A model for talent management and career planning

This paper discusses a talent management and career planning system designed based on the performance and qualifications of a group of interns working for an emerging social media company located in Istanbul. The proposed model is dynamic, comparative, and perceptional in constructing a talent pool for an organization. This system was developed based on structured questions precisely designed to evaluate the employees in different categories. Evaluations by the supervisors combined with the employees’ self-evaluations represented performance; previous experiences represented qualifications. Depending on the high and low scores for performance and qualifications, four evaluation segments were proposed: star, rising star, backbone, and iceberg. Employees who had high performance and high qualification scores were classified as “stars” and constituted the talent pool. Employees in other segments needed performance development, qualification development, or both. This paper further provides detailed discussions explaining how employees can address the identified performance or qualification deficiencies and take paths toward improvement, which forms the career planning aspect of this system.