
questionnaires are used to gather additional
information about the candidate, based on the job
area they are interested in.
6. Identify Talent Groups by Level of Application Completeness
Company F wants to clean up the talent pool
and sees talent groups as an ideal instrument
to keep the talent pool up to date and small.
Example talent groups here are “Those who did
not maintain their profile in the last 6 months”,
and “Mickey Mouse” registrations. All these
candidates are marked and a responsible recruiter
sends correspondence to such candidates. He
finally creates an activity “Marked to be
deleted”. Such candidates are then picked up by
the administrator and deleted from the system.
9
10
Talent Group Creation
Creating a Talent Group is similar to creating a
requisition. It contains:
• A responsible person
• A support team which controls who can see both the talent group and which candidates are assigned to that talent group
• Attachments – An example would be a document outlining the handling of high potentials
• Data overview
The Talent Group can be used by anybody on the
support team, but can only be created using the
administrator role. If a recruiter needs to create
talent groups, then the standard recruiter
authorizations and start page can be changed to
enable this.
11
Overview of Application Groups
Application groups are similar to requisitions
in that applicant activities and statuses can be
tracked against application groups. Application
groups are designed for funneling unsolicited
applicants for a similar type of job, without
actually hiring against a particular requisition or
position. An example of “funneling” would be
processing any applicants from a college career
fair using an application group. Once the best
area of employment is found for the applicants,
then they can be moved to specific requisitions.
Like a requisition, an application group has a
responsible support team. This support team may
use the application group to decide which
unsolicited applicants should be forwarded to
which requisitions.
One key difference between application groups
and requisitions, is that applicants apply to a
requisition through the job postings. Application
groups do not have job postings, but can be
applied directly against using a url that can be either
emailed to potential applicants or embedded as a
career page link such as “Engineering Students
Apply Here”.
12
Application Group Creation
Application groups must be created from the administrator start page. Support team members can be
added, a process template can be assigned, and so on. The Talent Group can be used by anybody
on the support team, but can only be created using the administrator role. If a recruiter
needs to create talent groups, then the standard recruiter authorizations and start page can
be changed to enable this.
The main difference in creating an application
group is that no postings can be created. The final
step in creating an application group is creating a
publication. You enter a reference code, and the
system will automatically generate a URL that
applicants can use to apply. This URL can then
be embedded in a career page using a link such
as “Peoplesoft sales people apply here”.h
13
Talent Groups vs. Application Groups
Talent Groups
Are intended for managing groups of candidates
(not applicants)
Allow you to create activities for talent outside the context of a
requisition
Can be used as a way of funneling candidates to a specific
requisitions
Not intended for the final hiring process
Are not used in hiring metrics
Membership is based on talent group support team member manually adding a candidate
Authorizations restrict recruiters
talent group assignments (recruiter can only see they are on
support team)
Membership is not known by the candidate
Does not have an application process
Does not have candidate statuses (in standard)
Membership can be used as search criteria for recruiter
Candidates can be removed from a talent group
Applications Groups
Are intended for managing groups of applicants when you do not know which, if any, requisi-tion they would fit against. (e.g. unsolicited applications, college
grads, etc.)
Allow you to create activities for talent outside the context of a
requisition but within application group context.
Can be used as a way of funneling candidates to specific
requisitions.
Can be used for hiring (can hire from application group)
May be used in hiring metrics
Membership is based on candi-date actively opting into application
group (submitting resume) or recruiter manually assigning
candidate to application group
Recruiters can see all of a
requisition assignments
Membership is known by the candidate if they applied
Has an application process (customizable application wizard)
Has applicant statuses
Application group assignment cannot be used as search criteria
by a recruiter
Applicants cannot be removed from an application
Requisitions
Are intended for specific recruiting efforts where the job
details are known
Allow you only to create activities against the requisition
Used to recruit against a specific requisition
Intended for the hiring process
Are used in hiring metrics
Membership is based on candi-date actively opting into application
group (submitting resume) or recruiter manually assigning
candidate to application group
Recruiters can see all of a
requisition assignments
Membership is known by the candidate if they applied for a job
Has an application process (customizable application wizard)
Has applicant statuses
Requisition assignment cannot be used as search criteria by a
recruiter
Applicants cannot be removed from a requisition due to need to
audit
14
Talent Groups and Application Groups as Pipelines
You can embed links to application groups
you interested in a career at the ABC Company?
Submit your resume according to where you
would like to work:
• ABC Worldwide
• ABC EMEA
• ABC APAC
When the candidate clicks on the link they are
taken to an application wizard tailored to that
region (application group), e.g. specific questionnaires
according to where they would like to work.
The recruiter can then access the members of the
application group and process them accordingly
(see screenshot below)a
15
Below is the list of assignments. You see that you
have different filter criteria at the top for looking
at the assignments as well as the possibility to
perform ranking on application group members
(by questionnaire, using your own weighted
search criteria, etc). You can perform activities
also search for other people to add to the talent
group. You can sort all the columns in the hit list
and filter the hit list by entering search strings in
the first row.can be changed to enable this.
