……..What can be done to find more talent in a challenged, talent marketplace?

The first call to action/reaction in these situations is to bring in more suppliers to deliver the sort-after talent. Its not a bad strategy, but it is a short sighted one. Additional, new suppliers will in assence drive their recruiting engines at the same talent pool that existing suppliers are already focused on.  A few more fishing poles in the pond doesn’t necessarily guarantee a bigger catch of the day.

So what’s the answer?

You have the have the best fishing lure in the pond, and the ability and willingness to cast far and wide to other types of pools of talent in the locale.

The client examples mentioned above couldn’t be more different. The high cost of living in Silicon Valley coupled with a long recession saw local talent forced to relocate to more affordable areas of the state and country. As the demand of Silicon Valley companies for IT and Engineering talent started to uptick, the required talent supply to draw upon wasn’t available locally in the same numbers.  In North Carolina, locale played a part; so did the prospect of the call center moving from the area. Low pay wage and stringent background and credit checks were also responsible for shrinking the available talent pool greatly.

Talent challenges like these need to have companies and the staffing program partners employ creative strategies of attracting contingent talent in the same manner they would go to employ their full time staff. Flex time, virtual opportunities (technology enables us to grab some levels of talent from anywhere); drawing upon resources that have left the work force (retirees, full time mothers) or those looking for a way to enter it (college student interns, change of career professionals) and offering them even part time opportunities as a way to cast the lure into these new ponds of talent opportunity.

Developing a joint training program with a staffing partner, especially in the technical arena, can entice professionals looking to learn a newer, hot technology, while developing the resources needed by the client.

But sometimes the best lure is the green one with Benjamin Franklin’s face right in the middle. Occasionally pay rate increases are necessary in drawing talent; but other valuable enticements can be part of any program. Signing bonuses, completion bonuses, performance and attendance rewards in monetary or goods add to levels of attracting and retaining talent. Sometimes it’s just the question of how above and beyond a company will go in creative solutions that have you catching fish out of the pond all day long.

Any Six Sigma professional likely knows that the enemy of process quality is variation and the push in any quality initiative is to work to identify variation in a process that results in waste, errors, or bottlenecks. However, the aforementioned article highlights another perspective in that there are many processes—namely recruiting and sales—that have an inherent element of “art” that cannot be ignored. Executors of the recruiting process wrestle with an effort to maintain consistency while at the same time addressing the nuances that come with the art of recruiting.

In a previous blog posting (http://www.sourceright.com/blog/?p=71 ), I espoused the advantages of a truly experienced recruiter in the recruiting process. Lately, I’ve been questioning the efforts of so much of the recruiting industry to standardize, standardize, standardize. More and more RPO providers are working towards a shared services center model with a strong push towards a standardized, commoditized approach to recruiting. The has been done to, ensure compliance, improve economies of scale, implement repeatable best practices, with the end goal guaranteeing process consistency. For some RPO solutions, this approach may suit the client’s specific talent acquisition needs very well. Analyzing the recruiting process and the many components that directly impact it, there are two key areas that should work towards standardization:

• ATS – Commonality of technology ensures a one-stop shop for compliance auditing and requisition tracking

• Measurements – While the individual targets may vary based on position complexity, the metrics themselves (e.g. time-to-fill, diversity of candidate pool, recruiting cost efficiency, etc.) should be the same

But should the methods and tools utilized for the Vice President of Product Development requisition differ from that of the next Customer Service call center class? Naturally, the techniques and avenues a recruiter exploits recruiting for these two categories drastically diverge. Even the people (i.e. recruiters, candidates, and hiring managers) involved in each example likely differ greatly in expectations, experience, and earnestness. Furthermore, the current job environment might impact each hiring category in very different ways, in turn, transforming the way a recruiter might approach each hiring challenge.

Going even more granular, every requisition has inherent nuances that an experienced recruiter will recognize and adjust to accordingly. I’m not suggesting that the process should evolve with each requisition nuance, but the critical to quality goal in most requisitions, is a quality hire in the shortest amount of time possible. An experienced recruiter knows where the process boundaries truly exist to maintain consistency, compliance, and client satisfaction while at the same time achieving that end goal.

