All fiction, some prediction – about what Talent Acquisition could be like in 2050.

Anita ran her fingers over the large graphene screen spread out in front of her. Figures and images scattered about until Anita found what she was looking for. The 800th target employee had digitally signed in his acceptance just minutes ago and the entire lot had only a 3% exception rate. Anette, the CEO, should be pleased! Her requisition for 800 new incremental headcount was complete!

Sitting back in her Herman Miller chair, Anita flicked back a lock of silver hair. Her mind went back to the changes the business of HR had undergone in her past two decades in talent acquisition.

It was Talentron that first disrupted, then completely overran the HR business that Anita’s professional fraternity once knew. In a way she was grateful to Talentron. So what, if it was an inanimate software! It was intelligent beyond comprehension! Talentron had made the likes of her, the talent acquisition function heads, leaders of the HR business.

By 2035, Cyberhedron, an aggressive start-up, had bought out-right – or made watertight long-term deals with – every social media service in existence. The result was Mega Data, a repository containing personal and professional data – current, historical and visual – of nearly 90% of the world’s population above the age of 15! They then developed Talentron – the ultimate talent search engine. By 2040, Talentron had virtually displaced every formal Talent Acquisition solution on the planet – and every organization worth its salt subscribed to it, happily!

Talent Management – a software solution.

With the world’s population exploding beyond 10 billion, opportunistic and highly mobile new talent was easily available – way in excess of demand. Nobody was loyal anymore – leaders who demanded loyalty, now owned dogs as advised by their shrinks! Global Average Tenure was under 10 months and constantly shrinking – Anita herself was eight months in her present role! People arrived at the gates ready to hit the road sprinting. All prescribed skills and competencies already acquired, online.

Talent management investments were soon redeployed towards talent acquisition and Employee Engagement became obsolete – like the fountain pen!

Cloud-based software solutions replaced all HR processes, not just related to hiring but training, compensation, performance, even motivation, had long been gamified. Employees could still ‘speak’ to someone in HR but an advanced version of Apple’s SIRI, intelligently answered people’s queries – even provided advice!

Backrooms supported all Talent Management processes

Vast sweatshops across Africa and Afghanistan, kept the data fresh and updated. The quintessential grunt work! Keeping pace with legal and compliance requirements in each country, running algorithms on Mega Data. These vast backrooms watched for exceptions and inconsistencies that indicated fraud. Yes, that still existed! Fraud was now the domain of ultra-brilliant, ultra twisted, deviants who abhorred the system that resembled slavery from a previous millennium.

Talent Acquisition ruled

By 2050, Talent Acquisition remained the only aspect of HR that stayed proprietary. Anita’s boss, Glenda, who sat on the Global Leadership team, was the CTAO – Chief Talent Acquisition Officer. The new ‘tao’ of HR! While Anita and 4 peers managed the global footprint, somebody had to run Talentron.

1. CV’s were rechristened VV’s: Virtualis Vitae – virtual life. Talentron automatically updated personal and professional stories, complete with visuals from thousands of submissive systems! By 2020, it was universally agreed that separating personal life from a professional façade wasn’t giving the correct, or complete picture. Talentron collapsed the most popular business and personal networking sites in the social media space into a single VV.
2. High data integrity: Talentron data was almost totally accurate. Individuals added and changed stuff, but nothing was ever truly erased! The Personal Data Integrity Act of 2040, signed by 190 countries, defined fudging profile information as a premeditated crime. Perpetrators were punished swiftly and severely. Talentron suspended their profile so it would never show up in any search for a minimum of one year. Thereafter, organizations could decide if they wanted a criminal on their roles. It worked…!
3. Hard coded…everything: Everything had a universally applicable code. Education, friends, interests and hobbies, evolving personal principles, political leanings etc. Codes covered job history – down to every appraisal, business networks, successes, failures, new skills, promotions and so on. Criminal records, anti-social comments, illegal words and actions, parking e-tickets – all had a place, rather a code, in Talentron’s codec!
4. Talent search – the appropriate algorithm: Searching for appropriate talent became all about how well a sequence of codes was configured. Talent acquisition professionals usually lost their jobs because of coding errors. The consequences of mis-hiring were infinitely greater than attrition costs! There were no second chances!

Anita sighed. She was 45 years old. Time to retire! No, it wasn’t the stress. She just knew that someone younger, smarter and cheaper could do her job. Chances were that Talentron had already identified her successor.