The next generation of talent acquisition and development: What will it look like after this recession?

Today’s economic challenges are affecting employment across the globe and across industries.
RSM McGladrey
2009/01/13
Yet, the different attitudes today’s workforce have about their careers and their lives – and their ability to access and share information with unprecedented speed and depth will affect all organizations’ ability to retain, recruit, deploy, and develop their top performing talent in the future.
The number one question: Are we truly a match?
Traditional job search methods such as job boards are obsolete, offering both prospective employees and employers ‘matches’ based on ‘keyword’ searches. These sites offer limited functionality and therefore, very little value-add for the time and effort spent there. As a result, both hiring managers/recruiters and the prospects they seek are now using alternative means to find each other and, more importantly, to do their due diligence to ensure that they are seeking a ‘career match’ that truly aligns the organization’s current hiring need with the individual’s long-term career and life strategies.
With the advancement and mass adoption of Web 2.0 technology, the timeliness and ability to exchange knowledge and information is ever expanding. As a result, individuals and organizations alike are beginning to rely more on knowledge-based ‘recommendations,’ rather than assuming that the traditional job posting and interview process provides sufficient information to drive career decisions. Generation Y and the Millennials are driving this trend. They are multimedia whizzes who can produce and access information more easily than their older counterparts. In fact, according to recent studies, most of them communicate via text-messaging, and a majority of them prefer text and instant-messaging over e-mail. The ways that they communicate with others are inspiring new online ways for potential employers to connect with them as well. Today, both employers and potential job seekers can access a tremendous amount of information via blogging and social media as they execute their hiring and individual career strategies to help ensure that their time and efforts are well-spent.
To satisfy this thirst for knowledge among today’s potential employees, many companies are taking a multi-media approach. Career services companies like CareerTours, currently offer more than 600,000 videos about companies, jobs, and careers. In the audio realm, companies like Walgreen’s are using podcasts for recruiting.
Just as Millennials increasingly expect marketers to sell products to them through new forms of media – social media, text messages, internet ads – they expect employers to sell them on working for them through employer Web sites. They expect ‘info-tainment’ from employers, says Bernard Hodes Group, which provides recruitment advertising, employer-branding, and staffing solutions.
Focus on career and life intersection
Today’s employees are also less likely to accept traditional employment models. The pace of change in the business world has long since eliminated the concept of spending a career with a single organization or even within a single career path. This recession will further erode job seekers’ faith in promises of stability and future rewards. As a result, more top performing employees will seek employment terms and conditions based upon near-term, definable, individual rewards, and will place less emphasis on long-term incentives based on corporate performance objectives that they believe are outside of their realm of control. Candidates will probe positions more deeply and will want more influence over the type of work they do. Prospective employers must prepare for candidates to negotiate what they will and won’t do.
Free agency
Recessions have, in the past, increased the pool of people who decide to become free agents – contractors, consultants, and part-time workers. More people than ever are trying out life as independent workers in order to better align their career and life strategies. Many will not make it and will return to the corporate fold, but they will be wiser and better prepared to abandon ship should they see signs of stormy waters ahead.
Others will find they would rather work on their own than return to insecure and fragile corporate structures. Companies will have to identify and take care of their top performers better than ever. While many organizations do work hard to keep top performing talent, they will have to increase this effort and explore more creative ways to engage and develop those people.
In addition, organizations will have to adjust staffing strategies in order to make effective use of this emerging pool of highly talented free agents. Companies must determine how to integrate free agents with their traditional employees and will have to redefine their HR policies to ensure compliance with IRS regulations. Such demands will accelerate as more companies find that leasing employees, relying on contractors, and sharing talent with other organizations are central to success in today’s business landscape.
Values rule
Gen Y candidates, in particular, but all employees to a growing degree, are seeking companies that hold values high and make and keep commitments to their employees and their families. They seek environmentally sensitive, charitable, and ethical firms.
Gen Y will be followed by the even more morally and environmentally committed Gen M. They will have higher expectations than the Baby Boomers ever did. While shareholder value will always be a core concern for the management team, they will also have to understand that their employees will be examining corporate ethics with every corporate action and statement.
Organizations will have to understand that what they do is just as important as what they say, and that information and knowledge about their actions can be instantaneously shared with the outside world, without boundary.
The recession is an immediate concern, but the changing attitudes and abilities of today’s workforce will affect your company’s success long after the economy recovers. Organizations that start now to recognize and adapt to these new realities will be those that succeed in the long term.