Talent Cloud
Key Project Goals
Optimizing Fit-to-Team
People work with people. They’re more than a job description. This is why high performing teams often require a strong fit between team members. Talent Cloud developed a five-factor match, adding team culture, management style, and operating context to the basic match between job requirements and applicant skill set.
Diversity and Inclusion
When people change what is valued in a system, they change who is valued... and that leads to different outcomes. Talent Cloud has pioneered a new methodology for recognizing skills and talent, designed to improve diversity and inclusion outcomes for equity-seeking groups.
Reducing Time-to-Staff
Speed is a key factor in recruiting top talent. Talent Cloud set the ambitious performance objective of a 30 day time to staff (plus security clearance). After 2 years of testing, the project was able to deliver an average time of ~40 calendar days (plus security clearance). An improvement of ~85 days from the experiment’s early days.
The Talent Cloud Results Report
We’ve assembled a comprehensive record of the Talent Cloud project, including the goals, structure, process, and outcomes.
Read It HereAbout the Experiment
The Talent Cloud experiment explored digital age concepts for modernizing the government’s approach to talent and recruitment. It was a partner funded initiative, built by a multidisciplinary team, and was hosted out of the Digital Change Sector in the Office of the Chief Information Officer. The initiative focused on generating project-based opportunities (term jobs only), primarily (but not exclusively) for digital areas of work.
An experimental project launched in July 2017.
Platform built in-house, launched in October 2018.
Project concluded in spring 2021.
3 Products: real hires, data, and bold new theory.
50+ externally advertised job processes.
Intensive research and testing on each process.
A new skills-based hiring model, designed to advance equity.
Portable skills credentials experiments, including blockchain.
Remote work recruitment experiments (pre-COVID).
New approaches for optimizing the hiring fit-to-team.
Remarkably strong recruitment results vs. industry averages.
Remarkably strong retention results after 1-2 years.
Dramatic reduction in time-to-staff.
Indigenous Talent Portal developed with community.
Build approach using best practices in accessibility.
Where to From Here?
Talent Cloud, as a project, has officially concluded. The result of these development efforts over the last three years have led to numerous insights on ways to improve recruitment, and a fully operational staffing platform that has delivered a hiring timeline dramatically faster than the Government of Canada average. The project also managed to recruit a lot of great people from diverse backgrounds… many of whom reported never having considered applying for government work before applying with Talent Cloud.
In 2021-22, the project team itself will be shifting to collaborate with the GC Digital Community Management Office (also inside the Office of the Chief Information Officer) to develop a talent platform for the digital community. The new platform will deliver an interoperable talent repository, with a focus on manager-searchable talent pools. The project team will also be working with partners across the Government of Canada to advance work on an Indigenous Talent Portal. The team remains committed to advancing digital age talent solutions that advance equity and serve Canadians.