Workforce Planning and Talent Acquisition
Forecasting supply and demand
Workforce planning translates strategy into the number, type and location of people needed. Candidates should know demand forecasting methods (trend analysis, ratio analysis, managerial judgement, scenario planning, Markov modelling) and supply analysis (skills inventories, replacement charts, succession grids, turnover and wastage analysis). Gap analysis compares the two and drives build, buy, borrow, bot or bind decisions.
Recruitment and selection
Understand the recruitment funnel, employer value proposition, realistic job previews, and selection validity. Know the predictive validity hierarchy: structured interviews, work samples and cognitive ability tests generally outperform unstructured interviews, references and graphology. Reliability (consistency) is distinct from validity (accuracy). Adverse impact and utility analysis often appear.
Traps in questions
Beware options that confuse a replacement chart (who can step into a role) with a skills inventory (what capabilities exist). Do not accept unstructured interviews as high validity. Watch for confusion between internal and external recruitment trade-offs, and between time-to-fill and quality-of-hire metrics. Questions may present a tight labour market and expect a shift toward build/borrow rather than buy.
Worked example
A firm needs 40 engineers in three years and currently has 25, with 15% annual attrition. Attrition alone removes roughly 11 over three years, so demand plus replacement exceeds 50 hires. Rule of thumb: gap = future demand + expected losses − current supply − expected internal promotions. Then decide whether to build (apprenticeships), buy (external hiring) or borrow (contractors).