Was at a great program last week about the "War for Talent" ... the same day the March unemployment figures came out and the US lost about 80,000 jobs in March, to run the total job loses this year to 230,000 and the unemployment to go to 5.1%. Wow. We're in the crapper.
BUT there are thousands and thousands (OCTANe knows of over 400) high paying, high innovation jobs that go unfulfilled and Biomedical, IT and Clean Tech companies are yearning and competing for talent. What gives?
Simple. Convert mortgage workers to scientists and technology workers. Run a credit report? Just like running an FDA study. Explain an ARM mortgage? Just like writing XML code. No down payment needed with interest rate resets at will? Just like venture capital. Oh if life were that easy...but I digress.
Are we positioning our workforce to be aligned with our future competitive growth industries?
Is there such a thing as an "un-trainable worker"?
How come millions of kids now don't like engineering and "the hard stuff" for careers?
Which brings us to good old supply and demand. We are demanding more innovative talent; just need the supply to catch up. The "War for talent" is now everywhere, from local to regional to global; now only if we can go PC and change the phrase to "quest for talent". Maybe this would help us find more good people.
3 comments:
What do you expect Gary? Most of the start ups want people to hit the ground running. No time to learn, train or practice. All those VC driven companies never wanted to spend time and money to train or raise new talent. After all, those VC people wanted performance. Only a very few large players have done a good job of raising new talent. I think that they want their cake and eat it too! Unfortunately, studying engineering takes determination and persistence. (Why bother if you can make money on Ebay or the net.) The few times I have trained and mentored technicians to become successfull degreed engineers, I often was critized that it took too much time. If the VC's would have a little more patience and let the old gard raise up new and young talent, we wouldn't be in such a pinch now.
Well said!
And, as we're converting workers, remember healthcare is a HUGE growth industry. More and more colleges are offering "accelerated" programs to covert anyone with a bachelor's degree to a bachelor's prepared Registered Nurse in about 18 months. Talk about job security, great pay and benefits. RNs are it!
Post a Comment