The IT talent shortage is getting a lot of attention these days—and rightly so. While some jobs are open due to employee departures, many exist to fill growth needs. According to Barry Asin, President of Staffing Industry Analysts, “80% of CEO’s are concerned with uncertain or volatile growth of the economy – 50% will grow but only 30% say they have the talent they need.”

This gap presents a huge challenge for organizations. Companies dealing with a tech talent shortage are experiencing high turnover, lost revenue, and low productivity. Georgia employers are no exception. According to a Dice.com analysis, the state of Georgia ranks just short of the top 10 (ranked #11) in states that rank from shortage to surplus.

According to this Bureau of Labor Statistics projection, a huge percentage of newly created and vacant jobs are, and will be, in computing:

Source: http://www.xconomy.com/seattle/2011/05/17/red-hot-the-computer-science-job-market/

Skill is King

Why does it seem that every company is chasing the same pool of experienced workers? The possible answer to that is because employers all want the same thing. These days, employers are looking for talent who already have the skills needed. Listen to what some of these specialists had to say:

• According to one industry expert quoted in this Information Week article, companies are “seeking experienced business technology pros who can drive and manage IT projects in highly matrixed work environments.”

• Freelance programmer George Fanhbulleh states in a Dice Tech Talent Crunch report, “if you aren’t cutting edge, you aren’t marketable.”

• James Burgess, a serial entrepreneur, reports that he searches out technical team members who combine an impressive resume with diverse and complementary skills.

• Seth Williams, Google’s Sourcing Manager, says “experience is critical …provided it’s matched by burning desire. We look for people who are passionate about coding in general, rather than merely those with a niche skill-set,” Williams explains.

• Rod Favaron, CEO of startup Spredfast, mentioned at the CEO Summit 2011 that “the shortage is being exacerbated by companies hiring employees from each other, rather than bringing in talent from elsewhere. That only gets you so far,” Favaron said. “We need to import top people, not hire them away from each other. In the past, we’ve had companies like Tivoli and Trilogy that brought in hundreds and hundreds of highly talented people. Nobody’s doing that right now. Instead, we’re recycling people.”

• Tech executive Larry Warnock stated in a Market Watch article, “We need people who’ve been there, done that. It may sound like whining when unemployment is this high, but there is a shortage of talent. We can’t find enough people.”

What Organizations and Companies Are Doing About the IT Talent Shortage

One innovative solution to the shortage of in-demand tech jobs is being developed by a group of influencers in New York City. Mayor Bloomberg’s education team, along with a top-tier venture capitalist, are opening The Academy for Software Engineering. The school will enroll 400-500 students who will get trained in technical skills along with rigorous academic education to prepare them for college.

A local Atlanta program, WIT’s Get IT, sponsored by Women in Technology (WIT) is focused on developing women for technology careers. The program fosters collaboration with the Georgia business community to inspire girls in middle and high school to choose careers in science, technology, engineering and math.

Additional ideas organizations are implementing include:

• Forge partnerships and engage with local high schools, technical schools, junior colleges, and universities to help refine their technical curricula
• Create more attractive, comprehensive internship programs
• Enhance company loyalty programs and workplace desirability environments
• Invest in talent acquisition the way a company invests in customer acquisition
• Create training and development programs to fill in the technical skills gap
• Wide their search outside the local region
• Hire candidates who lack the job skills but have potential to develop them (for more on this keep an eye out for our new white paper coming soon)

The common message regarding the tech shortage? It’s not going away anytime soon.

Photo thanks to bgottsab

Want to Retain Your Best Employees? Keep Them Happy and Engaged at Work

According to economist David Birch, “the average college graduate will have 12 jobs by the time they are 50.” That equates to employees changing jobs every 2.5 years.

That’s a sobering statistic for IT managers. Turnover costs you time and money, not to mention the hassle of recruiting, interviewing and hiring. If job-hopping has become the new norm for employees, what can you do to keep your best team members happy and engaged? While some job moves may be out of your control, below are techniques and tactics you can use to increase employee retention and reduce the chance of your star employee flying the coup.

