Talent marketplace – The market we still don’t have

Is the “talent marketplace” really the next step in workforce strategy, or just a new label for an old idea?

Many companies proudly announce they’ve launched one. In practice, it’s usually an intranet list of openings synced with external portals. Sometimes employees can even apply directly inside the system – which feels smooth from a technical point of view. But that rarely changes how talent actually moves inside the company.

Because a real marketplace isn’t about broadcasting, it’s about exchange.

Where the balance disappears

A marketplace implies two sides meeting on equal terms. Each can offer something, each can choose.
But in most corporate “marketplaces,” that balance doesn’t exist. The company posts, the employee applies.

It’s less of a market and more of a bulletin board with better branding. You can almost hear the system whisper,

“We’ve digitized the process, so it must be modern.” Except nothing really changed. People still wait to be picked.That’s not an exchange. It’s a controlled process wearing a modern interface.

A true marketplace lets people offer what they have, not just request what’s available.

Flipping the talent marketplace logic

Here’s the uncomfortable question: in most internal marketplaces, the job is the product and the person is the buyer.
Employees apply, qualify, and wait to be chosen.

If people are truly the core value of a company, that logic needs to flip. It’s not enough that some companies simply rename their HR teams to People Departments to prove they don’t treat employees as resources. It’s a nice gesture, but without processes that actually support mobility and growth, it’s meaningless.

Employees hold the scarce resources: skills, experience, and learning agility. The company needs access to those — that’s where the real competitive advantage lies.So the product isn’t the person. It’s their time, capability, and readiness to act.

The purpose of the marketplace is to connect business needs with individual aspirations, not to buy people.

Internal job board �  talent marketplace

Let’s call things by their name.
An internal job board is a static list of openings, usually almost the same ones you post to external job boards. It shows you treat your employees the same way as strangers from the outside world.
A talent marketplace is a living network of skills, interests, and opportunities.

A mature marketplace:

• Knows what people can actually do, not just what their title says,
• Understands their goals and openness to change,
• Matches them to projects, not only full-time roles,
• Helps managers uncover hidden talent within the company.

That’s the difference between managing vacancies and managing potential.

From allocation to activation

A real marketplace doesn’t allocate people. It activates them.

Most systems still operate on the logic of distribution: who goes where, who’s available, who can be “used.” It’s language borrowed from resource planning, not from human development.

A proper talent marketplace doesn’t move people around like assets on a spreadsheet. It gives them visibility, context, and choice. It invites them into motion instead of assigning them a slot.

It’s not just an HR tool for tracking moves. It’s a platform for collaboration and growth.

Employees can find projects that fit their goals. Managers can reach people whose skills were underused.

No one is forced. It’s based on invitation and autonomy. That’s the cultural shift: from control to connection, from planning to flow, from managing resources to enabling contribution.

From process to flow

In healthy organizations, talent flows to where it creates the most value. It sounds obvious, and in small companies (especially startups) it often happens naturally. Everyone sees what needs to be done, and people simply move toward it. The larger the organization, the more processes, approvals, and silos start to slow that flow down.

A true marketplace makes that flow visible and frictionless, but most companies still treat it as a process to be managed, not a system to be enabled.

They build approval chains, assign ownership, and add layers of control. All of this in the name of “transparency.” Ironically, that’s exactly what blocks movement.

A talent marketplace shouldn’t need a dozen permissions to let someone join a project. It should remove friction, not institutionalize it.It’s not another HR module. It’s the architecture of how people and skills move.

And that movement, not structure, is where innovation happens — when people follow curiosity, not hierarchy.

Before you call it a a talent marketplace

Before calling something a “talent marketplace,” it’s worth a moment of honesty. Too often, the name comes first and the meaning never follows.

Ask yourself:

• Do people actually have a choice, or do they just click through the same approval chain under a new label?
• Are we offering experiences, or just listings with better filters?
• Are we supporting mobility, or automating the old job-posting process?
• Do we treat people as participants, or as candidates to process?

If participation still depends on manager approval, if movement between teams feels risky, if side projects need three layers of permission — that’s not a marketplace. It’s a rebranded workflow.

A real marketplace builds trust before technology. It starts with psychological safety — people must feel free to move, to explore, to say yes or no. Without that, no amount of data or matching algorithms will make the system work.

Final thought

A talent marketplace isn’t a prettier job board.

It’s a system for opportunity flow, one that helps people shape their own growth while letting the company use what it already has more intelligently.It’s not a market of positions.

It’s a market of possibilities.