I was at a family reunion this last weekend and we were talking about recruiting issues. They were mentioning that despite unemployment numbers, they still had a hard time finding the right people for the most critical positions that were open. And it isn’t a question of technique, or pay or anything along those lines. It’s a situation where there is a genuine labor shortage. Only a few people could do this job in the country. They’ve done research and it is under 1,000 people.
This company has spent millions of dollars on talent acquisition alone in this one critical area of their business. Their problem isn’t going away anytime soon. And they are doing things to help but it isn’t enough.
So I asked who is going to blink first: the people that need to hire or the people that need the jobs? Whose will is going to break in order to make the tough decision that maybe it is time to retrain the workforce since many of the positions that existed a decade or two ago aren’t coming back.
No response.
Is there a third option? As I discussed with someone else, there is a short term solution. Importing talent has been going on for quite a while. The person I talked to said his company got 5% of the temporary visas they asked for though. And they certainly didn’t advertise that fact.
I was thinking later that to someone outside of the talent industry, this has to be a maddening conversation. And maybe I am starting to agree with them a bit.
So let’s say you’ve got one of these positions where there are a very limited number of people for the role. And you’re spending millions of recruiting dollars and you’re still falling short. What’s the solution?
Some recruiters would say devote more budget and more energy into recruiting.
Yuck. Talk about diminishing returns.
How about becoming a real talent pro and looking at the broader picture? Maybe it is time to do a lock down on your retention efforts. Every person you lose not only means another search, it means a person with institutional knowledge leaving the workplace.
What about internal training? You’ve got people interested in moving into this role but they don’t have the skills they need. You make it as easy as possible for them move up by offering training classes, education incentives, whatever. And that retention program will come in handy when you sell this to your boss.
How about external programs? Working with colleges, scholarships, adult educators… We could go on and on.
The current war for talent isn’t like it was hyped in the past. Right now, there are too many people with the wrong skill sets to do anything more than drift from contracting/freelancing, side jobs and occasional full time work below their level of experience. We were hoping for a war where finding is the difficult part, not a true shortage.
So if you’re one of the few companies looking for people and you’re having trouble finding them, wouldn’t it be great to alleviate some of that confusion by showing that you’re thinking outside of the box? That you want to hire people, that you don’t want to be constantly behind in those critical reqs.
Isn’t it time for us to stop waiting for candidates to blink and actually take some action?
July 29, 2010 at 10:31 am
Lance, You make a good point about retention and promotion from within. One of the best ways to retain an employee is to foster an environment that supports the growth of their career. Aligning employee and company goals is the smartest thing a company can do, and better yet, it’s free!
July 29, 2010 at 3:14 pm
Strategic and insightful as usual, Lance! I hope lots of companies take this advice to heart, and SOON.
July 29, 2010 at 3:19 pm
P.S. Steve Boese blogged about this very topic on Wednesday, too: http://steveboese.squarespace.com/journal/2010/7/28/does-that-job-really-require-a-college-degree.html/ He came to a similar conclusion. Hooray! Let’s hope this concept works its way out to the companies that need to hear it.
July 29, 2010 at 8:48 pm
Great Points,
Just as we must constantly be sensing our markets, we must be in tune with our internal customers, our employees.
I found the book Delivering Happiness does a good job of explaining how we are to treat our teams today and you can read my thoughts in my blog http://nosmokeandmirrors.wordpress.com/2010/07/09/delivering-happiness-proof-%e2%80%a6the-%e2%80%9cgolden-rule%e2%80%9d-is-profitable/
Current employees and those you may be considering are giving much greater weight to culture. Make sure yours is one they want to join.
Mark Allen Roberts
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July 30, 2010 at 5:22 pm
I’ve always surprised when I read that companies actually value their employees. In the current environment, the current corporate mantra seems to be this “We don’t care how valuable you are, we can replace you. So if you are dissatisfied with the way we do business, don’t let the screen door hit you in the butt on the way out.”
