ABSTRACT
Organizations are engaged in a war for talent as they face mounting complexity and must fight harder to remain effective. Attracting, hiring, and developing employees that have the potential to drive organizational success has become a top priority for many leaders and human resource executives. Fortunately, the field of industrial-organizational (I-O) psychology can assist in these endeavors, given that individual differences have been consistently demonstrated to be statistically significant and practically meaningful predictors of individual, team, and organizational performance. It, therefore, stands to reason that psychological assessments are the key weapons by which organizations can win the war for talent. That said, the current tools used to identify and develop talent, while effective, are on the verge of being replaced by artificial intelligence, big data, and biometrics. The past decade has seen these technologies significantly mature as people increasingly live out their lives through smart devices and offer new ways to measure and observe human behavior and talent. Organizations, therefore, must not only instate evidence-based talent management practices; they must also begin to upskill and build competencies around data literacy and artificial intelligence so that they can use such technologies to hire and develop talented employees more effectively. This chapter seeks to inform and provide this foundation for those academics and practitioners that have little knowledge of talent management. Readers will finish the chapter having a firm understanding pertaining to the psychological talent and how it can be assessed.