16
You can then drill into a candidate and see all
activities performed and planned for him or her
on this application group. If you want to see all
activities performed on this candidate in general,
you can see this by looking at the candidate
overview (clicking on the hyperlink of the
e
17
Talent Groups
People are assigned to Talent Groups manually (search and assignment).
Above is an example of three talent groups
this user has authorization for. You can see by
their names that they are intended for different
purposes. The first one, “Obsolete Candidates”
is intended for cleaning up the talent pool, e.g.
collecting candidates that should be removed
from the talent pool for some reason, such as
in a long time. The second one “US East Coast
Engineering Students” is intended for marketing
and/or funneling college candidates. The third
one “HiPos: Development (West)” is intended
for succession planning purposes. All three uses
are covered by the flexible talent group concept.
18
The screenshot above shows what the screen
looks like when you drill into the talent group
assignments. You see that you have different
filter criteria at the top for looking at the assignments
as well as the possibility to perform ranking on
talent group members by questionnaire.
From the candidate list you can perform activities
(individual or mass), view the candidate over-
the assignment to the talent group (remove from
the talent group). You can also search for other
people to add to the talent group. You can sort all
the columns in the hit list and filter the hit list by
entering search strings in the first row.
19
The above screenshot shows you all the activities
carried out on a specific individual on this talent
group. If you want to see all activities performed
on this candidate in general, you can see this by
looking at the candidate overview (clicking on
You will only see activities on talent groups for
which you have authorization.
20
Internal Identification and Development of Talent
Identifying employees (or external candidates)
as having current capabilities or potential for
a certain role within the organization is key to
developing and retaining talented people; It can
mitigate the risk of lost business opportunities
and restrictions to organizational growth due to
talent constraints.
Those responsible for talent development must
be able to signify capabilities and potential of an
individual both at the macro level of which jobs
they are best suited, and to the micro level of
individual competencies. This can be done using
the Talent Development Specialist role, and the
employee can also enter competencies using
Employee Self Service (ESS). Assignment of
candidates to Talent Groups can also be achieved
from within E-Recruiting.
The ability to identify those that can fill future
organizational gaps and search on current and
future capabilities has to be embedded into both
the recruiting and succession planning process. It
is now possible to search for candidates based on
Job Family assignment (though only for employees)
and Talent Group assignments (everyone).
21
Conclusion
The use of a Talent Pool has expanded in scope
beyond E-Recruiting into Succession Planning
and Talent Development. It has taken on a critical
role within workforce analytics and understand
organization capabilities, potential, and how
demographics will impact the bottom line
In order to capitalize on the rich new functionality,
boundaries between Succession Planning and
E-Recruiting, and which modules are best suited
critical to understand the different talent hooks
to tie candidates to: talent group, job family,
application group, requisition. They all have an
impact on how internal and external candidates
can be handled, as well as what kind of analytics
is available.
The wider the SAP talent management footprint
in your organization, the more benefit you will
receive from reusable data, functionality, and
analytics. Succession Planning heavily reuses the
functionality, integration and data model of
E-Recruiting. The reuse of other talent management
data such as learning history within E-Recruit-
ing and Succession Planning will increase the
ROI that can be gained from the SAP Talent
Management platform.
A stable SAP ERP release based on ERP6.0, with
new functionality being released through non-
disruptive Enhancement Packages thru 2010 will
ensure the solution will be a stable one that you
will be able to receive additional functionality
from at your own speed.
About the Author
Mark Ingram leads the Talent Management Practice at Aspire HR. Prior to joining Aspire HR,
Mark was an SAP Product Manager responsible for SAP E-Recruiting strategy, product defini-
tion, and rollout for SAP Labs LLC. Mark is a co-author of HR-XML industry consortiums
Staffing Exchange Protocol. Mr. Ingram has been with SAP in the United States since 1998 and
has been intricately involved in the SAP Solution Management Practice.
Mark moved to the US to work at SAP Labs in California where he extended his payroll de-
velopment experience working on the US and Canadian versions of SAP Payroll. Prior to his role in
the US, he spent several years with SAP AG in Germany where he was responsible for developing the
British Payroll version of mySAP(TM) ERP HCM. Mark holds a Bachelor of Science in International
Business and Information Technology from University of Teesside, UK.
22
Copyright
© 2008, Aspire HR Inc. All Rights Reserved.
No part of this publication may be copied, or used in any form or by any means, without the express written permission of Aspire HR.
Contacting Aspire HR
Aspire HR
2701 N. Dallas Pkwy. Tel. 214.880.0099 Suite 420 Fax. 214.880.9914 Plano, Texas, 75093 Web. www.aspirehr.com
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