The New Job Position In Human Resources Management: The Talent Manager

Content analysis of the job titles containing the term “talent”

The vacancies included in the first group are mainly offered by the companies from the following market segments:

• FMCG (common consumption goods);

• services;

• agriculture;

• banking/insurance;

• retail;

• medicine;

• consulting;

• IT.

The demand for the specialists in “talents” is more often found in FMCG, service and agriculture markets (fig. 01 ).

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The terminological content analysis of the vacancies connected with talent-management showed that international companies where TSM (Talent Management System) is already being implemented in any degree differentiate job titles, e.g.:

• Coca-Cola - Talent Development Specialist, Talent Attraction Specialist;

• Philip Morris International - Talent Acquisition Executive;

• Nestle - Talent Acquisition Specialist;

• Coca-Cola- Talent Development Specialist, Talent Attraction Specialist;

• DuPont - Talent Sourcing Specialist;

• Align Technology Inc. - Talent Acquisition Lead;

• SAP - Talent Acquisition Support Intern HR and others.

Some Russian companies also follow this direction:

• Russian Post - Specialist in the department of personnel selection, assessment and management;

• Bank Home Credit - Specialist of talent assessment department;

• Pyaterochka - Talent Manager;

• Baltica - HR Manager in the department of talent attraction and others.

Content analysis of vacancies with talent management included in job description

In vacancy analysis, the vacancies with job descriptions emphasizing talent management were singled out. However, the job title is formulated traditionally – Human Resources Manager.

Companies offering talent management as a basic function of HR Manager are represented in the following market segments:

• FMCG;

• services;

• agriculture;

• banking/insurance;

• retail;

• medicine;

• consulting;

• IT;

• telecommunications, communications;

• development;

• fitness;

• production company;

• furniture;

• educational establishment;

• advertising;

• automobile business.

The specialists with professional duties in the field of talent management are in high demand in the markets of FMCG, production companies, retail, banking/insurance, development (fig. 02 ).

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It is important to note that some companies consider talent-management as a function of the HR Department. A vivid example of such an approach is PepsiCo - a company from the FMCG market. It offered the position of “Support Specialist on HR Processes” with the key responsibility of “HR process support in the framework of job duties (talent management, recruiting, training and development, appraisal, staff involvement and others) (Mars, 2016). It is also very curious that according to another vacancy – Business Partner on Personnel - PepsiCo does not single out a group of talented employees as the basis for business development; rather it considers all employees as potential “talents”. The vacancy states that a key function of a business partner is “to train line managers and employees as well as to provide support for talent and leadership development” (HeadHunter, 2017a).

Meanwhile, the situation in Adidas Group is different. The position of HRM Retail includes “participation in talent management processes and personnel reserve development in the relevant departments” (HeadHunter, 2017c); this proves that the company views talent management as a program of particular employee selection for further promotion.

The banking sector also aims at talent management. The job responsibilities of HR Manager in Raiffeisenbank include “general banking program support (employee efficiency management system, talent development system)” (HeadHunter, 2017e) . A HR Specialist in Alfa Bank is supposed “to take part in talent management campaigns proposed by the Head of the organization” (HeadHunter, 2017d) which shows that talent management is understood as a part of a particular program but not a general HR management concept.

Thus, in some companies talent management is the leading strategy of HRM, whereas in others it is only a tool for human resources development. Moreover, it is clear that some companies not only realize the importance of talent-management, but closely connect business development strategies with solving tasks in the field of talent management orienting top management of an organization to talent management.

For instance, Baltica , a brewing company, besides HR Manager in Talent Attraction Department, advertised for a HR Business Partner for Siberia and Far East regions whose job responsibilities include “talent management”:

• “medium term personnel demand planning (1 year);

• recruiting and selection of applicants for vacant positions in sales departments;

• organization of adaptation for new employees;

• organization and implementation of assessment and development centers;

• facilitation of talent identification, rotation and development of the employees with high potential;

• employer's brand development “ (HeadHunter, 2017b)

The above example shows that talent management is being carried out not only by personnel services but also by top managers, strategy planning and general management departments.

Thus, we have established the active development of talent management as an innovative approach to HRM in an organization, its introduction in the activities of modern organizations at a basic level as a system, or at application level as a technology. The transformation of companies' approach to recruiting (selection, hiring), preservation (adaptation, organization and creation of comfortable and safe working conditions), retention (motivation and assessment) and development (training, personnel reserve creation, promotion, enrichment of labor) of personnel serves as a main indicator for this huge transformation.

“Best practices” in talent management

Modern companies, mainly oriented at introduction of talent-management, develop their own tools permitting the transformation of HR management into TS management, especially in its key features: recruiting, development and motivation.

When looking for talented personnel, non-standard and creative recruitment sources are used, e.g. career exhibitions, case-competitions, scientific conferences and other (Neo HR, 2016;Lysenko, & Kovaleva, 2016). The main idea of such talent recruitment is to provide company with talents at the earliest stage of their career development. Thus, having started from the bottom, they could develop exclusively inside a company, as it happens in Procter and Gamble (Direktor po Personalu [HR Director], 2016). Not everyone gets to the company, only the candidate with high potential, who is able to develop and grow professionally, i.e. a talent.

The recruiting process of HiPO (derived from high potential) employees in the company Mars involves several steps:

• application for the chosen position;

• on-line proficiency testing (mathematical and verbal test);

• interview with the company's managers;

• assessment procedure: group and individual tasks during which the candidates are being evaluated by the managers.

Currently many international companies widely use this staff selection algorithm. Among them: international companies Philip Morris International, Unilever, British American Tobacco, Procter & Gamble , Samsung, Nestle, Bayer, Russian Federal companies Gazprom, Rosatom, SberBank, Megaphone, Vimm-Bill-Dann/Pepsico, Ural regional companies Uralskaya Gorno-Metallurgicheskaya Companiya, Evrazmetall-Ural, Atomstroykompleks, Turbomotorny zavod, Uralelectrotyazhmash (Lysenko, & Kovaleva, 2016) and others.

Another key element in talent-management is motivation. The most attractive and preferable ways of non-material motivation are the following (Shahbazov, & Upravlenie, 2016) :

• life-job balance;

• challenging tasks;

• fast promotion opportunities;

• unlimited internet access;

• working in a team of the people of the same age;

• close interaction with an immediate manager;

• availability of modern gadgets.

Finally, the development of talented employees – is the most integrated process in talent management, which is differently organized in all companies. For instance, Coca-Cola has developed a two-year internship program Hellenic Management Trainee Program . Within the frameworks of this program, an employee goes from a trainee-manager to a supervisor. During the internship the employee gets acquainted with the structure of the company, raises his level of knowledge, and acquires necessary skills for his future career (HR BP, 2017) . Most international companies in the Russian market organize programs, like the Unilever program (Unilever Future Leaders Programme ) , Mars program (Leadership Development Program ) , Danone program (Danone Wave ) , British American Tobaco program Global Graduate Programme ) , and, finally, programs by renowned companies like Procter & Gamble, Heineken, L'Oreal and many others.

Another option of employee development programs is a system of life-long learning, which understands human resources as basic in competition, and that any investments in it will pay off in the long run. Such a practice is being realized in many international and Russian companies, for example, Philip Morris International , Kelly Services,McDonalds , Ancor and others.

Thus, based on the results of the content analysis, the demand for the position of Talent Manager in companies was underscored by the definition of leading. Moreover, in some organizations talent management is already the main strategy of HRM, while in others it is only one among other tools for the development of human resources.