Recently I read an article where a major insurance company was suing a competitor insurance company for a list of real or perceived issues. The one count that caught my eye quickly was the plaintiff claimed the defendant was stealing their employees. There was little detail about it, but it brought to mind the very real talent war we are beginning to experience.
Most companies and most company leaders are not aware of the potential devastation that is happening to companies with their critical positions. These are positions where without the right person contributing their skills, experience, and accomplishments to help accomplish the goals and objectives of the organization, it may fail.
You may ask, what’s the big deal? There are a lot of unemployed individuals, why should it be a concern? Most people like quantified facts, so let’s look at a few.
· There were 76 million Baby Boomers born between 1946 and 1964.
· They are retiring at a rate of approximately 10,000 per month, it may be greater.
· There were only 38 million Gen Xers born as the next generation.
· The Department of Labor estimates that within the next two to three years, there will be over 6 million open positions in this country without enough people to fill them. We are not talking about all levels of positions, but of professional positions, the critical ones that may mean winning or losing.
· The unemployment rate for those possessing a four-year degree or higher is 4.6%. That is low and it will continue to go lower as the already small pool of talent continues to dry up.
Some people want to ignore the facts by saying that many of the Boomers will stay on at their current employment. True, some may, but the majority are retiring or going to work in a position that is outside their chosen profession, which in effect is the same as leaving the employment of the industry.
How are you responding to the talent war that is upon us and only going to increase in scope and intensity? If you do not feel you are experiencing any effects, what are you doing to prepare for it when it does start to affect your organization? How will you cope with the impact the lack of the talent you need to accomplish the goals and objectives you have set for the company?
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
What has Created the Hiring Confusion Companies Experience, Part Two
When a job posting fails to attract the right candidate, the company may go to the next level of hiring. They employ several recruiters. The selection process and logic most companies use to choose recruiters, is an entirely separate subject I will address in another article. Typically, the results of most recruiting efforts are not too dissimilar to the results of the job positing. Sadly, recruiters typically provide their client with candidate information that is from previous searches and their hope is one will be close enough the client will want to see them and there is a much better way.
By the time the company has gone to recruiters they are typically willing to settle. If they interview a person(s) who might work out; they decide which candidate is the most likely to accept an offer.
The focus goes from solving a business problem to solving a hiring problem. They solve the hiring problem, but many times it did not solve the business problem, because they did not hire the type of person they really wanted.
For companies to solve this, they have to become recruiting companies. What is that? They do not just fill jobs but attract top talent. Understand the best are not hanging around job boards or looking at company websites. Companies have to stop using dated recruiting practices and change their hiring attitudes.
Instead, create attraction factors for your company. Use specific knowledge. Understand general knowledge generally fails. Do not use annual reports for recruiting. Do not use marketing materials and do not think the company’s reputation is enough. It is not. Having situational insight for a position is important. Knowing how to apply attraction factors in a selling scenario will start to attract those you might want.
The best qualified people are pensive side today. They ask very tough questions and you better be able to answer them. The best are able to perform excellent due diligence on you and your company. They will be quite knowledgeable, therefore be prepared.
Where does this leave you and your company? On the outside looking in if the traditional hiring practices continue to be followed. That can lead to very serious consequences. With the coming extreme shortage of qualified people:
· It will mean some companies may reach a point where they are no longer competitive and they go out of business
· They may be without the necessary talent and become targets for take over
· Some may feel forced to sell their company to others that have made a shift and are able to go get the talent they need
· They may not be able to pursue new product development to keep up with market demands
It could mean that this country falls behind further in the world as a leader in technology and other areas.
What is the answer? Companies have to learn to become real recruiting companies. It has to start at the top. These are skills that are very foreign to most companies and their leaders. It is foreign to the hiring managers and to the Human Resources department. The points made above illustrate why this situation exists.
We teach companies how to make that shift. We teach the necessary skills, so the key individuals involved in the process become a part of the recruiting process. The company can transform into a company that is attracting the top talent, not just job applicants.
