General manager of Anchorage-based NMS Employee Leasing, Scanlon spoke at the Anchorage Chamber of Commerce’s “Make it Monday” lunch forum on November 27.
She said, “Business today is transacted in an information-driven, global economy where human capital is the most critical factor to achieving corporate goals, surpassing the importance of capital management, quality control, and re-engineering.”
And finding “real talent” is what seems to be the main problem.
According to Scanlon, “talent is clearly seen as the source for competitive advantage among executives,” as “CEOs rank finding and retaining talent the number one obstacle to growth. Many corporate officers say their organizations are chronically talent-short, and global executives ranked the shrinking pool of skilled talent among their top five concerns.”
Why so difficult?
Companies are dealing with three major setbacks in the war for human resources — the shrinking supply of labor, the explosion of candidates’ use of the Internet and the emergence of web technologies and tools for human resource management.
Scanlon said U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics highlight dangerous trends such as the voluntary quit rate among U.S. employees, which has reached a 10-year high.
There’s also the issue of increased mobility, allowing workers to switch jobs an average of 10 times in a 40-year career versus twice in a lifetime for the baby boomer generation that’s currently reaching retirement age. And to top it off, she said, demand is drastically outstripping supply; with projected growth in the U.S. labor force reaching a mere 11 percent while the demand grows at 21 percent.
Scanlon challenged employers to not forget the first pipeline project in Alaska, or Milne Point when it came online; “We will see a shortage of skilled workers for in-town jobs, and wages will go up. Has your HR department and senior management made a contingency plan for finding and maintaining skilled workers when the gas pipeline becomes a reality?”
And despite the many benefits of Web-based recruiting, new technologies have also led to new challenges according to recent research, Scanlon said. Problems include managing multiple job postings, screening large quantities of resumes, managing back-end workflow related to staffing, and dealing with candidates who find the Web impersonal and still feel they can present a more accurate picture of themselves person-to-person. The process is still imperfect, and it’s likely some qualified workers are being lost in the shuffle, research indicates.
Scanlon recommends “doing a needs assessment within your company before doing any outsourcing recruiting,” which often includes “updating job descriptions, so the recruiter understands exactly what you need in a candidate and what skills you’re looking for,” and “partnering with a reliable staffing agency.”
As an executive or human resource manager, to make the most of your time, money, and to acquire real talent, Scanlon said it’s important to ask your recruiting agency the questions that matter most for the positions being filled. Specifics refer to drug testing, reference checks, physical assessments, agency mark-ups, whether candidates are supplied for short-term, long-term, or permanent positions, who provides employee benefits and does payroll, and what steps are taken when a candidate doesn’t work out.
According to Scanlon, “recruiting agencies are in the business to recruit — that’s what they do, so why not leave the recruiting to the experts?”
If it sounds too good to be true or not worth the extra step, consider the fact that recruiters and job placement agencies say they’ve been dealing with workforce shortages for years, and have had to fine tune the process to continually meet industry needs.