Understand Why Great Employees Leave
There are many reasons why employees leave. But two reasons you may not have given enough weight to include:

1. They feel unappreciated

According to a Yahoo! Small Business Advisor article, employees feel unappreciated when management:

• Never acknowledges the work done or says thank you
• Consistently criticizes work without any compliments to add motivation
• Praises other employees on a regular basis
• Yells at or otherwise mistreats the employee

2. The employee holds unrealistic expectations

Did you paint too rosy of a picture during the interviewing process? While you don’t want to scare away potential employees, it’s important to be up front about the job and the company to give a realistic 360-degree view of the position.

Improve Employee-Manager Relations
There’s a saying that goes, “employees don’t leave companies, they leave managers.” Ouch. Whether you know it or not, you play an integral role in creating and establishing healthy work relationships. A simple compliment—“thank you,” “nice work,” or “well done”—can go a long way.

According to the Globoforce Workforce Mood Tracker™, 78% of U.S. workers said being recognized for their good work motivates them in their job. In fact, Google (notorious for the perks they provide), came out with a surprising list of what employees valued most at work: “even-keeled bosses who made time for one-on-one meetings, who helped people puzzle through problems by asking questions, not dictating answers, and who took an interest in employees’ lives and careers.” 

Learn to Read the Signs
Most employees don’t leave on a whim. They usually make the decision to start searching for other opportunities, interviewing with other companies, and accepting another job after a great amount of internal debate.

Ways to tell if employees may have “checked out” or are thinking about leaving include:

• They are frequently late, absent or sick
• Production drops
• They seem more quiet than usual
• Less participation
• Their behavior changes significantly

Take Exit Interviews Seriously
Exit interviews can give incredible insight into uncovering recurring internal issues and problems. While you may be ready to dismiss the employee and move on with filling the position, you should take the exit interview process seriously.

An exit interview can be structured with a set of pre-determined interview questions, or it can be an informal conversation. Always work to preserve the relationship when an employee resigns. You never know if the employee may return or end up being a valuable recruiting and referral source in the future.

Additional Ideas for Improving Employee Retention

Further ideas for improving employee retention:

• Conduct regular anonymous employee or team surveys
• Ask for feedback on a consistent basis
• Have regular touch points with your best people
• Take action when other employees aren’t pulling their weight or aren’t cutting it; one bad apple in the barrel can ruin the whole team
• Foster employee and career development
• Give employees a reason to be loyal

Proactively planning different strategies for holding on to your best employees is an important responsibility. Taking the time to implement these tips, tactics and techniques will be a worthy investment for you, your company and your team.

With the world changing each year at an increasingly faster pace, there are times when many of us think and feel as if we are treading water and are not learning new behaviors to increase our leadership effectiveness. When we look back over the past year at our accomplishments, we can’t clearly define what behaviors, skills, knowledge, and traits have helped us achieve our goals.

One key trait extraordinary leaders have is the desire and ability to continuously improve and learn, allowing them to adjust to the changing global economy. Learning for them is ongoing and incremental. Sometimes our behavioral learning is so slight that we really have to carefully investigate what we have truly learned.

Why Should You Journal?

A learning journal, when implemented on a consistent daily basis, can help you capture your learning by creating a time to be self-reflective of each day’s experiences. However small and seemingly unimportant these experiences are, these experiences can connect you to a specific learning that took place. These experiences can also make you aware of your learning by knowing that at the end of a day you will take time and energy to add to your learning journal.

By writing down and tracking your progress, you are able to review your progress at any point in time. Journaling is a great tool when you may be questioning your learning progression. Journaling can not only help you focus on your strengths, but can also help you determine what limitations you are currently working on that can have a positive impact on your overall performance. As a result, you will begin to see trends on how you best learn and develop so you can incorporate the right learning opportunities into your day.

As the days, weeks, and months of journaling come together you will be able to identify behaviors in your work performance and personal life that work and don’t work for you. As your capacity builds, you will be able to take on new and bigger challenges which provide the development situations you need to increase your leadership effectiveness.

Getting Started

Journaling is a daily commitment which need not take a lot of time. Like any habit, it will take 21 days before it becomes a natural occurrence.

There are many methods you can use to implement the journaling process. For some of us a dedicated time each day to journal fits our personality and preferences. For others having a small note pad or PDA to jot down our thoughts and feelings about an experience immediately after the experience occurs works best. The key is to keep trying and adjusting your method of journaling until it works for you.