For positions where we are asked to be engaged, we perform talent acquisition in a surgically precise manner. Typically, we are asked to help where the position is critical and no solution has been found.
Do not be caught is the situation many companies already find themselves. The current environment is not very forgiving and companies have to be prepared for the current talent shortage that is ever increasing.
For more information on our webinar that creates the needed transformation or our talent acquisition services, please contact me at kvn.sutton@gmail.com.
By the time the company has gone to recruiters they are typically willing to settle. If they interview a person(s) who might work out; they decide which candidate is the most likely to accept an offer.
The focus goes from solving a business problem to solving a hiring problem. They solve the hiring problem, but many times it did not solve the business problem, because they did not hire the type of person they really wanted.
For companies to solve this, they have to become recruiting companies. What is that? They do not just fill jobs but attract top talent. Understand the best are not hanging around job boards or looking at company websites. Companies have to stop using dated recruiting practices and change their hiring attitudes.
Instead, create attraction factors for your company. Use specific knowledge. Understand general knowledge generally fails. Do not use annual reports for recruiting. Do not use marketing materials and do not think the company’s reputation is enough. It is not. Having situational insight for a position is important. Knowing how to apply attraction factors in a selling scenario will start to attract those you might want.
The best qualified people are pensive side today. They ask very tough questions and you better be able to answer them. The best are able to perform excellent due diligence on you and your company. They will be quite knowledgeable, therefore be prepared.
Where does this leave you and your company? On the outside looking in if the traditional hiring practices continue to be followed. That can lead to very serious consequences. With the coming extreme shortage of qualified people:
· It will mean some companies may reach a point where they are no longer competitive and they go out of business
· They may be without the necessary talent and become targets for take over
· Some may feel forced to sell their company to others that have made a shift and are able to go get the talent they need
· They may not be able to pursue new product development to keep up with market demands
It could mean that this country falls behind further in the world as a leader in technology and other areas.
What is the answer? Companies have to learn to become real recruiting companies. It has to start at the top. These are skills that are very foreign to most companies and their leaders. It is foreign to the hiring managers and to the Human Resources department. The points made above illustrate why this situation exists.
We teach companies how to make that shift. We teach the necessary skills, so the key individuals involved in the process become a part of the recruiting process. The company can transform into a company that is attracting the top talent, not just job applicants.
For positions where we are asked to be engaged, we perform talent acquisition in a surgically precise manner. Typically, we are asked to help where the position is critical and no solution has been found.
Do not be caught is the situation many companies already find themselves. The current environment is not very forgiving and companies have to be prepared for the current talent shortage that is ever increasing.
For more information on our webinar that creates the needed transformation or our talent acquisition services, please contact me at kvn.sutton@gmail.com.
Monday, April 5, 2010
What has Created the Hiring Confusion Companies Experience, Part One
There is some understandable confusion within companies today when it comes to hiring new employees.
The confusion comes in a several different forms. On the one hand, there are a huge number of people unemployed. Most companies assume the large numbers of unemployed individuals are qualified individuals who can easily fill their specific requirements.
On the other hand, companies are finding that even with all those millions of unemployed, they fail to find the person they really want. Therefore, they either settle for the person they feel will work out, or they try again and often times with the same results. Neither solves their problem.
Where company results are affected by an individual’s skills, experience and ability to impact results, it is serious. In today’s economic environment and possibly more than ever, companies can ill-afford to have:
· Delays in sales
· Delays in product development
· Delays in cost improvement initiatives
· Delays in capital improvements
· Delays in operational improvements
These are only a few items. The list can get very long. The bottom line is the bottom line. Companies today are not willing to wait for any positive results they can create. To do so may be detrimental to the health of the company.
Why does this situation exist? There are a number of issues of which companies are not aware. There are a number of issues that haunt companies today, making it difficult for them to hire the right people.