Dartmouth Tuck School of Business professors’ Joseph M. Hall and M. Eric Johnson, who authored the article mentioned above, recommend some practical approaches to this Art versus Science dilemma in a business process. They conclude that each has important value development roles in many business processes. They specifically describe the role of art as “allowing for flexibility, creativity, and dynamism that a purely scientific approach cannot replicate.”

Future leading edge RPO best practices and processes will incorporate the strengths of both recruiting art and science and be measured by the appropriate customer (art) and process (science) focused metrics to determine future solution quality levels and success.

This month the Ugliest Job in America would be expert level Security Engineers.

Why? Is it a market that is tapped as far as available talent/supply? No, actually, their is still quite a bit of contingent talent available and willing to go to work, even travel to smaller metropolitan areas to fulfill needs. But the need here is not for contingent talent, or at least only partially. Contract for Hire is what the client desires in a market filled with career independent contractors whose willingness to go full time is completely dependent on their willingness to give up the gravy train they make on a hourly basis and the freedom to move from project to project at will. In other words, this highly skilled and experienced talent is difficult to attract on a full time basis, especially in smaller markets that can’t offer the compensation levels they would be willing to accept.

What to do when stuck in this “rock and a hard place scenario”? The answer varies from client to client, but their has been a measureable level of success in bringing in the high level talent the way they prefer, contingent contract, for a length of time as a company simultaneously hires  more novice and intermediate talent on as contract for hire or directly full time. This lets the “contingent contract” experts impart their knowledge until all are satisfied that the new employees have gained the necessary skills and/or knowledge to perform the full time job. In this transition scenario, the career independent contractor has added value while giving them the ability to move onto the next comparatively lucrative project, while the client has potentially grown the full time talent resources they need.

Ugliest Job runners up this month:

1) Part time call center talent, for a location that is closing

2) Account Managers for Sales and Marketing 

3) User Experience Architects in a talent tapped marketplace

Hottest Job in America, July 2010

The hottest jobs in America all have something in common, they are Technical in nature, mainly IT related.

Project managers, Tech Writers, Software and Application developers are titles we continue to see a sustained and sometimes increased demand. The hottest jobs continue to be challenged in some markets, with bill rates still at recession levels while the contingent workforce in expecting pay increases. Our customers should be aware that though unemployment remain near 10% overall, white collar/knowledge worker unemployment in at 5 1/2% overall, and that it is leading to a supply squeeze in some areas. Clients willing to flex on their bill rates are grabbing the talent.

Hottest Job runners up this month:

1) All Light Industrial titles continue to see high demand

2) Recruiters

Data Source: An aggregation of SourceRight Solutions MSP client engagement activity

Definition: “Ugliest Job” category is defined as the most difficult to fill position with the “Hottest Job” category being positions with the highest demand.  A job position can be defined as both simultaneously.

“If we want to put a stop to the outsourcing of American jobs, then we need to provide incentives for American Companies to keep American jobs here,” Schumer was recently quoted in a recent AP article about the proposed transaction tax.

A lot of the buzz on this law is whether it is logical or not; how comprehensively it would be implemented; whether the intended effect of offshore call centers coming back onshore will actually occur or if the “fee” will just be passed on to consumers in the form of price increases. It seems opinion is divided across the political spectrum.

Regardless of one’s “red” or “blue” beliefs, this law may pass, or one similar down the road. Proactive planning needs to be considered with customers who offshore call/contact center/help desk business as to what action to take if/when a statute like this passes.

Clearly, there will be some increased level of staffing needed in the United States should this law pass; the labor arbitrage advantages and cost savings of off shoring will be diminished by the level of fee imposed and how companies have decided how to counter it. The effect may truly be the movement of offshore to onshore and recruitment and staffing efforts have to be prepare for that as quickly as a customer may want to flip that switch. Others have mentioned the use of a level 1 type contact center in the US, (live agent, internet chat or automation have all been mentioned) to resolve the call here first before they would move overseas to more skilled resources.

Dialogue is already happening within organizations that may be facing this call transaction fee. We have to make sure as a staffing provider and Managed Service Provider partner; we are part of those conversations and have solutions at the ready to what could be a fast changing landscape.

