Talent Management

Hey Everyone,

I'm a Babson College student going through the advanced consulting curriculum.

I'm on a team of four analyzing the Strategic HR Consulting Industry and I'm specializing in the Talent Management & Organizational Design segment.

I'm trying to determine the low-hanging fruit of the industry, i.e. the competencies that are relatively easy to gain but provide a lot of strength to a TMOD consulting program.

Any insights?

I was recently talking with a friend of mine whose son is starting his sophomore year in college and just changed his major to Petroleum Engineering. When she asked her son why he chose that major he informed her that is has the highest starting salary potential of any job for college graduates. He obviously did his research as you will see below.

As a quick follow-up to my recent post about college recruiting, here are the top-paying jobs for recent college graduates (and those which give the term “entry-level” a new meaning):

1. Petroleum Engineer. Putting physics, chemistry, and industrial engineering classes to work can net a twenty-something nearly $120,000

2. Computer Hardware Engineer. It requires a computer science degree and the ability to keep up-to-date with almost-daily changes in the industry. But at $97,000, it’s probably worth it.

3. Electrical Engineer. The field now includes robotics. And it can bring an $85,000 salary.

4. Investment Banker. Who said that scientists and technicians should have all the good-paying jobs? $85,000 a year for those who can perform top-notch financial research and communicate it effectively.

5. Economist. No longer practitioners of “the dismal science” and certainly no longer confined to the halls of academia and government, economists help companies (and non-profits) of all shapes and sizes understand and prepare for changing market trends. Salary: $84,000.

6. Computer Programmer. No need to explain this one. Starting salary: $73,000.

7. Management Analyst. I’ll confess that I hadn’t heard of this job before reading the description in the article that provided the information for this post (see link below). I guess they assist in making and executing strategic plans for businesses. Hard to imagine someone right out of college doing that, but easy to imagine a smart 23-year-old contributing to a team – especially when he or she can make $73,000.

8. Database administrators. Like everything else related to IT, these people are in demand. And the starting salary of $73,000 reflects that.

9. Registered Nurses. I’ve read a lot about a coming (and possibly current) shortage of doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals. Add to that the force of unions and you get a $68,000 salary.

10. Landscape Architects. The modern rage for good design and environmental responsibility have created a demand for these professionals. The result: a $64,000 starting salary.

As you can see from some of these starting salaries, companies may being seeing a rise in their human resource expense line, driven by the newest members of the work force. This will put even more pressure on corporate recruiters to better execute on their talent management strategies and tactics if they want to fill some of the above mentioned positions without having to offer the highest salary in the market.

Link: "Top-Earning Entry-Level Jobs" http://www.primermagazine.com/2011/earn/top-earning-entry-level-jobs-inf...

Do these starting salaries seem high, low or about right to you? Feel free to comment below!

An article in the New York Times suggests that employers and employees alike might be moving toward a temporary-centric staffing model.

In November 2010, 80% of the 50,000 jobs created in the private sector were temporary positions. For all of 2010, a bit more than 26% of 1.17 million jobs were temporary positions. That’s a lot.

What are we to make of such high numbers of temporary positions? There are, I think, two possibilities:
1. What we are seeing is a standard trend of a recovering economy. In past recessions, a jump in temporary hiring has always preceded a steady rise in long-term hiring. Overall economic growth for 2010 was 2.9%, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis – a good number, to be sure.

If growth in the next few years remains steady or improves, it’s just a matter of time, some would say, before employers start creating more full-time positions.

2. We are witnessing the beginning of a long-term trend toward more temporary employment. (And that’s across the board: blue collar, office, and highly skilled and specialized workers.)

Even before the recession, employers were getting skittish about the high healthcare costs associated with full-time employees.

In addition, work in general was becoming more project-based, demanding fewer full-time project managers and more temporary teams of workers.

Advances in staffing software have also enabled employers to better predict their employment needs, leading them to cut down on expensive full-time hires.

In short, the recession pushed employers to a new staffing model: hire a minimum amount of full-time workers and use staffing agencies and independent contractors as needed to fill out the rest of the workforce.

Which of these is correct? Only time will tell, of course. If we see economic growth surge past 4% in 2011, the competition for qualified workers will force employers to make more full-time offers. If growth hovers between 2.5% and 3.5%, expect temporary employment to account for a large number of new jobs.

My guess is that there’s something else that’s changing in the larger workforce. More people – especially highly skilled people – are opting for a freelance, independent contractor lifestyle.

The growth of information technology and sophisticated telecommunications makes it easier than ever to work from home (or the coffee shop, library, or any place with an Internet connection), which in turn makes it easier, if you have skills that are in demand, to broker yourself out to multiple employers.

If that’s the case, then temporary employment will be on the rise for many years to come.
But my guess is just that – a guess. There simply are no good statistics available on independent contracting. You can be sure, though, that I’ll be keeping my eye on – and commenting on – employment statistics as they come out.

For more up-to-date news on recruiting and staffing software, follow the Human Capital Supply Chain blog and subscribe to our newsletter.

Since I looked back at 2010 in a recent post, I’ll look ahead in this one. And I’ll admit, reading U.S. News and World Report’s annual “50 Best Careers” list got me thinking about staffing challenges and staffing solutions in the year ahead.

According to the article, just about any healthcare position – especially those involving direct care, including massage therapists and dental hygienists – is a safe career bet in 2011. Not surprisingly, technology-related positions will continue to be “hot careers” – although some may be surprised to see “meteorologist” and “hydrologist” alongside “biomedical engineer” and a handful of computer-related positions on U.S. News’ list. Business professionals like financial analysts and public relations specialists are expected to be in demand, along with a smattering of other workers (including translators, technical writers, and court reporters).
So what does this mean for the staffing world?

At least three things:

1. Healthcare institutions need to develop strong staffing solutions. If they don’t, they will – as I noted in a recent blog post – face (potentially expensive) pitfalls like overstaffing, understaffing, and relying too much on soon to retire workers. A strong solution includes 1) comprehensive, long-term, metrics-based planning that minimizes workforce duplication and 2) top-notch software that streamlines hiring, firing, and every employment category in between.

2. Companies should develop good relationships with staffing agencies. If U.S News is right, finding computer-related help won’t always be easy, and these days, we all depend on computers and the internet to do our jobs. A staffing agency that works with technology professionals will be able to find that programmer or network technician in less time than it takes to start and complete a typical search for an employee. Given that a lot of computer tasks are temporary in nature – for example, setting up an internal network or moving a software program to the cloud – using staffing agencies for contract-based technical staffing solutions makes a lot of sense.

3. Companies should evaluate (or re-evaluate) their staffing needs for 2011. As regular readers of this blog will know, this is one of the big themes, if not the big theme, of my working life. In my experience, companies with a human capital supply chain plan – even one that isn’t well-developed – do better than those who don’t. Developing a workforce plan takes work, but it almost always results in short-term and long-term cost savings as well as happier, more efficient employees. More to the point: staffing professionals should read the U.S. News article (and other employment forecasts, like the one from Moody’s Analytics) and apply its predictions to their own situations.

I’ll add this: staffing professionals also need to be flexible in 2011. The economy could perform better or worse than expected, and jobs that defy easy labels may suddenly demand to be filled. As I wrote in my book, a long-term staffing solution is essential for the health of any business, but it should never be implemented too rigidly.

Visit the eEmpACT staffing resources section for more about staffing solutions, staffing software, and other tools for improving human capital management at http://www.eempact.com.