The Rise of External Talent Intelligence as a Strategic Priority

Historically , people analytics and HR have often focused on understanding the internal talent landscape. It has helped CHROs and Talent Directors address critical questions around how well their talent is performing, what skills gaps exist, how diverse and engaged are their talent. However, in today’s talent-driven economy, businesses face increasing challenges in attracting and retaining top-tier professionals. Companies are having to bring the outside in and focus much more on understanding the external talent landscape. Don’t get me wrong there has been a precedent for strong people analytics functions to always have some lens upon the external marketplace – often centred around attraction and insight on how appealing a company is to potential future candidates. However, with skills shortages, shifting workforce expectations, and intensified geo-political landscapes, organisations need to go deeper and build a comprehensive and effective talent intelligence capability to compete in the modern world of business. By leveraging real-time labour market insights, competitor hiring trends, and geographic workforce data, companies can build proactive talent strategies that enable them to gain competitive advantage.

Why External Talent Intelligence (ETI) Is Becoming Essential

The rise of external talent intelligence is being driven by several critical factors:

1. The Global Talent Shortage and Competitive Talent Acquisition

Organisations are no longer just competing on products and services—they are competing for the best talent. This is intensified by the ever present global talent shortage; indeed despite economic fluctuations according to reports by 2030 the shortage of talent could result in over $8.5 trillion in unrealised revenue.

By using talent intelligence, companies can monitor their competitors’ hiring activities, understand where they source talent, and identify skills in demand to help give them a competitive edge in the war for talent.

For example, if a tech company notices that its top competitors are aggressively hiring AI engineers in a particular region, it can adjust its hiring strategies to remain competitive—whether by increasing salaries, offering remote work options or targeting talent earlier in the pipeline.

Furthermore, companies outside of tech may choose to use the above scenario as a reason to pivot on their geographic sourcing of certain talent. If you can’t compete with other industries on salary but are fishing in the same geographic talent pools it may be worth sourcing talent from elsewhere or accept that you will have to lower your expectation on the calibre of talent you can afford.

2. The Evolving Landscape of Skills and Work

The rapid evolution in the nature of work and disruption by AI means that more than ever companies need to keep abreast of what skills are emerging and where they believe they should use humans vs where is AI well placed to complete tasks.

Companies must look to external demand signals to help them identify which skills are becoming obsolete and which skills are emerging. This has arguably always been the case but now needs to be an ‘always on’ and real time scanning capability in order to keep up with the pace of change within the skills landscape.

Furthermore, with the emergence of AI (in particular Agentic AI) I believe talent teams also have a role in understanding where they should no longer source through human talent but working with technology team should ensure their companies are able to source the right AI Agents to complete the work. ??

3. The Changing Talent Geographies

External talent intelligence helps businesses determine the best locations for hiring and expansion by analysing labour availability, salary expectations, and workforce trends in different regions and cities. Rather than relying on outdated assumptions, organisations can make data-driven decisions about where to set up offices, remote work hubs, or build talent pipelines.

This has become particularly prevalent due to the changing work landscape post pandemic with the emergence of remote and hybrid work meaning that companies are competing globally for skilled professionals and not just within their local markets.

The evolving geo-political landscape is also impacting the geographical talent landscape. Examples can be seen in the disruption of workforce availability in regions suffering with conflict or the growing regulatory changes around citizenship and immigration that are preventing the freedom of people to work within certain locations.

A strong talent intelligence capability helps companies ask some of these critical questions to help drive data driven talent decisions:

• Which cities or countries offer the most cost-effective talent?
• Where is the highest concentration of professionals with the needed skills?
• What are the regional labour laws and cost implications?

4. Changing Workforce Demographics and Needs

People analytics teams and HR have often focused on understanding the sentiment and needs of their workforce to help drive retention and engagement. Increasingly this same lens needs to be applied to the external talent landscape.

The modern workforce has new expectations around flexibility, pay, transparency, company ethics and career development. In particular the generational transfer of work with the emergence of Gen Z and the retirement of baby boomers places a strong emphasis on companies needing to adapt in order to future proof their talent pipelines.

Companies that fail to adapt risk losing talent to more forward thinking and data driven competitors.

How Companies Are Using External Talent Intelligence

Organisations are already leveraging ETI in various ways to gain a competitive edge. For example, global companies like Microsoft and Amazon use ETI to determine which countries offer the most promising talent pools for AI research, while fast-growing start-ups use it to identify niche markets where they can attract specialized talent at lower costs.

Some of the key data sources that companies are using are already readily available (see below) but companies need to build the right capability to gather, transform, analyse and act on the data.

• Job postings and hiring trends across industries
• Salary benchmarks and compensation insights
• Labour market reports and government employment data
• Social media and professional networks (e.g., LinkedIn trends)
• AI-driven workforce analytics platforms

The Future of External Talent Intelligence

As AI and workforce analytics tools continue to evolve, external talent intelligence will become even more precise and predictive. Key trends shaping its future include:

• Real-Time Talent Market Monitoring: AI-powered platforms will continuously track hiring trends, skills demand, and workforce movement.
• Integration with Business Strategy: ETI will become a core component of executive decision-making, influencing everything from M&A decisions to product development.
• Enhanced AI and Machine Learning Applications: Predictive analytics will help companies anticipate skills gaps years in advance, allowing them to prepare their workforce accordingly.
• Greater Transparency and Data Accessibility: Governments and labor organisations may expand open data initiatives, making ETI even more powerful for businesses of all sizes.

Conclusion

In an era where talent is the most valuable asset, businesses that embrace external talent intelligence ?and ensure they bring the outside in will be best positioned to outmanoeuvre competitors, secure top talent, and future-proof their workforce strategies.

Organisations that fail to build this capability into their talent strategy risk falling behind—not because they lack great employees today, but because they fail to anticipate the workforce needs of tomorrow.

Photo by Ryoji Iwata on Unsplash