The (Tech) Talent Scarcity Paradox

You may have heard these days that in tech Companies, the offer dropout ratios are increasing steeply, there are many no shows and mostly every other person is holding 2-3 offers and is either negotiating with a prospective employer or bargaining with their existing employer.

The mandate given to hiring managers: Hire or Retain at any cost !

What's my biggest worry with the current scramble from Companies to hire/retain Tech talent at any cost?

It's not that how Companies will find talent from the limited scarce pool. Yes is challenging in short term, but as a nation, in the past we as a combined ecosystem of industry, institutions and people, have always risen up to support the industry demand be it in:

• 1985-95: MBAs and electronics & instrumentation engineers
• 1995-2005: IT or SAP professionals
• 2000-2010: Knowledge workers for the sunshine industry of BPOs/KPOs/ITeS/Financials Services
• 2010-2020: Tech Talent largely Full Stack or Mobile Developers, Data Scientists

The only problem that had been persisting is that we have been always reactive in approach instead of being proactive, but our demographic advantage always helped us bridge that gap. And this time is no different – though it always feels so while you are in it.

So, what's the problem?

While in my view the issue of talent scarcity is not so critical as it seems (you may disagree), but the below points are:

1. We are building a pipeline of inexperienced first level Managers who are highly insecure, feel intimidated by their teams and whose focus is largely on the next hop rather than building camaraderie.
2. Focus on acquiring talent at any cost has led to unreasonable expectations.
3. Behaviors that once were a strict No in organisations are being termed as acceptable.
4. Managing people is less about why he/she is staying with us but more about why he will leave us. People are making hay by putting a gun to the head to their managers and bargaining in return. The relationship has little rational base but usually gravitates more towards transactional value.

Are we repeating history- a bubble in the making?

Those who started their careers in the late 90s or early 2000s, will remember that how people with few years of relevant experience were hired in key leadership roles by MNCs (largely Captives, GICs). To set up the shop it was important for them to man those key positions and they had to force fit people in those roles... It created an entire layer of inefficient leadership pipeline, insecure Managers who were scared of focusing on developing their teams, and most importantly mid-level management which either plateaued or became a bottleneck for those organisations. Of course, there were quite many who also took this as a challenge and developed themselves to become into great business leaders. So, there are no generalizations here.

Therefore, whenever such a short term business need drives unsustainable outcomes, you end up creating a bubble. This time, a bubble of incapable mid level managers and fragile leadership pipeline, that although may take years to burst, but when it does it hurts more than in the first place.

What should be the focus on:?

1. Be reasonable in what you are ready to part with to acquire a specific talent.
2. Think twice what kind of cultural impact it’s going to have on your organisation.
3. Stop operating in silos. Somewhere industry needs to come together to define what is acceptable and what is not.?Stop promoting the inappropriate behaviours. If demand and supply drives talent outcomes, then remember the theory for equity markets- What goes up, will also come down (and more steeply).
4. Build a strong mentoring mechanism to let people know that what makes logical sense in the long term
5. Take steps to do your bit in building talent pipeline proactively for future. Remember how Infosys created the backbone of IT industry by state-of-the-art development facilities in Mysore... The entire industry reaped benefits of that not just Infosys.
6. Do not give people roles they are not ready for the sake of retaining, optics and showing them a careers progression. It hurts more than it solves for.

Always remember- You can always develop technical and analytical skills through interventions in short time frames, but managerial capability, emotional intelligence, resilience, the art of mentoring and coaching and most importantly maturity in approach- takes years of experience to build. There are no short crash courses for them.

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Think before you act!

#TheTotalRewardsFellow