"There is no such thing as standing still. You either move forward or regress." Herber. J. Grant
The world of work is changing. Retailers are hiring Data Analysts, construction firms need Negotiators and investment banks need more coders than economists. Behind the brands are roles that didn’t exist five years ago: big data architect, UX designer, cloud services specialist and those that often don’t reflect the perceptions of sectors that we all grew up with ourselves. Caring people work in HR or nursing, economists work in banks. To be a lawyer or a teacher, you have to go to university. All that has changed. Hiring patterns and new talent entry points are also changing. Organisations that hire school leavers can’t rely on summer internships and degree preferences to whittle down their preferred candidates and the presumptive educational progression ladder of 3 A stars, a 2:1 in anything and the well regarded graduate programmes to specialise, is less prevalent. What hasn’t changed is organisations wanting the best people who have actively chosen to join their organisations and want to succeed and specialise to help them all achieve their strategic goals.
Playing the long game
Attraction needs to change. It needs to become a longer, more strategic process.
Employers can’t just wait for engagement with talent once they have become applicants or even later when they’re candidates. Expecting people to jump through your applications hoops with little support or specifics of what lies at the end of the process will not necessarily attract the ‘best’ candidates and certainly won’t feed into any diversity aspirations or broadening of the talent pools.
In order to attract a wide range of suitable and capable people, employers will need to take time and energy to educate and engage a wide range of people and their influencers in order to help them realise that what you have as a range of opportunities is exciting, relevant and probably something they had never thought they would be interested in.
Gone are the days where employers can sit passively rejecting the majority of thousands of applications to whittle down to those that look and perform like the current employee population.
Early careers redefined
Education and engagement are key. Meeting school children at 13, when they are still making decisions and are more open to a range of opportunities will be a key part of any employers recruitment strategy over the next five years. Particularly in regards to STEM subjects and whether they can or can’t ‘do’ maths or digital roles, which as luck would have it, will be the foundation for the majority of roles in the digital world of work. Employers simply can’t wait for schools to catch up with the need for digital skills within the curriculum. They will have to start to fill in the skills gap themselves.
Having information to share and spending quality time with parents and career professionals will have an impact on the broader population that you can’t immediately capture, however this will be more about creating a long-term talent pipeline for the future rather than hires for today.
Inside-out
There is also a need to educate internally, to open the minds of hiring managers and decision makers to realise that hiring for skills and experience will only support the immediate landscape, there has to be a willingness to train on the job and develop both new and existing employees to succeed in the expanding landscape of the future of work.
The costs of early engagement can be easily managed by having a technology-enabled marketing strategy to give wider reach and with many engagement tools available, it is possible to support and educate potential candidates without having to go to each and every individual school or college.
The future embraces the niche
Another option is to partner with a specialist. Across the UK, there are many specialists who will deliver your messages to schools and colleges, while working willingly with you to engage the more junior population. Companies that already have the relationships with this target audience can disseminate your message which will save you time and money, as well as help to create the outreach strategy with you.
There are so many schools and colleges and simply not enough budget or resources. It is an investment in the future of work and has the opportunity and financial costs attached to it. However, what is the cost of not having the skills you need in your workforce to respond to the future of work?
There is already a talent shortage in key skills, such as data; e-commerce; and information security. How will you find that talent if you don’t grow your own?
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