Similar headlines are popping up every day: there are great jobs going unfilled because of the “talent shortage.” As the economy moves forward, these “shortages” are going to continue to increase in frequency and severity.
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Many firms will offer to help leaders solve this issue, with most dusting off the toolkit used prior to the 2008 recession. These toolkits typically include things such as traditional training and retention programs, workplace attractiveness, and empowerment and leadership development programs – which are all good things, but with a long fuse. By the time they take hold in the market, the opportunity for your firm to launch may have passed by.
I want to take a different view: that of a strategist who offers some non-standard methods to meet your talent needs as you allow the longer duration approaches above to become effective.
#1. Make a movie. The first path to beating the talent shortage is to take advantage of two key trends. The first trend is designing your innovation programs using tools like the Growth Zone and the business model canvas to carefully design and de risk your innovation efforts. This process will allow you to efficiently use the talent you do have prior to making the full-scale commitment to implementation.
Which brings us to the second trend: the influx of qualified individuals who have set up specialty consulting firms since 2008. When you do choose to scale up and launch a product or service, you’ll want to think like a movie maker. These professionals don’t go off and hire a huge number of full-time employees. Instead, they start with a trusted core of key staff members, and then go out and hire specialists to fulfill tightly defined, specific assignments.
#2. Leverage mentorship. I once had to rebuild an entire design function at a Fortune 500 firm after a drop in contract made it necessary for us to hire 20 talented designers. The issue was that we hadn’t developed our bench strength ahead of time and it usually took 36 months for a fresh grad to become skillful enough to do the work.
Our solution was born of necessity: I had the managerial skills to bring the talent along, and we had an awesome senior subject matter expert who was a very skilled mentor. Together, we went to one of the major universities in the field and hired their whole graduating class. By accelerating the learning curve and taking the time to look for great talent, we were able to deliver the entire design load.
#3. Hire from the last “hot job wave.” It turns out that universities are very poor predictors of skill sets and typically crank out graduates based on pretty sketchy forecasts. Since good liberal arts graduates can be redeployed remarkably quickly, you can use this trend to your advantage by looking for talent in non-standard pools. For example, I have had good success finding leaders among the legions of teaching graduates that universities developed in anticipation of the boomer retirements that didn’t happen.
#4. Do active pre-work. Having a good bench of great talent requires much deeper investment than traditional intern programs: you need to get out, look for talent pools and get to know these individuals as people. For example, it turns out that many STEM candidates are very good musicians, as well. Have you thought about talking with your local band director? There are also maker groups springing up in all the major metro areas – be creative and develop relationships.
#5. Find the raw talent. If you do need full-time talent, you are going to have to be more creative and willing to think outside the box. Entrepreneurs are going to need to be chief talent officers more than ever, and that means looking for talent where others aren’t. It may mean looking for grad students in the sciences and hiring them based on the promise of challenging work and your charisma. The key here is to hire for aptitude and a demonstrated motivation to do the core work. Remember, Steve Jobs took calligraphy.
I would love to hear how you are weathering the talent tsunami. Please send me a tweet @scottpropp or drop me an email.
If you’re looking to accelerate innovation using your existing resources, I invite you to take advantage of my offer for a complimentary 20-minute coaching call. No hard sell, we’ll roll up our sleeves and get right to it.
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