The talent group concept in SAP E-Recruitment (SAP ERC) makes recruiting proactive by having recruiters build a talent pool rather than recruiting on a just-in-time basis. When recruiters are assigned to requisitions, they can check the talent group to see if any candidates fit the requisitions prior to making a new posting. In the current economic climate, talent groups and customized talent services help organizations attract top talent in a crowded job-seeker pool. From my implementation experiences, I have noticed many companies lack a strategy for segmenting their talent pool.

A talent pool is a common pool of candidates that all recruiters can access. The talent pool is at times referred to as the candidate pool or the recruiting pool. Many organizations restrict recruiters to certain talent groups or segments of the talent pool based on the recruiter’s assigned requisitions or the departments the recruiter supports.

Talent Groups

In Figure 1, I identified a few talent groups you could create from the talent pool. Some of these talent groups may not be suitable for every organization. For example, in the medical devices/pharmaceutical industry, I have found that past industry experience is rated very highly. You can further segment the business functions talent groups as sales, marketing, HR, or training.

Figure 1

Possible talent groups

Other segmentation of the talent pool can include:

• Level of experience – recent graduate, experienced professional, mid-level manager, executives
• High-potential candidate – based on industry or education qualifications
• Willingness for international assignments
• Rare skills/specific experience

Assigning candidates to a particular talent group is not a reflection on the quality of the candidate. What a talent group accomplishes is grouping together candidates with similar profiles so that talent services can be tailored to the specific needs of this talent group. For example, a candidate with mid-level managerial experience should not be grouped with a recent graduate; the candidates have different talent services needs. A candidate can belong to more than one talent group.

What Are Talent Services?

Figure 2 shows some of common talent services that I have implemented during some of my client projects. You can develop talent services to meet your organization’s requirements. For example, you can start talent services to target former employees. You could create a Web page where they can congregate to learn more about their former employer. You can post open requisitions in that Web site in case they are interested in returning or can make a referral.

Each of these services is customized to meet the specific needs and the requirements of the talent groups. Each is implemented from the respective start pages. If you are an internal or external candidate searching for a suitable position, you can create a job alert. When a requisition that meets your specific job requirements is posted, you receive an alert. You can then apply to the posted requisition or contact your recruiter to discuss the open requisition.

Figure 2

Possible different talent services

Let me give you an example of something I saw during a past implementation. College students spend much of their time in the Web 2.0 world. Therefore, it is so much easier to reach out to new graduates and college students through Web 2.0 applications such as Facebook rather than through email correspondence. If you are planning to recruit college graduates or if there is a recruiting event for college grads, you can send the notifications through Web 2.0 targeting them. You can customize the notifications to meet the interests of this talent group – details such as why the company is a great place to start your career and how the company is net savvy. You can even invite students to visit your company Web site and interact with the recruiter through Facebook or other social networking sites.

Without talent groups, your recruiter could have sent a global email to all candidates that exist in your organization’s talent pool, but that casts a net that is too wide. A mid-level manager does not want to see an email informing him of a recruiting event for new graduates.

Let me give you another example. Your organization has a requisition to fill the Manager-IT Projects position and posted it on Web job boards. As represented by Figure 3, your recruiter can send a job alert to the talent group Business Functions – IT targeting mid-level professionals. The channel to send the job alert can be email or a personal contact by phone. Recently, I have noticed recruiters sending job alerts by Twitter, though I do not have personal experience with this channel.

Figure 3

An example of talent services

During my implementations, I have heard many of my clients mention that a significant portion of the budget is spent making job postings on job boards to target the right candidate. A potential candidate responds to your job posting, and later, the recruiter finds out the candidate is already registered in your talent pool. The candidate has not heard from the recruiter regarding this job posting. What this really means is that the organization has not created talent groups and therefore talent services cannot target the right talent.

Note
Talent groups are different from application groups. Talent groups are groupings of people with similar profiles and are used for talent relationship management. Application groups are groupings of unsolicited applications for similar jobs. Talent groups help the recruiters in proactive recruiting, whereas application groups result in reactive recruiting.

Generate SAP E-Recruiting Access Links for Start Pages

To generate SAP ERC access links for the start pages from the SAP Easy Access screen, click System in the menu bar. In the displayed options, select Services and then Reporting. The ABAP: Program Execution screen is displayed. In the Program field, enter RCF_GENERATE_URLS and click the execute icon. Use RCF_GENERATE_URLS in every system for every time someone wants to create the access link for a start page. This displays the E-Recruiting: Generate All Relevant URLs screen. Alternatively, in the SAP Easy Access screen, enter transaction code SA38, which displays the ABAP: Program Execution screen.

Select the option HTTPS (or HTTP, check with your portal administrator) and choose the language as EN (English). Click the execute icon to generate the URLs for the various start pages. You can click the local file  icon and save the generated URLs to the local file.

How to Create Talent Groups

Talent groups are configured in the portal from the administrator’s start page. The first step in creating talent groups is to launch the administrator page from the portal (Figure 4). If you have not implemented manager portal/employee portal functionality, you can click the Administrator URL that you have generated, as described in the previous section to launch the administrator’s start page.

The administrator is responsible for creating the talent groups, assigning the recruiters to the required talent groups, and assigning and restricting access to the talent pool. SAP has provided a standard role SAP_RCF_BUSINESS_ADMINISTRATOR for the talent administrator that provides access to the administrator start page.

Figure 4

Administrator start page

In the administrator start page (Figure 4), under the Application Data group, click the Talent Groups link to get to the talent groups list page. Follow menu path Administrator Pages > Application Data > Talent Groups. In the Talent Groups launch page, click the Create button. This takes you to the Talent Group Basic Data page where I circled the SAP definition of talent groups (Figure 5).

