TALENT IN THE POST-COVID AGE

Part I: The Skills Pivot

Over the past 2+ years, I’ve been in touch with Talent Acquisition and RPO leaders from many industries. We’ve all weathered a lot of change. Now it’s time to figure out which of these shifts will subside along with the pandemic, and which will become permanent.

The two most significant changes I’ve seen are in the areas of skills and hybrid working, with compensation not far behind. I’ll talk about the latter two in upcoming blogs. Today, let’s focus on skills.

In most industries, the current skills shortage is likely a temporary after-effect of the pandemic. When the economy shut down in 2020, workers were furloughed en masse. Now we find ourselves on the other side of the hill, trying to staff up again in double time. Eventually, this will resolve itself.

?The outliers

Healthcare was an interesting exception. While others were closing their doors, the healthcare sector was in a mad scramble to source and onboard more talent – not just in skilled caregiver roles, but extra janitorial and front desk staff as well. Conventional recruiting activities like job fairs and in-person interviews were suddenly out of the question, and innovative workarounds such as virtual hiring events and video interviews took their place.

We helped a large healthcare company to integrate multiple innovative tools — like candidate self-scheduling, Modern Hire OnDemand text screens, and Video Voicemails — that took tasks off the recruiters’ to-do lists and gave them more bandwidth to accommodate the large spikes in volume. Remarkably, whilst dealing with unprecedented demand, they achieved the following:

·????????Time to fill dropped by 8 days

·????????Time to screen was cut by 50%

·????????Time to interview dropped an amazing 67%

Going forward, these highly effective new tactics will likely become our go-to solutions.

Today, as many sectors make the hard pivot from layoffs to rapid rehiring, one other skill set is in short supply: recruiters. Never have RPO providers like IBM, as well as our clients, had to deploy so many escalated sourcing tactics to meet our own hiring targets. Even before the pandemic, RPO was a growing industry; the many new opportunities now available will likely continue well into the future.

?What we didn’t see coming

But the most unusual and unexpected fallout of the pandemic is the so-called Great Resignation. On top of the already high turnover rates that began in 2020, a big chunk of the global workforce is voluntarily leaving one job to seek another. One study from the IBM Institute for Business Value found that 27% of employees – that’s right, more than one in four – planned to change jobs during 2021.

Everywhere there are waves of people looking for jobs, and huge numbers of companies are looking to hire them. Unfortunately, in many cases, the two don’t match up very well. Many departing workers are seeking entirely different careers, not just new jobs. In restaurants and other hospitality businesses, many of the most experienced career staff are calling it quits, determined not to be caught in another industry-wide shut down. Their replacements rarely have comparable experience and skill (if you’ve been to a favorite restaurant lately, perhaps you’ve noticed).

In technology and other professional roles, a different kind of skills gap has emerged. Newcomers to these fields may need time to earn a specific certification or degree before they’re qualified for most openings. Likewise, their predecessors will need time to retrain before shift to new careers.

Just how big a problem will this be? Very. Korn Ferry estimates that more than 85 million jobs could go unfilled globally by 2030 due to a lack of skilled talent – resulting in as much as $8.5 trillion in unrealized revenues. In the U.S. tech sector alone, the talent shortage could lead to $162 billion in lost revenues each year.

When finding talent gets tougher, it’s more important than ever to retain the good people you already have in your workforce. As employers, and especially as RPO professionals, we’re witnessing a sea change. It’s not about filling roles anymore; it’s about offering more opportunity and taking good care of current employees and active candidates.

There are many ways to do this, and of necessity, we are discovering more all the time. Creating greater internal mobility will be important. We’ll need to stay flexible about hybrid work environments. And of course, salaries and other forms of compensation will likely keep getting more competitive. But that’s a topic for another blog …

?If you’d like to hear more about TA and RPO strategy in the post-pandemic hiring crush, watch for Part II of this series. You can also read all seven topics at once by downloading our white paper, "Talent Acquisition: Finding Balance on Shifting Ground.”