New Job Assignment
In most cases, an employee isn’t simply hired into one job to which she is assigned for her entire career. The one job/one career model may have been fairly common during the first half of the Twentieth Century, but it certainly is not common today. Men and women rarely devote their entire career to a single job, unless they are professionals, such as accountants, engineers or lawyers, or work in highly skilled and specialized fields, such as airline piloting, fire fighting or law enforcement. More often, successful employees move from job to job inside one company or they move from company to company. Thus, the process of applying for a job is not a one-time affair. Resumes are submitted repeatedly and job interviews have become a rather common place event in the lives of most contemporary employees.
Given this state of affairs, the Human Resource Bank can be frequently updated with additional information that is collected during repeated resume updating and interviewing for new jobs. In this case, if the person applying for the job is already an employee in the organization, the new resume and interview data can be entered in the HR Bank, even if the employee does not get the new job. The entry of this information in the HR Bank may help to cushion the blow if the employee doesn’t get the new assignment.
Inventory of Talent
This final source of information for a Human Resource Bank is the most formal and time consuming. It requires the generation of new data rather than the accumulation and classification of data that have already been generated in the organization. While this survey process does require time and money, it can save an organization many dollars, in the long run, if properly conducted and if the data generated from the survey are extensively used. There is yet another benefit associated with this data source. It is highly appreciative in nature. The Inventory of Talent leads to the acknowledgment and honoring of distinctive strengths and competencies in the organization, which itself helps to improve morale and the retention of the best and brightest in the organization.
Typically, the process of building an Inventory of Talent begins with the identification of key SKAs that are needed in the organization. The inventory might be more future-oriented, identifying SKAs that will probably be needed in the near future, given changing conditions inside and surrounding the organization. It is often particularly valuable for an organization to use this inventory to prepare for the future, since resumes, job interviews and performance appraisals usually provide ample information about the current needs of the organization, but rarely enough information about anticipated needs.
