A project team needs a data analyst for a six-week assignment. Two departments need customer service support before peak season. An engineer is ready to move into a new role but has no visibility into internal openings. These scenarios used to trigger budget approvals, external sourcing and long hiring cycles. Today they can be solved inside an organization in days through a talent marketplace.

A talent marketplace is a digital platform, usually embedded in an organization’s HR or talent acquisition system, that gives employees and recruiters a central place to match skills to available opportunities. It functions like an internal career site or mobility hub where employees can view open roles, short-term projects and development opportunities matched to their skills and career goals. For recruiters and HR teams, it provides a live view of internal talent, skills data and role requirements so they can see who is ready for a move, who matches a project and where skill gaps exist. The system recommends internal candidates and helps teams redeploy talent before sourcing externally.

In simple terms:

It connects real openings with real people through a single platform, creating visibility and movement that traditional tools can’t support.

As organizations face hiring demands, internal mobility expectations and budget pressure, talent marketplaces offer a practical way to increase agility without adding new processes or incurring the costs associated with external hiring. As interest grows, so do the myths surrounding how marketplaces function. The following sections clarify what is misconception and what is proving true in practice.

Myth 1: Talent Marketplaces Only Apply to Gig or Temporary Work

Short-term assignments and project-based work are often the entry point for marketplace adoption but they represent only a small part of its potential. Modern marketplaces match current employees to full-time roles based on skills and readiness, helping organizations fill critical positions faster and with greater internal alignment.

Permanent hiring through a marketplace also strengthens retention. When employees have visibility into opportunities across the organization, they are less likely to look externally. This creates a more resilient talent pipeline and reduces the cost and speed challenges associated with external recruiting.

LinkedIn’s Global Talent Trends data shows that internal mobility has risen by around 6% year over year, and organizations that enable internal movement report stronger promotion pipelines and higher retention.

Reality: Talent marketplaces are accelerating full-time hiring by expanding internal talent pools and giving people a clearer path to move into new roles.

Myth 2: Marketplaces Replace Recruiters

There is a common assumption that automated matching and internal deployment reduce the need for recruiters. In practice the opposite is true. Recruiters play a more strategic role when repetitive sourcing and manual screening decrease.

With a marketplace in place recruiters can:

• Focus on talent strategy instead of administrative coordination.
• Build stronger relationships with hiring managers.
• Advise on skills, internal pathways and workforce planning.
• Support mobility programs with structured guidance.
• Improve the quality of hiring decisions.

Rather than removing the human element, marketplaces elevate it. Recruiters gain more time for decision making and candidate engagement because the system supports high-volume matching and visibility.

Reality: Marketplaces do not replace recruiters. They shift the function toward high-value work and create better outcomes for hiring teams and employees.

Myth 3: Launching a Marketplace Adds Complexity

Building a talent marketplace used to require custom systems and extensive change management. Today, technology makes it significantly more accessible.

When implemented with a clear framework, a talent marketplace simplifies:

• Visibility into available skills.
• Internal and external talent matching.
• Workforce planning and redeployment.
• Role prioritization and sourcing strategy.
• Mobility program scalability.

Organizations also gain measurable efficiency benefits. Skills-based matching reduces the time spent searching for candidates and internal redeployment lowers external hiring volume where appropriate. SHRM benchmarking data puts the average time to fill for roles in the 36–44-day range.

Reality: A marketplace reduces friction when it is supported by connected data and a unified hiring approach.

Why Talent Marketplaces Matter Now

Talent marketplaces are gaining traction because they address real operational needs rather than hypothetical future scenarios. Organizations are facing increased hiring demand in certain functions and uncertainty in others. Traditional workforce planning models are not built for this level of variability.

A marketplace provides:

Greater Agility

Teams can access skills as needs arise without opening every requirement externally or delaying work.

Improved Retention

Employees stay longer when they have pathways to grow inside the organization. Visibility and access reinforce engagement and long-term planning.

Research shows that employees at companies with high internal mobility stay almost twice as long as those in organizations with low mobility, and that people who make an internal move within two years are significantly more likely to stay than those who do not.

Reduced Cost

Internal redeployment can lower hiring and onboarding expenses. External recruiting remains essential but becomes more targeted and efficient. Data puts the average cost per hire at around $4,700, illustrating why over-reliance on external hiring creates sustained cost pressure.

