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.
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