SourceRight, recently announced the launch of SourcingEdge, a proprietary candidate sourcing methodology that is designed to help talent acquisition outsourcing clients gain a competitive edge in identifying the best and brightest talent from active and passive candidate pools. The SourcingEdge Career Networking Hub provides clients with rich talent pools; gives candidate access to thousands of job opportunities; provides career resources to aid in career searches; among other advantages.

SourceRight has also launched SourceRight Advisor for talent acquisition programs, a workforce analytics and thought leadership solution that draws on the company’s experience, aggregate business information, knowledge and scale to help businesses develop better-informed strategies to optimize their services and workforce management spend.  SourceRight advisor will deliver specialized expertise and guidance including policy, compliance, change management, market intelligence and supplier relations.

The launch of SourcingEdge and SourceRight Advisor is the next phase of the company’s commitment to continuously revolutionizing recruitment strategies and services for today’s emerging workforce population.

Many times, a supplier in one common client may be found in multiple client accounts of MSP providers. Occasionally, a top performing supplier with the ability to provide the quality talent a customer needs may only be found in one client.  MSP Supplier participation lists at customer locations typically have been “built” by absorbing the current supplier base already on the ground at a client. Unfortunately though, you can get some great suppliers included in a new MSP solution, you can also get some not so good. You can, and often do, get the good, the bad and the ugly.

But what if a MSP provider already knows all about the bad and the ugly supplier characters out there in the marketplace?  Giving a new client the ability to avoid bad and ugly choices or changing those choices in a new MSP engagement? What if, through a stringent screening and qualification process, the supplier with the most competitive rates, the strongest ability in staffing capabilities and the best reach for a particular client geographic coverage areas walk in with the MSP provider?

A triangular benefit occurs: The MSP provider smoothly implementing a supplier program with companies familiar with its processes; suppliers gaining a new client to their portfolio they know they have the ability to support; and, a client that gets a seamless transition in supporting their contingent hiring!

Furthermore, a stronger and longer lasting partnership between MSP supplier and its supplier partners develops outside of just an individual client, with acknowledgement and reward tied together by a long-term partnership focused on the clients’ needs and requirements.  Leading Japanese business organizations have, for decades, managed successful long-term, high quality partnerships thru what is know as “keiretsu”.  Maybe a little of this long-term partnership philosophy needs to be the standard operating practice delivered by solutions in the MSP industry today.  And clients need to more deeply evaluate the “keiretsu” depth of the MSP’s supplier partnerships.

Think Big Picture…..The MSP solution is only as good as the partnership management capability of your MSP provider and the caliber of suppliers willing to do business with them, long-term.

What may be a more telling result from this industry satisfaction research however is the NPS satisfaction opinion of the staffing suppliers who participate and support MSP engagements. For any participating supplier, there is certainly an advantage of having access to a known volume of customer spend with managed competition. This is true regardless of the MSP models/engagements, though admittedly, some models can provided more attractive returns than others for a supplier.

For sure, the surveyed buyers will definitely be focusing on the overall quality of their MSP program/engagement, which would include supplier delivery performance to predefined service level agreements and other metrics. But when a supplier is rating the quality of a MSP engagement, what might be the business perspective of their opinion?

Opportunity. Fair Access. Participation Levels. Efficient, Managable Process. Profitability. And, equally important, a Collaborative Partnership.  An MSP program cannot succeed without the strength of some “highly satisfied” supplier partnerships that support a mutual MSP customer. Suppliers may be similar in staffing service offerings, but every organization is unique in its history, experience, capability, business operations and point of view. MSPs need to engage their staffing supplier community beyond the required SLAs and KPIs. Ideas for process and program refinement, improvement and optimization come from open lines of communication and a shared, common interest to provide the highest levels of quality services to exceed a client’s staffing needs and requirements.

So look for SIA’s announcement of their 2010 VMS MSP Buyer Satisfaction Survey results in the next month or so, but carefully review the accompanying Staffing Supplier satisfaction results to get the complete picture of industry leading MSP program/engagement performance.

