On Open Letter to CEOs on Why Jobs are Going Unfilled

Dear CEO,

I can honestly say I don't get you. How can you sit on the sidelines, week after week, while your team members play Whack a Mole? Foosball I get, since you've brought those tables into your organization. But Whack a Mole? That's what appears to be going on in your organization, as your HR team tries to plug all the hiring holes that keep popping up due to growth or employee turnover.

As of this writing, the three most difficult positions to fill (in no particular order) are IT, sales and finance/accounting positions. So last week, I decided to try an experiment. I posted a plea for help, on behalf of my 19-year old son, who is seeking a summer internship in IT. I know every parent thinks their kid is special, but in my case I do have a reason to brag. He's a 3.8 Computer Science major at a top university, who has participated in a number of Hackathons, where his team took first place in several categories. There were 800 participants. He's also spent two summers teaching programming skills at an IT camp.

He's not a rising senior, which is what most organizations are seeking when hiring interns. He's a rising sophomore, which gives you way more time to train him to fill your future hiring needs.

Do you want to take a guess how many people reached out to me (and I have over 18,000 LinkedIn followers)?

Only one person responded. She said she'd like to connect with my son for future opportunities, as all 25 of her summer internships are filled. I'm not surprised she was able to fill these internships, as she is doing what your people are not. She is always looking to the future and is filling her pipeline, knowing there will come a day when she'll need to make additional hires.

Then there were those of you who were recently featured in a WSJ article on the difficulties of finding talent. You talked about how your companies are hurting because you can't fill jobs and how this was impacting your ability to grow your businesses. Your time would have been better spent looking inside your organization. If you did, then perhaps you would have noticed that there is no mention of job openings on your website nor is there even a place to apply for future consideration. How do you explain that?

So I ask you, what are your people doing to fill your company's pipeline? And more importantly, what are you doing as well? When's the last time you looked at your talent strategy? Or do you even have a talent strategy?

The U.S. government released today's unemployment numbers. If you haven't seen them, unemployment has dropped to 3.9%, which is the lowest it's been since 2000. It's even lower in some cities. Let's be honest here. We are at full employment.

If your customer based dropped to record levels, would you still be operating as if business is as usual? Of course not!

So here's my offer to you. I'll set aside 30 minutes to speak with any CEO who is ready to take action. I'll do this with my compliments. I guarantee you will take away at least three ideas you can immediately implement to compete in today's competitive labor market. Reach out to me at [email protected] and we'll schedule a date to speak next week.

Sincerely yours,

Roberta Matuson

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