Redesigning Career Paths: How AI Uncovers Hidden Talent in Your Organization

What if your organization’s next superstar is already on the payroll—perhaps even hiding in plain sight? The reality is that many businesses overlook a goldmine of untapped talent within their teams. Today, with the help of AI, organizations are finally beginning to unlock that hidden potential.

The Hidden Talent Problem

Consider this: that hard-to-fill role you’ve been struggling with might already have its perfect candidate just down the hall. Yet, their abilities often go unnoticed under traditional approaches to hiring and talent management.

Research highlights the extent of this issue. While the average employee lists around 11 skills on their résumé, AI can identify nearly three times that number—about 34 skills. This means companies are blind to two-thirds of their employees’ capabilities. This oversight has a name: the hidden talent problem.

It occurs because organizations focus narrowly on job descriptions and résumés. Valuable adjacent skills—like an administrative assistant who codes automation scripts for fun, or a salesperson with an eye for design—often go unrecognized. As a result, businesses spend heavily on external recruitment while underutilizing their internal talent pool.

How AI Reveals Hidden Potential

AI addresses this challenge by acting as a talent x-ray for the organization. It uncovers overlooked skills and capabilities through a three-step process:

1. Data Collection – Pulling information from résumés, project documents, performance reviews, and more.
2. Contextual Analysis – Using natural language processing to identify contributions beyond a person’s official role.
3. Skill Inference – Predicting adjacent skills and growth potential based on existing strengths.

This approach reveals new career pathways. For example, a World Economic Forum pilot found that a Walmart IT manager had a 50% skills overlap with a product manager role—an opportunity unlikely to be spotted by a traditional human review.

Why It Matters

Unlocking hidden talent is not just an HR experiment—it is a strategic advantage. Organizations that adopt AI-driven talent visibility can:

• Boost agility by moving the right people to the right projects quickly.
• Reduce recruitment costs by filling roles internally.
• Close skills gaps before they become critical.
• Enhance diversity and inclusion by relying on data rather than subjective judgments.
• Improve retention, since employees who see internal growth opportunities are far more likely to stay.

In fact, LinkedIn reports that employees making internal moves are 75% more likely to remain with their company, compared to just 56% if they do not.

One Fortune 500 telecom company applied AI to internal mobility and saw a 25% increase in role-matching success, significantly reducing recruitment costs while improving workforce satisfaction.

Balancing AI Power with Human Judgment

Of course, applying AI to careers carries risks. Amazon’s now infamous AI recruiting tool, trained on biased historical data, ended up penalizing women’s résumés. This is a powerful reminder: AI can amplify bias if not handled carefully.

The solution is not to abandon AI but to balance it with human oversight. AI can uncover patterns and possibilities, but humans provide empathy, context, and strategic decision-making. In practice, this requires:

• Transparency with employees about how AI is being used.
• Strong data privacy protections.
• Human oversight at every step, ensuring managers—not machines—make final decisions.

AI should serve as an augmentation tool—a career coach, not a career judge.

Building a Future-Ready Workforce

To put AI-powered talent discovery into practice, organizations need to focus on two parallel tracks:

1. Technical Foundation
   • Build a comprehensive skills inventory.
   • Select platforms with robust bias-mitigation features.
   • Secure leadership buy-in with a clear ROI.
2. Cultural Foundation
   • Encourage a culture of growth and mobility.
   • Communicate openly to foster trust.
   • Continuously monitor and refine the process to ensure fairness and effectiveness.

The Bottom Line

The talent your organization needs is not always outside—it already exists within your teams. AI is the tool that can make this hidden potential visible. The question is no longer whether this talent exists, but what you will build once you uncover it.