The name mentioned in the Person Responsible field is the administrator of this talent group. On the Talent Group Basic Data page, enter the name of the talent group you are creating, enter the description of the talent group, and click the Save button.

Figure 5

Administrator start page

In Figure 5, notice the different tab pages. If you have completed a particular tab page, the green check mark icon is highlighted against the short text.

If you want to add members to the support team for this talent group, click the Support Team tab (Figure 6).

Figure 6

Support team for the talent group

Add members to the support team by clicking the Further Assignment button. You can assign the members either as individuals or you can add another support team to your talent groups. Members of the support team alone have access to the talent group and can add new candidates to the talent group.

The support team for talent groups is different from the support team for requisitions. In the talent group, the support team has access to the talent groups they are assigned to and they work as a team to identify the talent available in the talent pool for this talent group. Some (or all of the) members of the support team (recruiters, for example) might be working on open requisitions and might be accessing the talent group to fill those requisitions.

In requisitions, the support team is responsible for the creation and approval of the requisitions. Some members of the support team might be responsible for interviewing the candidate who has applied to the requisition, and some might be involved in the consensus meetings. Some members of the requisition support team might be recruiters (who also might be members of the talent group support team) who are responsible for recruiting candidates to fill this particular requisition.

If you wish to add attachments to the talent group, click the Attachments tab (Figure 7).

Figure 7

Add attachments

For the attachment type to be displayed in the Attachments tab, you should have defined the attachment type in the IMG and assigned the attachment type to the object NF-Talent Groups. You can define the attachments and assign the attachments to the HR objects in the IMG. The attachments are stored in infotype 5134 (attachments). The attachment types can be Microsoft Word documents, text files, PDF documents, JPEG files, or TIF files. What attachment type is suitable depends on the server space you are willing to use.

Use transaction SPRO and follow IMG menu path IMG > SAP E-Recruiting > Basic Settings > Attachment Types. In the Define Attachment Types, you can configure the different attachment types such as resumes, reference letters, certificates, and talent group descriptions. In the Determine Use of Attachment Types, you assign the attachments (that you configured in the Define Attachment Types) to the HR objects such as the NA- Candidate, NB-Requisition, NC-Posting, ND-Application, and NF-Talent Group.

You can use the Business Add-In (BAdI) HRRCF00_DOC_UPLOAD to upload the documents. The BAdI provides the following methods:

• CHECK_ATTACH_FILE_TYPE – This method checks the data types of the uploaded file. You can only upload file types that have been configured in the process step Determine Use Of Attachment Types.
• CHECK_ATTACH_FILE_SIZE – This method checks the file size of the uploaded file. You can configure the maximum file size of an attachment. Files that exceed this file size cannot be saved.
• CHECK_NUMBER_OF_ATTACH – This method checks the number of attachments. You can specify the maximum number of attachments or the maximum sizes of all the uploaded files.
• CHECK_ATTACH_VIRUS_VIA_VSA – This method scans the files for viruses.

The attachment can provide more details about the talent group. It can mention some of the top/high potential talent in the group. The attachment can provide details that you would like to share with your support team.

The data overview provides details about the talent group (Figure 8). It is similar in concept to the data overview in the requisitions. You click the URL field to display the attachments. You can have the data overview in Smart Form or in PDF. I do not have a preference for either. Smart Forms are displayed in HTML. SAP Interactive Forms by Adobe provide more interactive features such as online and offline viewing and enhanced printing solutions – for example, a display of your organization logo. Depending on the level of customization, you might need the assistance of a technical developer to develop SAP Interactive Forms by Adobe.

Figure 8

Personal settings in the recruiter start page

In the recruiter start page, click the link Personal Settings available in the group Personal Settings. In the displayed Business Server Page (Figure 8) in the group General Settings, click the Display Format for Data Overviews drop-down list. Then you can choose how you would like your data overview to be displayed. Figure 9 shows the data overview of the talent groups.

Figure 9

Talent groups data overview

Assign Candidates to the Talent Group

As shown in Figure 10, you assign candidates to a talent group from the recruiter’s start page. Refer to my earlier note on how to generate the URLs for the start pages.

Figure 10

Recruiter’s start page

In the recruiter’s start page, click the Assignments to Talent Groups link. The Talent Groups assignment page (Figure 11) displays all the talent groups that are assigned to you as a member of the support team.

Figure 11

Talent groups assignment page

Click the Candidate Search button and then enter the search criteria to select and display candidates from the talent pool. From the displayed list, you can select the candidates and assign them to the talent group. When you click the Assignments button, it displays all the candidates that are assigned to the particular talent group. Select the candidate to perform talent relationship management activities.

As you can see, assignment of candidates to the talent groups is a manual process. This is beneficial since it helps the recruiter to know the candidates in the talent group. It helps the recruiter to understand the talent group better and customize the talent relationship management activities for the talent group.

Venki Krishnamoorthy

Venki Krishnamoorthy is an author, speaker, and SAP ERP HCM talent management solutions subject-matter expert. He is currently an independent SAP ERP HCM functional consultant. Venki has over 10 years of experience as a functional lead, project manager, and program manager in the HCM space. Besides implementing SAP HCM solutions, he has implemented and acted as a trusted advisor on SAP ERP HCM talent management implementations, including E-Recruiting, HCM Performance Management, Succession Planning, SAP Talent Visualization by Nakisa, Learning Solutions, and Employee Self-Service and Manager Self-Services. He is the coauthor of three books: E-Recruiting with SAP ERP HCM, SAP ERP HCM Infotypes: Your Quick Reference to HR Infotypes, and SAP Transaction Codes: Your Quick Reference to T-Codes in SAP ERP.

You may contact the author at krish.venki1@gmail.com.

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