Barb Hyman argues that talent acquisition and talent management must stop operating in silos and start acting as a single business engine. By connecting hiring, internal mobility and learning to commercial outcomes, organisations can reduce restructuring costs, deploy skills more effectively and make talent a genuine driver of value creation.
Somewhere over the Atlantic, I keep circling back to a question I hear in boardrooms everywhere: why do we still treat talent as a cost centre, when in reality it acts more like a revenue engine? This tension is fuelling the rise of a new role: the Chief Revenue Officer of Talent.
Talent Acquisition and Talent Management need to operate as one function, with the clear purpose of treating talent as a core business requirement
The one thing that stands out the most, even if it feels uncomfortable, is that Talent Acquisition and Talent Management need to operate as one function, with the clear purpose of treating talent as a core business requirement. Today, that alignment is missing.
Start with the real problem in mind
Consulting firms have mastered the essential discipline of defining the exact problems that they are faced with and reacting to surface-level symptoms. They dig deeper, pressure-testing systems and processes to unveil the root cause of what’s becoming an increasing number of issues.
Let’s look at a familiar scenario. A Talent Acquisition team points to interview scheduling as the main headache because of just how slow, inefficient, and frustrating it can be. But is that really the core issue? If you dig a little deeper, you might find that turnover is the real culprit. If turnover rates were lower, scheduling would be far less of a challenge and much easier to manage. Real value can be demonstrated by talent acquisition teams by moving beyond patching up process issues to addressing underlying business problems.
After all, making hiring more efficient doesn’t always reduce costs. Cutting headcount isn’t what teams are incentivised to do. Instead, the focus is to create more capacity with the resources they have.
If you want to get the attention of a CEO or CFO, you need to reframe the conversation entirely. Are you solving the problems that matter most to the business, or just smoothing over the symptoms?
Follow the value
Restructuring costs are making headlines for all the wrong reasons. Organisations are spending hundreds of millions to reshape their workforces to ensure the right skills are being deployed in the right places, yet the cycle of layoffs and new hiring continues. Is this really just about cost? No. There’s a deeper contradiction at play: companies let thousands go, only to recruit again for different roles. It’s a classic revolving door, and one that creates friction and introduces avoidable risks.
So, what’s driving this pattern? The issue runs deeper than hiring on its own. Too often, Talent Acquisition teams operate like a sales team, always chasing the next lead, while Talent Management tends to deal with those already inside the business. The problem is, these two functions rarely connect, resulting in clashes where talented individuals are left unsure about the role they’ve been hired to do if they are new to the business, or what career progression might look like if they are an existing employee.
The cost of starting from scratch
On the surface, external hiring can seem like a quick fix. But look closer, and you’ll find it comes with three specific costs.
- The obvious cost of recruitment fees, marketing, and employer branding
- Lost productivity as new hires need time to settle in
- Risk of churn. External hires are more likely to leave or underperform compared to those who move internally
Away from bringing new talent in from external sources, many organisations are sitting on underutilised talent from within the existing workforce, people who already know the business and the systems inside, yet they remain overlooked.
The fundamental questions to ask here are if key roles can’t be filled from within, is this truly a talent shortage? Or is it more simply a question of ownership?
L&D as an engine for steering talent focus
This is where the concept of a Chief Revenue Officer of Talent starts to feel less like a new job title and more like a new perspective towards how talent is acquired and developed. Tangible, meaningful change will stem from the ability to rethink how existing talent is viewed and assessed, in order to establish what talent is already in the business.
Rather than getting caught up in the debate of acquisition versus management, the real opportunity lies in how we deploy the talent into suitable roles where individuals are able to shine. The question becomes: how do we move people to where they can have the biggest impact on the businesses? How do we activate skills and align them with the direction the business is heading?
In terms of learning and development and the role it can play, this represents a pivotal moment, becoming the engine that steers where the business needs it most. Here, L&D teams play a critical role in nurturing and growing building skills, as well as making sure those skills are visible, and deployed where they can deliver the greatest value to the organisation.
The metric that gets attention
If the target is a seat at the leadership table, there are a handful of questions worth clarifying and understanding, such as, are the hiring metrics we report on truly connected to business results, or are we simply tracking activity for its own sake? If answers are unclear, perhaps it’s time to consider changing the topic to something that directly impacts the bottom line.
When Talent Acquisition and Talent Management work together, the opportunity to reduce restructuring costs by redeploying people into new roles rather than leaning on external hiring becomes clear. This is where HR changes from being a support function to becoming a real driver of value for the organisation.
Barb Hyman is Founder and CEO of Sapia.ai
