Dear Liz,
How are we supposed to reconcile the fact that employers constantly whine about "talent shortages" while there are talented and experienced people out of work, and desperate to find employment?
Thanks,
Jeremiah
Dear Jeremiah,
The standard HR answer to your question is "Those people with experience and talents who are looking for work don't have the exact combinations of skills we need in our company."
This is a terrible answer, of course, because the definition of leadership is to overcome problems in the real world.
If the real world doesn't produce the number of candidates with the exact skills you think you need, then it is your obligation as a leader to figure out a solution -- either by training new hires in the skills you think they need, or changing the way your business works such that those skills won't be as essential anymore.
Many leaders can't rise to that challenge. It is so much easier, after all, to complain about "talent shortages" than to hire smart people and train them in the parts of the job they don't already know.
If you read job ads you see countless examples of laziness on the part of employers. Job ads say, "We need someone who can hit the ground running!" and "Candidates must possess six years of experience in the following tools..."
These are examples of bad recruiting and bad leadership. I still have the tiny job ad I cut out of the (physical) Chicago Tribune around 1989 because I wanted to keep it. It was incredibly stupid and also completely typical of job ads then and now. My yellowing cut-out job ad says "Administrative Assistant. Must be proficient in WordPerfect 5.0."
I cut out the ad because I couldn't believe anybody would be foolish enough to think that a smart person who learned some other word processing program or some other version of WordPerfect wouldn't easily be able to learn a new version.
As the Facebook memes say, that's a special brand of stupid -- but that same brand of stupid is still all around us in the hiring arena!
It takes time and/or costs money to train employees, but it also takes time and costs money to recruit and recruit and wait in vain for the perfect applicant to come along. I tell CEOs that if a job opening anywhere in their organization remains open sixty days after it is posted, then unless there is a candidate already identified and offer on the way or outstanding the job opening should be killed.
It doesn't sixty days to advertise a job opening, review resumes, interview candidates and hire someone. If it's not a priority to the manager who says they need more help, then maybe they don't help as badly as they thought they did.
If a manager can't spec a job such that qualified candidates currently living in the company's recruiting zone are not applying for it, then there is something wrong with the spec -- not the people!
HR people need to find their backbones and tell hiring managers when their job requisitions are based on fantasy. I would not have been successful as an HR person if I hadn't figured out how to tell a hiring manager when half their goofy Essential Job Requirements had to go.
As a job seeker on the other side of this issue, my advice is to apply for jobs that you aren't qualified for on paper. Apply for them anyway. Don't apply through the company's Black Hole recruiting portal -- use this method, instead.
All the best to you -
Liz
