War on Talent

Recruiting the right talent is always a challent but now more than ever!

Winning the war on the pandemic has made talent reluctant to move due to the status of the economy and the worry that moving would risk their security and redundancy rights etc. 

Companies are looking for more and more talent on a temporary and permaennt basis but are struggling for these reasons: 

1. Too many talented people are reluctant to move even for exciting new ventures.
2. Their is a significant amount of candidates available with 100s applying for the same position. 
3. Companies are tending to look to borrow talent and move it around the business instead of buying it in.  Although this is a very good principle it also misses on actual talent being bought in to build and improve a company's performance and futre.
4. Companies are looking for the lowest level of detail to sift through candidates. Examples include that applicants must have a certificate in project management to apply ruling out candidates that have delivered large scale multi modal programmes but don't have a certificate. 
5. Recruiters are sticking with tried and tested advertising instead of knowing their talent pipeline and finding the right candidates. 
6. Due to the economic pressures in society at the moment companies are less willing to recruit permanently and looking for low level temporary skills that can be brought in and released early.
7. Consultants have suffered through the pandemic and therefore not willing to give as much as before as rates have significnatly reduced. Some are opting for typical 9 to 5 roles with an average salary instead. 

What can you do about this? Here are some tips: 

1. Be really clear about your operation and what talent you need and for how long. 
2. Use your HR teams to properly plan your talent need for the next 2 to 3 years and also the talent gap you currently have. Succession planning is often a useful process but it is rarely useful at a senior level. 
3. Work with your recruiting partners to be clear on the types of talent you are looking for and give them certainty in recruiting.
4. Improve internal learning and development opportunities and sell these opportunities for candidates too. Not everyone is purely thinking about the money!
5. Assess what good looks like through psychometric assessments of your internal talent to help you identify candidates easier. 
6. Look at your Equality, Diversity and Incusion policies and scrap them and replace them with integrated policies throughout your employment lifecycle. No more time for policy making... now time for action. 
7. Think like a competitor wanting to take over your business. What would they think about your company performance and what you really need to do with your operation and your organisation?
8. Reputation of your company really makes a difference. Have a real look at how you manage staff, customers and suppliers and think ... are we really a good company for people to join? 

Some of this is really simple stuff but to do it well takes a significant amount of effort and continual development. If you put the right level of support into this then it will ultimately improve your business too.