Where Is the Available, Skilled Talent?
The 2012 Manpower Talent Shortage Survey states that 49% of U.S. employers are experiencing difficulty filling mission-critical positions within their organizations. Why? A lack of available candidates with the right technical expertise and employability skills continues to elude employers. More specifically, the top reason employers say they can’t fill roles is simply an overall lack of applicants; the second is the candidate-based factor that applicants lack the technical competencies, or hard skills, required for the role.
Employers are attempting to overcome these challenges by employing strategies that are new to them or haven’t had to be as heavily relied on as they are now. The top three solutions, according to McKinsey Global Institute, are providing additional training and development to current staff to fill vacancies, appointing high potentials to the roles that currently don’t have the skills, and shifting focus on retention to keep current talent in the roles that would be hard to fill.
The 2013 HCI Strategic Talent Acquisition conference focuses on three major areas. “Upgrade your recruiting arsenal” is all about how TA can and should use what they currently have but do so in a way that will be cutting edge or at the very least, competitively. For instance, when 88% of job seekers are or would search for jobs via mobile internet, why do only 10% of employers have a mobile site? Another area, “next level sourcing” will host sessions about buy, borrow, and build strategies. Sessions will talk about how to partner with OD to build talent, sourcing internally, taking a holistic view of the workforce and determining how to include contingent labor, and more. The third area, “TA driven analytics and function design” is very exciting. Most TA professionals are asking how to build the optimum team structure, what analytics they can employ to aid in candidate insight, retention, and how to be involved in workforce planning. A variety of sessions will address all of these challenges.
Presenters from Walmart, AECOM, NPR, Amazon, Boston Scientific Corp, CareerBuilder, Oracle, and many more are being added every day. Steven Van Aperen, the human lie detector, will share how to make sure candidates are being truthful during the interview process and how to gauge if they are a good fit by reading their body language and other tell tale signs. Dr. John Sullivan will give insight into bold recruiting practices that every organization should be doing to stay competitive in his electrifying keynote session. If you can’t make it in person to the event, never fear – All keynotes and one tracked room in it’s entirety will be streamed live from Boston Park Plaza! If you would like to join us (of course you do!) sign up early, this event is historically a sell out, so don’t wait and secure your spot!
As always, if you would like to drop a line and let me know what your challenges are in the way of talent acquisition, or if you have a dream speaker idea you would like to share, please send me a message!