Better Use of Skills Data

Skills are updated more frequently than job descriptions. A marketplace reflects real capabilities across the workforce rather than historical titles.

The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 estimates that 39% of core skills required in today’s jobs will have changed by 2030, and 63% of employers see skills gaps as the top barrier to business transformation. A majority plan to prioritize upskilling to close these gaps.

More Predictable Hiring Outcomes

Matching becomes data-driven instead of reactive. Teams can plan around supply, demand and skill readiness with greater confidence.

What This Means for Employers

Organizations exploring or scaling talent marketplaces are focusing on several priorities.

1. Build a Skills Foundation

Skills taxonomies do not have to be perfect to begin. Start with high-impact roles and expand gradually. Align definitions across HR teams and business leaders to avoid fragmentation.

Once skills are established, teams can use them to identify silver medalists and match them to internal opportunities, strengthening internal pipelines and reducing the reliance on external sourcing.

2. Connect Data Across the Hiring Process

Disconnected tools slow down recruiting workflows. A single system of record improves matching accuracy and reduces duplicated work.

Screening and scheduling workflows can also be adapted for internal candidates. For example, employees surfaced in your CRM can be invited to automated screening to assess role fit, and automated scheduling can coordinate interviews across departments to accelerate internal hiring.

Gartner reported that 48% of HR leaders expect to maintain or increase their HR technology budgets, and nearly half plan to increase investment, with skills, career and internal mobility among the top focus areas. SHRM also notes that CHROs are prioritizing AI in HR, with around 61% planning to invest in AI to streamline HR processes, which reinforces the push toward integrated, intelligence-driven systems.

3. Start with Real Business Use Cases

Early success comes from solving tangible needs such as surge hiring, project staffing or internal progression for high-demand roles. Demonstrating value quickly builds adoption and confidence.

4. Support Managers and Employees Through Change

A marketplace is not a self-serve tool that functions without context. Clear communication, transparent guidelines and manager enablement ensure employees understand how to participate and progress.

5. Measure What Matters

Track outcomes aligned to business priorities such as:

• Time to deploy talent.
• Internal fill rates.
• Retention after internal moves.
• Hiring cost trends.
• Workforce agility indicators.

A marketplace delivers the strongest value when success is defined before rollout.

How Radancy Supports Internal Mobility and Redeployment

While organizations explore talent marketplace models, many are also strengthening mobility using connected talent acquisition systems. The Radancy Talent Acquisition Cloud supports internal movement through:

Internal Career Sites / Internal Career Hubs

• SSO-protected employee destination.
• Internal job feeds and tailored terminology.
• Content for internal education, policies and career paths.
• Internal candidate surveys to understand motivations and experience.

Employee Search, Match and CRM Pipelines

• Import employee data (ATS, uploads or Talent Community sign-ups).
• Skills-based search and match.
• Ranking employees for internal roles.
• Automated messaging for re-engagement.

Targeted Internal Communications

• Internal job alerts.
• Drip campaigns for development, job groups and internal events.
• Employee referral promotions, including colleague referrals.

Internal Hiring Events and Activation

• Support for internal Q&A sessions, career workshops and mobility-focused events.

Automated Screening

• Fully autonomous role-specific screening and scoring catered to internal candidates.

AI-Powered Scheduling

• Smart assistants that manage interview scheduling – all from within MS Teams.

Silver Medalist Redeployment

• Re-engage previous near-hires as part of internal talent pipelines. These capabilities help employers improve retention, redeploy skills faster and reduce sourcing costs without requiring a full talent marketplace model.

Looking Ahead

Talent marketplaces are moving into the mainstream because they offer a practical way to move talent where it’s needed with speed and clarity. They connect people to opportunities that match their capabilities, support strategic hiring decisions and create more resilient workforces.

As organizations plan for the coming year, the focus is shifting from experimentation to scale. The next phase of marketplace adoption will prioritize integration, measurable outcomes and alignment with broader talent strategies. We support organizations with the Radancy Talent Acquisition Cloud, a single, AI-powered platform that simplifies hiring, reduces costs, connects data across the talent journey and helps teams hire quality talent faster while building the workforce of tomorrow.

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