The biggest issue that companies are unaware of today is, while unemployment is very high, the unemployment rate for individuals with a four-year degree or higher is very low. What that means is that companies are expect to have the ability to find the candidate of their choice when in reality, the pool for those candidates is small, especially compared with the total number of unemployed individuals. As a result, many times they cannot find a qualified candidate for a critical position.
Here is why this issue is going to continue to get worse. By 2011/2012, the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates there will be 6 to 8 million positions open in the US, without enough qualified people to fill them. We are already seeing the results of this effect.
One major reason for this is that Baby Boomers are retiring. There were 76 million Baby Boomers and the following generation only had 38 million. The Boomers are retiring at a rate of about 250,000 per month.
The other issue many companies face is that they are a hiring company, not a recruiting company. What’s the difference? A hiring company is one that simply sends out information about a position and then waits for a response. Once they receive the responses, they filter them to eliminate as many as possible. The methods and means vary, but the results are the same. They end up with what they hope are qualified candidates but under the circumstances today many times none are qualified. This leads to excessive wasted time and the problem for which the position was to solve still exists. They are a “fill the position” type company.
See Part Two Tomorrow.
The confusion comes in a several different forms. On the one hand, there are a huge number of people unemployed. Most companies assume the large numbers of unemployed individuals are qualified individuals who can easily fill their specific requirements.
On the other hand, companies are finding that even with all those millions of unemployed, they fail to find the person they really want. Therefore, they either settle for the person they feel will work out, or they try again and often times with the same results. Neither solves their problem.
Where company results are affected by an individual’s skills, experience and ability to impact results, it is serious. In today’s economic environment and possibly more than ever, companies can ill-afford to have:
· Delays in sales
· Delays in product development
· Delays in cost improvement initiatives
· Delays in capital improvements
· Delays in operational improvements
These are only a few items. The list can get very long. The bottom line is the bottom line. Companies today are not willing to wait for any positive results they can create. To do so may be detrimental to the health of the company.
Why does this situation exist? There are a number of issues of which companies are not aware. There are a number of issues that haunt companies today, making it difficult for them to hire the right people.
The biggest issue that companies are unaware of today is, while unemployment is very high, the unemployment rate for individuals with a four-year degree or higher is very low. What that means is that companies are expect to have the ability to find the candidate of their choice when in reality, the pool for those candidates is small, especially compared with the total number of unemployed individuals. As a result, many times they cannot find a qualified candidate for a critical position.
Here is why this issue is going to continue to get worse. By 2011/2012, the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates there will be 6 to 8 million positions open in the US, without enough qualified people to fill them. We are already seeing the results of this effect.
One major reason for this is that Baby Boomers are retiring. There were 76 million Baby Boomers and the following generation only had 38 million. The Boomers are retiring at a rate of about 250,000 per month.
The other issue many companies face is that they are a hiring company, not a recruiting company. What’s the difference? A hiring company is one that simply sends out information about a position and then waits for a response. Once they receive the responses, they filter them to eliminate as many as possible. The methods and means vary, but the results are the same. They end up with what they hope are qualified candidates but under the circumstances today many times none are qualified. This leads to excessive wasted time and the problem for which the position was to solve still exists. They are a “fill the position” type company.
See Part Two Tomorrow.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
The Current Hiring Environment - It Might Be Yours
Many companies felt that the current recession would be a help for hiring options. Most are finding out it is not the case. It presents a difficult situation for companies and for candidates. Neither has been very good at finding each other.
There are some very well qualified people who are unemployed currently and cannot connect with an employer. Many have stopped looking for another position.
There are companies that have great opportunities that are not able to connect with the best qualified talent either unemployed or employed. Many companies settle for what they can find. There are three areas that are shaping this situation.
1. Companies
The company environment has changed dramatically over the last decade or more.
As companies continue to become leaner, the requirements of individual positions become more complex. Each person takes on portions of the duties and responsibilities from those who are no longer with the company. Positions may have had the same title for years. The same title today may have become much more complex and require many additional skills, different skills, and experiences.