A vast amount of research indicates that the American workforce has changed resulting in a rise of independent, career-minded workers which is driving significant implications for the U.S. employer.  SFN Group’s Emerging Workforce Study took an in-depth look at employee motivations, expectations and their viewpoints on success and failure, and further explored the divergent aspects of the “emergent”, independent workforce compared to the traditional “job-security focused” worker.  This research has consistently found a growing segment of “emergent” independent workers who seek a new and different employment compact. (Info link: http://spherion.mediaroom.com/pressroom/index.php?s=41)

Concurrently, it’s no secret that we can’t keep all of our employees forever so the opportunity then becomes how we maintain a long-term affiliation with them.  Staying connected to former employees is a low cost, high value opportunity for a variety of reasons including:

• Reengagement potential of known and proven alumni talent
• Maintaining a competitive edge by tapping into flexible working arrangements for full time and/or “project” based needs and requirements
• Direct “disintermediation” reduction in talent acquisition sourcing costs and time to a productive engagement
• Further cost reductions with on-boarding, job-training, production start-up and other general assimilation costs when engaging alumni workers
• Reduction in disengagement, off-boarding expenses
• Tapping into and leveraging the alumni’s referral network
• Corporate ambassadorship (spreading the goodwill, maintaining the corporate image/reputation)  

Alumni Resource Centers are a great way to optimize your relationship with your alumni talent. The deployment of a company branded Alumni Resource Center portal allows your SourceRight staffing service recruiters to mine a proven talent pool of high quality engaged “boomerangs” (returning alumni talent). The result is faster time to fill/hiring periods of high quality, proven, known talent with cost effective talent acquisition and engagement.

Incidentally, Alumni Portal/Resource Centers are being established by many business organizations with the outsourcing of the entire deployment and management of the Alumni Resource Center program…..from managing the program’s content relevance and the building of the talent pool, to managing job postings and matching the candidates to the actual jobs/projects, etc… This allows the organization to focus on running their own business with the right talent at the right time for the right costs.

This trend has emerged because of clients’ cost control needs and requirements; which allows access to higher dollar talent over a shorter period of time, primarily focusing on critical projects with priority budget allocations. Since most contingent talent is still presently in great supply, it’s working. This short term contract engagement strategy provides important financial management flexibility to support any uneven economic business cycles in the near-term.

But as the market continues to turn and more budgets constraints are relaxed, demand will start to dictate whether this strategy remains a viable option. When the business environment turns more active/competitive, those organizations with longer term projects will always be able to capture more of the supply of available, high quality, talent.

Other important emerging trends:

• Social Media boom in the workplace, driven primarily by business organizations, is producing lots of project work for content and design development.
• Small/local staffing companies are aggressively vying to partner with big MSP players, who are becoming strategic “Channel Masters” of significant volumes of spend in the staffing industry
• Increases in industrial spend (SFN Group has seen a 26% increase recently in this space)
• H1-B restriction for companies who received TARP funds spurring growth in outsourcing suppliers

Application Developers in the state of California.

California employers are being forced to confront an interesting workforce anomaly when trying to hire application development talent contingently:  Unemployment pay is a better deal.  Pay rates have dropped everywhere in response to the recent recession. They have not yet trended upwards; Hence, unemployed application development talent in the state are not being lured back to work. The current contingent pay is lower, the contract lengths are shorter, and they would have to give up their unemployment pay and benefits….not an attractive deal for application development talent.

Runner-ups this month:

• Welders
• Material handlers
• Producers/Animation Motion Graphic Artists
• Websphere Portal Architects

Hottest Jobs in America, June 2010

Contingent worker titles with the highest demand, based on employer feedback.

• Engineering Designer and Drafters
• Buyers in Procurement departments
• Credit and Collections talent
• Recruiters
• Senior JAVA Developers

Full time worker titles, based on job postings from Wanted.com

• RNs
• Retail Sales Managers/Supervisors
• Retail Salespersons
• Systems Analyst (IT)
• Customer Service Representative

Data Source: An aggregation of SourceRight Solutions MSP client engagement activity

Definition: “Ugliest Job” category is defined as the most difficult to fill position with the “Hottest Jobs” category being positions with the highest demand.  A job position can be defined as both simultaneously.