A quest for talent
Is it just me?
Where to start
The perfect storm is taking place with Covid transitioning to a new normal, a surge in demand of goods and services, and digital transformation as the hype of the hour. Small wonder why job openings are looking for candidates nowhere to be seen and vacancies starting to impact capacity in areas from transportation to restaurants.
In this series of articles, we will go over the challenges to hire talent as well as required workflows and pipelines to improve hiring agility.
Ready when you are
How thorough was your hiring team in planning the selection and ultimately employing a candidate? Your template for job description, nonnegotiable, acceptable attributes, experience, and domain knowledge was reviewed when?
In the middle of a quick unfolding of new context for business involving remote interaction, virtual relevance, and AI assisted automation to try using a legacy job description turned into digital transformation expert role may not work. User experience also applies to the hiring process so if you are not measuring it the value leak is wide open and it may be wise to consider it as a key indicator of the whole journey. Ghosting, later replies, endless interviews, and surprises along the process are not helping and the talent pool is shallowing.
One bullet for all
Requirements in job descriptions are becoming a laundry list to widen the net in a costly scouting exercise. Technological landscape sets the go — no go criteria to platforms or applications used in the company looking for somebody knowledgeable to save on training and onboarding, even if functionality of those products is similar, i.e. Agile tracking for one.
In a time of dramatic changes specially in technological arena, depending on your segment it may make more sense to look for capacities based on knowledge of domains not application, reason why knowledge workers are called that way. Supply Chain is a typical example where platforms to manage it divide the world, i.e., SAP, Oracle and talent is scarce despite skills transfer being minimal. Workflows and pipeline management are the new concept for productivity and efficiency and more importantly they are product agnostic. Is your Job Description application agnostic?
Mastering the hunt
Now that you have a planning process behind the selection of candidates based on realistic job descriptions, and user experience measurement, chances are that candidates are being pulled from different directions, from Metaverse land run to a massive Infrastructure bill with an increasing number of related options from space industrialization to electric vehicles, all at the same time.
A concept of total value may become handy when strategizing the talent search. From mental health to respect — not just camaraderie — purpose, values, remuneration, challenges, road map, and most importantly a vision to share which explains why the job is meaningful.
Let us share our vision in the next iteration.
Gustavo Pisani
Richmond, November 7, 2021.