When a vacancy requires a person who is highly qualified for a particular position today, it becomes more difficult to find a person with all the qualifications because of:
• Increased complex requirements
• A shallow pool becoming even more shallow for qualified candidates who have the types of experiences desired
• Continuing reduction of those qualified due to retirement (see Number 3 below)
• Fewer people filling in behind those retiring due to a shear lack of numbers (see number 3 below)
• The responses to the job postings have few if any qualified candidates
Companies still use the same strategies and tactics with candidates they always have. They have taken the position that the candidate will find them whether through a job posting, the candidates search, or some other method. From there, it is a process of sifting that has little to do with the qualifications of the candidate and the needs of the position.
There is no doubt that many companies are receiving record numbers of resumes for posted job openings. I routinely talk to companies that receive up to 400 resumes per position. Some companies have shared they receive up to 6,000 resumes per week. Most of the companies I talk to are not finding the right person even in the huge volumes of information they receive.
It is necessary today to be able to attract the candidate required for a position. The ability of companies to do so is lacking. That task typically falls upon the Human Resources Department that has many other duties and responsibilities. Their methods are primarily to sort and match with job descriptions. They are not able to reach out and discover those that are truly the best qualified.
2. Candidates
The generation following the Baby Boomers has not been in a situation where they have had to make a hard effort to find employment. Many searching for employment now are following the methods that were never particularly successful in the past. The ineffectiveness is highlighted by to the large number of unemployed who are unable to find employment today.
Reasons why they are not successful are:
• They do not know how to seek out employer companies that are a fit for them.
• They do not know how to effectively perform the research necessary to learn, if a company may be one they should pursue.
• They do not know how to effectively contact a company that may be that fit.
• They do not know how to create presentation materials about their skills, experience, accomplishments that allow them to stand out among a large crowd of applicants.
• They do not know how to effectively prepare for an interview where both the prospective employer and they learn if the situation is a real fit or not.
• In some cases, there is a huge gap between the experience base of the generation that followed the Baby Boomers and the requirements of a company.
The result is they rarely come into contact with the right employer.
Candidates will have to learn how to become more visible in the crowd of applicants that flood many postings. They will have to learn how to present their credentials in a manner that will get the attention of hiring managers. They will have to know how to meet with a prospective employer in a way that benefits both.
3. The Impending Talent Crisis
A lot of things have changed about the candidate landscape. Here are some important facts:
• There are approximately 32 million unemployed* in the United States today, 25 years old and over.
• There were 76 million Baby Boomers born. The Baby Boomers are approximately 5 million of that total group of 32 million. Most Baby Boomers are either truly retiring or they are taking a job outside the industry where they had their career. Many of those who were looking to stay in the industries their career was in have stopped looking.
• The unemployment rate for candidates possessing a four year degree and/or advanced education beyond is only 4.9%*. Even though more Baby Boomers are not retiring at 65, there is still a mass exodus of Boomers from their career companies.
• Approximately 250,000 Baby Boomers are retiring per month. The exodus is further reducing that 4.9% pool.
• The group behind the Baby Boomers is one half of the size of the Baby Boomers, about 38 million. That leaves a large hole in the experience base.
(* The unemployment numbers and percents can be found through the Department of Labor.)
As the economy improves the situation will continue to unveil itself even more. Those candidates that can respond effectively will help themselves and the companies that employ them. Companies that fail to respond to attract the best qualified people for their unique situations will potentially fall behind. There have been reports that by the end of 2010 there will be approximately 6 million open positions in the US without enough qualified people to fill those positions. The type of positions this refers to are those of a technical nature and above in organizations.
There are some very well qualified people who are unemployed currently and cannot connect with an employer. Many have stopped looking for another position.
There are companies that have great opportunities that are not able to connect with the best qualified talent either unemployed or employed. Many companies settle for what they can find. There are three areas that are shaping this situation.
