Wayne Gretzky and Talent Acquisition?

Strange title for an article about talent acquisition isn’t it?  It is actually very fitting.

Wayne Gretzky holds or shares 61 NHL records.  They did not call him “The Great One” for nothing.  He is quoted as saying, “A good hockey player skates to the puck.  A great hockey player skates to where the puck is going.”  If you have that picture in mind you can see why he was so great.  He was continually skating to where the puck was going.  To skate to the puck you are always chasing rather than anticipating and making good plays.

The current hiring environment is like that too.  Most companies have for the last few years been continuing their same activities to find talent as though nothing were going on.  They did not see anything unusual happening, and tried to conduct their practices the way they always have.  In other words, they had been skating to the puck. 

It has only been in the last few months that an enormous number of companies have woke up to the fact that there are no candidates available for many of their needed positions.  And, many of those positions have now become what could be termed, critical positions when in the past they may have hardly been noticed.  The reason is that many of those positions are vacant so long that the lack of having the position filled is causing problems within the organization.  It may be at a department level, plant level, division level or even a corporate level. 

In addition to the problem now being noticed, companies are attempting to respond to the problem.  But, their response is in the same manner they have sought talent for many years and now with no results.  So, what are those efforts, why are they falling short and actually failing?

This is where skating to where the puck is going becomes important.  There are a number of effects that occurred from both the demographics of the country and all the organizational changes that have occurred due to re-engineering, re-structuring, downsizing, right-sizing, etc.

Demographically Baby Boomers (76 million) retired in massive quantities.  Historically, the following generation filled in all the positions that were left open because they had been mentored and there were plenty of people available.  In this case, the following generation or GenX only had 38 million people in total and that created a math problem.  In addition, that generation has not been mentored like the Baby Boomer generation had been.  Why?  In many cases, the person who would do the mentoring either saw what was happening (they would get let go as soon as the new person knew what they did) or there was no one to mentor them.  The end result was there were no qualified people for the positions.

Secondly and in addition to the demographic problem, many, many of the positions are now much different than they were before all the organizational changes took place.  When a department goes from 12 to 6 people, the 6 take on the responsibilities of the 6 who left.  They now have unique positions.  The person with the same title at a similar company may not do much of what that person is doing.  As a result, when the company goes to find another person like the unique one in their company with all the qualifications required, there may be no one with the qualifications. 

Thirdly, most companies have been drawing their talent from the pool of unemployed.  What a minute you say, there are 25 million unemployed therefore there are plenty to draw from.  That thinking too is skating to the puck not skating to where the puck is going.

That above statement is true, however within the 25 million, the group that is 25 years old and older with a four-year degree or greater, the unemployment rate at the end of December was 3.8 percent or about 1.9 million people.  Only about half who are seeking employment.  That percent is below what is considered zero unemployment.  And, most of the company job postings, internal recruiters and third party recruiters are searching in that very shallow, basically nonexistent pool.  One more place where the puck is going is that there are approximately 6 to 7.5 million open professional positions open competing for the 950,000. 

Yet, companies continue to do the same things day in and day out hoping something will happen so they find the person they want.  They have been skating to where the puck is not where it is going. 

How should this situation (by the way, this problem will be with us until at least the end of the decade) be handled successfully? 

Since our business is all about understanding the hiring environment, we saw this coming years ago (skating to where the puck is going).  Like a lot of “voices in the wilderness” our efforts to share that information with many companies went unheeded.  Typical responses were that they were not having any problems and if they do they will worry about it then (skating to the puck).

As the situation unfolded and was becoming more apparent, unfortunately the response was very similar, “Yes we are having some difficulties with some positions but it must be that type of position, our area of the country, or it is a temporary thing.  We will be alright as soon as things return to normal.”  Or, “We aren’t having any problems, we get 400-500 resumes for every job posting.”  We followed that up with, so how many qualified candidates did you find in all those resumes?  The response overwhelmingly is, “None”. 

Perhaps the most confusing response as this problem has blossomed has been after we offer, “Would you like to know what has caused this and a solution to help you with your situation so you are effective with your talent acquisition?”  "More importantly help to find the talent that will allow you to achieve your goals and objectives?"  The response many time has been, “No, we are happy with what we are doing and will continue to do it.”  This is tantamount to skating to the puck only when you get there the puck is gone and everyone is at the other end of the ice.

There are effective solutions.  Some companies need a lot of change and help.  Other companies need momentary or some help in some areas.  However, we have not spoken to too many companies that do not need some type of help in talent acquisition.

Again, some solutions can be found in a previous article, Disruptive Changes and Talent Acquisition or you can contact us at 919-435-6873, kvn.sutton@gmail.com.