Recruitment
Industry Trends
Impending Crisis Too Many Jobs- Too Few People by
Roger Herman,
Tom Olivo and Joyce Gioia - 2005 Book Review by Cindy Hazen
By the year 2010, there will be a labor shortage of 10,033,000
workers for open jobs. That’s over 10 MILLION unfilled
jobs. These projections from the Bureau of Labor Statistics
don’t even take into account the growing skills gap in
the workforce today and into the future.
These startling statistics prompted authors Roger Herman,
Tom Olivo and Joyce Gioia to create a strategic plan for companies
in the book Impending Crisis. Why this is happening, the implications
to you and what YOU as a business owner can do to counter this
costly trend are well-outlined in the book.
WHY will there be a worker shortage? Simply, the Baby Boomers
are aging out. Losing these Baby Boomers in the workplace will
create a major chasm between what is needed to keep companies
producing and what is actually available for those tasks. Additionally,
the following group known as Generation X is 15% smaller than
the Boomers.
What are the implications to YOU? First, the business owner
has a smaller pool to pull from which narrows the field before
any other considerations. Worse, many of the people who are
available are not qualified to perform the duties required
by those jobs now, let alone what those jobs will become in
the future. From the author Most executives sense that employee
turnover is expensive but few comprehend the risk to their
bottom line. Complicating the corporate predicament, especially
for publicly traded companies, is the emerging inclination
by financial analysts to pay more attention to workforce capability
and stability. Uncomfortably high employee turnover can cause
bond ratings to drop and stick prices to tumble, threatening
capitalization. The other implication is the workers you currently
have. Workers are no longer loyal to the companies that employ
them. They are loyal to their supervisors, co-workers, customers,
etc. If they are not happy, they leave. People believe that
work should be fun and meaningful and intrinsically rewarding
to them. Executives need to better understand this paradigm
shift and address it.
So how do you counter this bleak outlook? The authors outline
four main areas: * The leadership practices * Change the way
you function * Human Resources role * Strategic Workforce Planning
1) Leadership practices: The senior leadership team sets the
tone and pace of the organization. They must clearly share
the values of the company with all employees, create a long-term
vision, promote accountability with all and continual learning
for all employees.
Some successful leadership practices recommended in the book
are:
* Coaching and mentoring- coaching is developing people on
purpose
* Feedback- measured feedback combines the competency/process
of compiling the information with the creating of actionable
knowledge that can be used for meaningful change
* Communication- If you want high productivity, company leadership
must be open, honest and confident with information sharing
and communication.
* Flexibility and Collaboration- Flexible practices including
telecommuting, flextime, and job sharing reflect a high-trust
environment where leadership is respected and higher results
are achieved
* Psychic ownership- Engaging employees to the degree they
possess psychic ownership which is a sense of being highly
accountable and a tendency to think and act like business owners.
2) Change the way you function: Change is necessary. If you
do not change, you become stagnant. Do you have open communication?
Do you hire warm bodies’ instead of finding the right
people? Are you tolerating employees who don’t get the
job done or have lousy attitudes? Is your technology up to
speed? Now is the time to closely examine your business model
and escort your team members through the strategic changes.
3) Human Resources: A Strategic Investment. Senior Human Resource
officers should be active participants in sculpting the organization’s
strategy. Their compensation and influence should be on par
with other senior executives. They are responsible for your
most valuable-and most volatile- resource in your company-
the human resource.
4) Strategic Workforce Planning; Positioning yourself as an
Employer of Choice will be critical to your success. Hire the
right people-The cost of hiring one poor employee is far greater
than the cost of having an effective selection process. Once
you have the talent on board, don’t lose them! Considering
carefully the people you decide to keep, create education,
training and development plans to strengthen their current
capacity and prepare them for future responsibility. Impending
Crisis is an excellent blueprint for you to prepare NOW so
that your company has the corporate culture that both attracts
and retains the best talent available !
Cindy Houston Hazen is an executive recruiter and hiring consultant
with Sales Executives who specializes in placing the Top 10%
sales professionals with her national clients.
Working Abroad
Sept. 21, 2006
RECRUITERS' INTERVIEW SECRETS & FAUX PAS
Kennedy's Executive
Recruiter News reports that speaking too much is the most common
interview mistake that job candidates make, according to 36%
of recruiters responding to Korn/Ferry International's Executive
Recruiter Index survey. Furthermore, six in ten (62%) recruiters
concur that a candidate should take less than a week to accept
or decline a formal job offer, with 29% claiming that the appropriate
amount of time should be even shorter. In addition, the survey
also addresses regional differences as they relate to job tenure.
Recruiters agree that in Europe, the Middle East and Africa
(EMEA), as well as North America, the minimum acceptable amount
of time to remain with one employer is two years. Yet in Asia
Pacific and South America, one year is the minimum amount due
to the rapid pace of growth and hiring in these emerging regions.
In addition, bad cultural fit is considered the main reason
for executives leaving companies after short periods of employment
in both Asia Pacific and South America. Finally, recruiters
worldwide overwhelmingly agree (87%) that executives should
disclose that they worked somewhere for a short amount of time,
rather than omit the position from their CV/resume. |