Three Great Journaling Tips

1. Remember your journal is about you and your personal development, not the people you work with or live with. It is about you, the only person who can control your own thoughts and behaviors.
2. Be alert to your feelings during the day. What made you excited, inspired, challenged, frustrated, fearful, angry, etc.? These feelings are a clue to a potential learning moment.
3. Since your journal is written by you for you, don’t worry about spelling, grammar, punctuation, etc. Keep your journaling short so it is easy to review. All that matters is that you can read it later to see your progress and trends, and plan for the future behavioral changes that you wish to make.

Questions to Ponder

Throughout the day and while you journal, here are some questions to help you become aware of your learning each day:

• What experience was challenging today and what feelings did you have during the experience?
• What specifically did you learn during this experience, such as new knowledge, a new skill, or a new technique?
• Did you notice a behavior linked to your feelings, either positive or negative?
• If your feeling was positive, how can you use this positive behavior more in the future? If your feeling was negative, how can you adjust your behavior so that next time your feeling is more positive?
• What did you learn today that you can expand upon to make you a more effective leader in the future?
• What next steps do you plan to take to implement this new learning in the future?
• Who can you ask for help with these next steps?

Final Thoughts about a Learning Journal

The leaders who advance today are the ones who stay ahead of their competition. They take control of their own development and embrace continuous learning. Remember the only cost involved with journaling your learning is your time and energy. Therefore, why wait? Start journaling and learning today to increase your leadership effectiveness!

Image by Richard Mallinson via sxc.hu.

As we highlighted in last week’s blog post, 5 Trends to Watch in IT Staffing, one of the recent recruiting developments is the emergence of recruitment process outsourcing (RPO). In fact, the Everest Group reports that the 2012 global RPO market continues to see accelerated growth of over 25%, and will reach US $1.4 billion in annualized spending.

As recruiting technologies evolve and contract staffing expands, organizations are increasingly turning to outsourced staffing solutions. Organizations are looking for alternative hiring solutions as layoffs in the HR department (along with budget cuts) have depleted their already limited internal recruiting resources.

According to a recent white paper from the Aberdeen Group, the top 5 drivers that persuaded organizations to use RPO were:

1. The need to focus on core business competencies
2. The need to innovate how organizations go about recruiting
3. Consolidated internal recruiting function
4. Need to hire quicker
5. Spike/anticipated spike in talent needs

The Benefits (and Hesitations) of RPO

The benefits of securing an RPO solutions provider are numerous.

First, companies benefit from the expertise of a specialist who has access to a large, qualified network of candidates and referral contacts.

Next, because RPO firms handle all aspects from recruiting through hiring and almost everything in between, it creates a seamless process for the candidates.

Finally, RPO can simplify the tedious, drawn out process that internal recruiting often causes. With RPO many of those challenges and roadblocks are inherently eliminated.

Despite the benefits, many organizations are still wary of handing over the recruiting reins completely. The top concerns listed in the Aberdeen Group report included cost and “the ability of the RPO provider to represent the brand well.”

In a recent Twitter chat, #TChat, the question was asked, “Does RPO damage or enhance a company’s recruiting practice? Why or why not?” A few of the responses included:

• “If you’re Microsoft, your brand is established, and going through a recruiter doesn’t tarnish it nearly as much.”
• “Some execs view ID’ing talent as 1 of their top priorities. Challenge is training managers & others to develop this competency.”
• “As with everything, it depends. Work with a good, reputable RPO, be upfront with candidates, you’ll all do well.”
• “Outsourcing is the way things get done in all aspects of HR today.”
• “RPO can definitely damage your employer brand pretty quickly”
• “Recruiters need to know both the org/ees to find the best talent who will fit & stay. Can that be outsourced?”

To view more about #TChat and the RPO discussion, check out the recap here.

It’s important to remember that even after a candidate has been hired, whether through RPO or internally, the successful recruitment was for naught if the candidate leaves after the first three months. Careful attention needs to be paid by the organization after onboarding to reduce turnover, increase team retention rates, and improve the overall quality of employee fit within the workplace culture.

What do you think: is RPO a good idea for your organization?

Note: To learn more about Agile’s take on RPO services, give us a call at 678.722.8200.

Image by Victor1588 via Flickr.

I just returned from the annual Staffing Industry Analysts Executive Forum held in Las Vegas this year. Two of my key staff managers attended with me, and we divided and conquered the many sessions to maximize our experience at the conference.

The conference hosts the top industry leaders and innovators and focuses on strategic issues, trends, opportunities and current challenges.