Talent Acquisition Strategy

This past week I was interviewed by a reporter from a major news magazine. He contacted me about a controversial article I had written on ERE addressing the lack of forward-thinking when it comes to companies developing talent acquisition strategies. In the article I suggested that follow-the-leader seemed to be the dominant strategy of choice used by most companies.
We then got around to talking about the skills gap in the U.S. workforce, whether it was real or imaginary, and if anything could be done about it. “Plenty” was my instant comment. Here’s what came next

Resumes are dead. Interviews are largely ineffectual. Linked-In is good. Portfolios are useful.
But projects are the real future of hiring, especially knowledge working hiring. No matter how wonderful your references or how well you do on those too-clever-by-half Microsoft/Google brainteasers, serious firms will increasingly ask serious candidates to do serious work in order to get a serious job offer.

People are billed as companies’ most important asset so routinely that we should be surprised they don’t all sleep nights in a corporate vault. Yet, in the hard-nosed, bottom-line discipline of managing organizations, the “soft skills” of people management practices are more often an afterthought than a core strategy linked to superior business performance. And while manufacturers’ workforce management practices have moved far beyond the personnel office of decades past—with its origins in managing masses of low-skilled workers in a pre-technological age—many have a long way to go to engage their people and connect these practices to shareholder value. Talent management for many manufacturers could be characterized as a less than ideal blend of new aspirations and old tactics.

While you're planning your expansion, you're going to find that talent is in short supply, especially in these five areas.

A five-piece mariachi band, a cake with a hidden message, and more food than you'd believe, were all delivered to our office—resume in tow—in an attempt to help an applicant stand out from the other 2,000 monthly hopefuls who apply for a job here. People do crazy things like this because they, with all their hearts, want to work at Red Frog Events.

Remember when recruiters spent Mondays fielding calls prompted by help-wanted ads in the Sunday paper?
It wasn’t that long ago — not even a dozen years ago — that newspapers were where the recruitment dollars went. In 2000, the watershed year for newspaper employment advertising, the take came to nearly $9 billion, and some newspapers — the Dallas Morning News and the (San Jose) Mercury News in particular — had Sunday help-wanted sections larger than today’s entire editions.

Most reports peg the end of the recession as 2009, but recruiting pros were slow long after that, as job losses outpaced job additions for too long.  Talent acquisition naturally took a back seat to other business concerns.  When companies struggled, talent acquisition played a lower profile role.  (When it really struggles, talent acquisition gets fired, but that’s a really depressing post.)  Recruiting guys and gals understandably don’t take center stage when employees are getting pink slipped.   I totally get it.

HR and talent management leaders are constantly striving to become more strategic. But more often than not it seems that when they are presented with a strategic alternative that really breaks new ground, they retreat and stick with the status quo. However, if you are serious about making a strategic impact and you take a minute to reflect, it’s hard to think of many things that could have more of a strategic impact than increasing corporate revenues.

How do you go from zero to six senior-level e-commerce pros in six weeks?
That would be a tall order in Silicon Valley or Research Triangle. How about if you were in Hong Kong, the hiring executive is in San Francisco, the job is in China, and the req asks for Chinese-speaking, retail-savvy, online experienced, e-commerce marketers?

I always assumed I was safe from being replaced by technology.  I work in a high touch, highly personal job.  Human interaction is at the core of what I do.  I always pictured the guy in the auto plant pulling a lever getting replaced by a robot pulling a lever.  Not an HR guy.

Bay Area tech companies, already in a fierce fight for full-time hires, are now also battling to woo summer interns. Technology giants like Google Inc. have been expanding their summer-intern programs, while smaller tech companies are ramping up theirs in response—sometimes even luring candidates away from college.

y definition, being strategic requires that you look forward — identifying trends, opportunities, and threats. With the December lull looming, now is a great time to plan for the future. I’ve listed the “top 10 talent management trends” I foresee that require your attention.
But you should certainly do your own thinking. I recommend that you start by examining this past year…