MIT Sloan Management Review Article on How to Start Smart With a Talent Marketplace

Many leaders can now make a strong case for establishing an internal talent marketplace, but getting one off the ground remains difficult. At Booz Allen, we experienced that truth during the first year after launching our pilot project. Here, we’ll examine some of the challenges we faced, how we overcame them, and what we learned about change management and talent marketplaces.

Having a talent marketplace represented an important change for Booz Allen. For years, we’d been deploying professional staff members through informal, internal networks that operated based on who you knew and who you trusted. But this path limited our flexibility to make use of available resources and match the right talent to the right work. More importantly, it limited our people’s control over their own career paths, and that hurt engagement and retention.

About the Author

Jeff Williamson Williamson is a leader in human resources at Booz Allen. Before joining the company in 2019, he was chief HR officer and executive vice president of the U.S. Postal Service. Donncha Carroll is a partner at Lotis Blue Consulting and he firm’s data science leader. He has nearly 30 years of consulting experience.

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