Striving for excellence: talent identification and development in English football refereeing

Almost 20 years after McKinsey introduced the idea of a war for talent, technology is disrupting the talent identification industry. From smartphone profiling apps to workplace big data, the digital revolution has produced a wide range of new tools for making quick and cheap inferences about human potential and predicting future work performance. However, academic industrial–organizational (I-O) psychologists appear to be mostly spectators. Indeed, there is little scientific research on innovative assessment methods, leaving human resources (HR) practitioners with no credible evidence to evaluate the utility of such tools. To this end, this article provides an overview of new talent identification tools, using traditional workplace assessment methods as the organizing framework for classifying and evaluating new tools, which are largely technologically enhanced versions of traditional methods. We highlight some opportunities and challenges for I-O psychology practitioners interested in exploring and improving these innovations.

Download Full-text

To See or Not to See: Talent Identification in the Swedish Football Association

Sociology of Sport Journal ◽

10.1123/ssj.2016-0144 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 34 (3) ◽

pp. 248-258 ◽

Cited By ~ 15

Author(s):

Stefan Lund ◽

Tor Söderström

Keyword(s):

Practical Experience ◽

Embodied Knowledge ◽

Sociological Perspective ◽

Talent Identification

The purpose of this article is to explore whether context and coaching cultures influence coaches’ practical experience and their unarticulated and embodied knowledge, and thus their different ways of seeing and defining talent. Using a cultural sociological perspective, we challenge the commonly held assumption that talent identification is, or can be made into, a rational and objective process. Our interpretations and analyses are based upon interviews with 15 soccer coaches in four districts within the Swedish Football Association’s talent organization program. The results imply that coaches’ talent identification is guided by what feels “right in the heart and stomach”; but what feels right is greatly influenced by their experience of previous identifications, interpretations of what elite soccer entails, and the coaching culture in which they find themselves.

Download Full-text

Rethinking Monolithic Pathways to Success and Talent Identification: The Case of the Women's Japanese Volleyball Team and Why Height is Not Everything

Journal of Human Kinetics ◽

10.1515/hukin-2017-0197 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 64 (1) ◽

pp. 233-245 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Jorge Vargas ◽

Manuel Loureiro ◽

Pantelis T. Nikolaidis ◽

Beat Knechtle ◽

Lorenzo Laporta ◽

...

Keyword(s):

The Other ◽

Performance Models ◽

Large Magnitude ◽

Talent Identification ◽

Core Feature ◽

Women's Volleyball

Abstract The aim of the present study was to analyse the Japanese National Women’s Volleyball Team and to identify items differentiating it from other teams. All fifteen matches between the six National Teams (i.e., Japan, Brazil, China, Belgium, Turkey and Russia) competing at the Women’s Volleyball World Grand Prix Finals of 2014 were analyzed, in a total of 56 sets and 7,176 situations of ball possession. Data suggested the existence of differences between Japan’s and the other five teams’ gameplay, namely the likelihood of more gameplay with utilization of the float jump serve (20.42; ± 3.79%, very large magnitude) and attack tempo 2 (61.89; ± 29.67%, large magnitude), while exhibiting less gameplay with zero blockers opposing the attack (-42.06; ± 21.28%, large magnitude). Based on these findings, it was concluded that sports success could be achieved even when a core feature of mainstream performance models (e.g., height in volleyball) was lacking.

Download Full-text