1. Companies
The company environment has changed dramatically over the last decade or more.
As companies continue to become leaner, the requirements of individual positions become more complex. Each person takes on portions of the duties and responsibilities from those who are no longer with the company. Positions may have had the same title for years. The same title today may have become much more complex and require many additional skills, different skills, and experiences.
When a vacancy requires a person who is highly qualified for a particular position today, it becomes more difficult to find a person with all the qualifications because of:
• Increased complex requirements
• A shallow pool becoming even more shallow for qualified candidates who have the types of experiences desired
• Continuing reduction of those qualified due to retirement (see Number 3 below)
• Fewer people filling in behind those retiring due to a shear lack of numbers (see number 3 below)
• The responses to the job postings have few if any qualified candidates
Companies still use the same strategies and tactics with candidates they always have. They have taken the position that the candidate will find them whether through a job posting, the candidates search, or some other method. From there, it is a process of sifting that has little to do with the qualifications of the candidate and the needs of the position.
There is no doubt that many companies are receiving record numbers of resumes for posted job openings. I routinely talk to companies that receive up to 400 resumes per position. Some companies have shared they receive up to 6,000 resumes per week. Most of the companies I talk to are not finding the right person even in the huge volumes of information they receive.
It is necessary today to be able to attract the candidate required for a position. The ability of companies to do so is lacking. That task typically falls upon the Human Resources Department that has many other duties and responsibilities. Their methods are primarily to sort and match with job descriptions. They are not able to reach out and discover those that are truly the best qualified.
2. Candidates
The generation following the Baby Boomers has not been in a situation where they have had to make a hard effort to find employment. Many searching for employment now are following the methods that were never particularly successful in the past. The ineffectiveness is highlighted by to the large number of unemployed who are unable to find employment today.
Reasons why they are not successful are:
• They do not know how to seek out employer companies that are a fit for them.
• They do not know how to effectively perform the research necessary to learn, if a company may be one they should pursue.
• They do not know how to effectively contact a company that may be that fit.
• They do not know how to create presentation materials about their skills, experience, accomplishments that allow them to stand out among a large crowd of applicants.
• They do not know how to effectively prepare for an interview where both the prospective employer and they learn if the situation is a real fit or not.
• In some cases, there is a huge gap between the experience base of the generation that followed the Baby Boomers and the requirements of a company.
The result is they rarely come into contact with the right employer.
Candidates will have to learn how to become more visible in the crowd of applicants that flood many postings. They will have to learn how to present their credentials in a manner that will get the attention of hiring managers. They will have to know how to meet with a prospective employer in a way that benefits both.
3. The Impending Talent Crisis
A lot of things have changed about the candidate landscape. Here are some important facts:
• There are approximately 32 million unemployed* in the United States today, 25 years old and over.
• There were 76 million Baby Boomers born. The Baby Boomers are approximately 5 million of that total group of 32 million. Most Baby Boomers are either truly retiring or they are taking a job outside the industry where they had their career. Many of those who were looking to stay in the industries their career was in have stopped looking.
• The unemployment rate for candidates possessing a four year degree and/or advanced education beyond is only 4.9%*. Even though more Baby Boomers are not retiring at 65, there is still a mass exodus of Boomers from their career companies.
• Approximately 250,000 Baby Boomers are retiring per month. The exodus is further reducing that 4.9% pool.
• The group behind the Baby Boomers is one half of the size of the Baby Boomers, about 38 million. That leaves a large hole in the experience base.
(* The unemployment numbers and percents can be found through the Department of Labor.)
As the economy improves the situation will continue to unveil itself even more. Those candidates that can respond effectively will help themselves and the companies that employ them. Companies that fail to respond to attract the best qualified people for their unique situations will potentially fall behind. There have been reports that by the end of 2010 there will be approximately 6 million open positions in the US without enough qualified people to fill those positions. The type of positions this refers to are those of a technical nature and above in organizations.
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