August 1, 2010 at 4:43 am
It kills me that companies (and HR/recruiting types) will continue smashing their heads on a wall without ever actually considering the effects of a change in perspective. If nothing else, just give it a test run on a few positions and see what happens!
August 2, 2010 at 3:27 pm
I agree, just because there’s more people in the pool doesn’t mean there will be more qualified candidates. Especially as the work world changes from manual labor jobs to more and more skilled focused (especially computer related) work rise..
August 6, 2010 at 1:28 pm
As an outsider from the HR field and a job seeker I always get the feeling that many of these companies “want their cake and eat it to” in terms of seeking top talent that fall within a younger age group. While many younger folks may have the degrees with very little people skills, more importantly they still have an age advantage as compared to many experienced misplaced degreed people that fall within the 40 to 50 year range. While many of course will talk the talk in terms of the laws they sell themselves short in trading off talent vs. youth.
August 7, 2010 at 12:10 pm
Okay, not misplaced but displaced degreed people….
August 8, 2010 at 6:32 am
It’s a seller’s market, and companies can pretty much choose whom they want to hire. Which means they can split hairs on applicants’ skills and qualifications and decide that the one who fits their KSA’s exactly will be the candidate they hire. And because it’s a seller’s market, companies can “afford” to be rigid and exact in their thinking about job openings. Whether it’s the right thing to do is another argument. What needs to happen now is to determine what skills and qualifications are necessary to work in this new economy and adapt our school curricula and workplace training programs accordingly. And the US has not done a good job of getting with the program in this regard.
August 13, 2010 at 7:51 am
Your post makes some excellent points. Another area that might aid retention is offering a top-notch retirement plan. Many companies have cut and not restored their mathch. Others have lousy, high cost plans. If retention is a concern why not offer an excellent plan with a generous match. While they are at it companies should consider offering their employees access to unbiased financial advisors who can offer them direct advice on allocating their accounts, retirement planning, and other issues while not selling them financial products. (Full disclosure I am an advisor to a number of company retirement plans).
August 23, 2010 at 12:57 pm
This is a late comment, and I’m not in an HR position, but in my dealings with company HR interviewers and agency recruiters over a long technical writing career, I have felt that many interviewers had a very narrow or poorly defined job description that they were working with, and that they may not have had any previous experience seeking employees with skills in my area of expertise. Also, having worked in a variety of industries, I have sensed that if the agents seeking candidates for a specific position do not have a grasp of what skills and attributes the position really requires, they tend to overemphasize what they do understand, such as specific experience in their industry, or a multiple years experience with a tool that I could master in a couple of days.
I’ve always wondered why a company could hire a CFO or CEO without specific industry experience, but were loath to consider writers or engineers without it. In other words, part of the dearth of talent for specific positions may just be a form of blinders imposed by an incomplete specification of what skills are essential, and what could be rapidly acquired by an otherwise well-qualified candidate. Another option may be to define a position in such a way that more than one person, such as two retirees who want to supplement their retirement or pension income, could share it.
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September 28, 2010 at 6:12 pm
Thanks for the great post. I agree with your post, and many others who have mastered the “shortage” problems in their fields would too. I’ve recently read several books on employee satisfaction and retention. The earliest of which was published in 1992 (so this strategy is nothing new) and the latest being published just over 2 months ago. In all of these books, there is one clear cycle: employee retention fixes shortages.
These books are all titled under the same general theme of taking care of your employees. This is done in various ways, from intrinsic and extrinsic compensation for good work and making a conscious effort in maintaining the working environment and a healthy organizational culture. Some of these books include cross-training, and some don’t, but they all highlight employee retention, employee reputation, and good employees recommending good applicants for open positions. In a nutshell, taking care of the employees you have now not only keeps them, it brings more, and this is very valuable in a shortage.
May 20, 2011 at 4:57 am
Retention and promotion from within is always the best solution… promotion always increases the emotional attachment that a person has with his company. The only reason that I left my last company was because I had the opportunity to start my own — another corporate would never be in a position to lure me away.