Tuesday, March 17, 2015

Digital Master Tuning #59: Is Talent Shortage Real or Artificial?

There is a digital way to identify talent -hiring character, raw intelligence, growth mind and recombinant capability.


With the economy getting in better shape, more and more organizations start ambitious hiring plan to drive business growth, does your organization experience a talent shortage? What do you consider the primary issues? Skill gap? Talent scarcity? How do you define "social hiring" - and, at the digital era, do you agree that ineffective social hiring causes inability to attract good candidates? Or to put simply, is talent shortage real or artificial?


Most of the times, it is a combination of the multiple factors: lack of a solid recruitment strategy, poor candidate research, wrong communication channel, or weak employer branding are all big obstacles to attracting the right talent. To dig through the root cause, talent managers should ponder: What do you mean by skill gap in the context of your organization? And, what, if any, internal/external actions are, and have been taken to address that? Does your organization take advantage of the latest technologies such as social or analytics in talent hiring & retention? What does your organization do to remain competitive while those circumstances exist? Assuming the demographics are correct, the looming workforce shortage demands that you need to broaden the criteria when looking to hire.


A solid talent strategy needs to be well-defined base on business’s long-term perspective well mixing with short term needs. The main goal of modern talent management is to put the right people in the right position for the right reason. There are many factors to consider when hiring and managing talent, but first you need to define talent unless "hiring talent" means "hiring employees." Employers fail to adequately understand or define their own business needs prior to embarking on a search for someone to fill their needs. Thus, they do not have a solid foundation upon which to assess, evaluate or decide who may be capable of performing successfully in their organization. Everyone wants to hire for and manage talent but if you can't answer the five questions below with specificity, you can't hire or manage talent effectively.
1). How do you define talent?
2). How do you measure talent?
3). How do you know a candidate’s talent?
4). How do you know what talent is required for each job?
5). How do you match a candidate’s talent to the talent demanded by the job?


The job requirement needs to be changed, to reflect the digital transformation: When struggling to fill jobs, many times, the first instinct recruiters have is to label the problem a “talent shortage.” Talent shortages do exist in point professions but rarely across the board. Over the years, jobs have continuously been transformed, mainly as a result of emerging technological advances. Therefore, requirements have also changed. Hence, if these changes have not been properly documented or updated; the talent shortage may actually result from faulty definitions of these evolving jobs and their respective new requirements.


There is a digital way to identify talent -hiring character, raw intelligence, growth mind and recombinant capability: There is a shortage if you only search for "keywords," look for the “perfect” skilled candidate and meets the very specific role. But no, if talent managers get creative and go beyond the standard view of traditional placement. Technology changes the face of many industries at a frightening speed and candidly hiring against today's detailed technical requirement is a recipe for staying behind the curve and not filling roles. Nowadays, information is only clicks away, knowledge life cycle is significantly shortened, experience only has been shown to be a poor predictor of future success. And creativity can not be measured by traditional performance management approach. What succeeds is a combination of hiring the right raw material: intellect, values, learning agility, motivation and mind fit. And then the sensible but challenge task is to well manage the talent pipeline including training and development.


Every company is looking to tap right candidates using all available mediums: More often than not, the inability to attract good candidates is caused by ineffective social hiring.The problem is two way - first: it’s sourcing and second: it’s recruitment process. Both can be time taking if a company just relies on traditional ways. If you can make any of these two more efficient, your problem is short. Sourcing is a challenge, but screening the candidates using manual methods is equally inefficient and time taking tasks. Use of technology in screening will help tremendously and automation to the maximum extent is surely going to make this process smoother and fast. The term social hiring, social media hiring, social recruiting etc. are interchangeable. You can define it as a process for quickly attracting the appropriate candidates using a number of current technologies and messaging platforms, in an integrated manner. One of the keys to success is integration. Though the reality is not so optimistic yet, here is the statistics from the recent industry study:
• While more than 80% of companies have a web/career presence, only 38% are using Social Hiring.
• Of those, only 11% have a well-planned and integrated process.
• 80% of large companies actually make it difficult for candidates to apply online, or fully leveraging digital tools in managing talent life cycle.


Many say, talent shortage is artificial, the talent managers have to open their own mind, to discover talent via the wise eyes, to well craft a robust and integrated talent strategy, to leverage the latest digital technologies, in order to hire and engage talent in the digital way.

Digitalization is like a flywheel, and Digital Masters are the one riding above it. Surf more Information about Digital Master:






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