On tackling the talent shortage
There are plenty of fish in the sea, or are there? These days, finding brilliant (and available) talent is like searching for a mountain in the Netherlands. So in Intrro #54, we explore how recruiters and people teams can navigate the yawning skills and talent chasm.
Podcast: Talent acquisition tips from CrowdStrike
In this week’s Hiring Highlights we were delighted to speak with Lisa McGill, an advisory board member and former Chief Human Resources Officer at CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity giant.
Lisa has spent much of her career in “high tech” at the likes of Silver Peak, and more recently, has advised VC firm SemperVirens, whose portfolio includes workforce tech companies like Karat and ChartHop.
Lisa arrived at CrowdStrike before its eventual IPO in 2019, so she understands the delicacies of stewarding a people team at a time of high growth.
Early on, Lisa identified that “50% of our new hires within the sales organisation were leaving”, which of course, would pose a problem for any company that was planning to go public. In fact, CrowdStrike would often lose talented staff members just one year into the job, just when they were reaching their “high optimal productivity”.
One solution was to really nail down a talent acquisition strategy. And according to Lisa, that meant answering some key questions:
By thinking about these details more deeply, CrowdStrike often hired in emerging engineering markets like Romania. But as Lisa adds, “In some cases, you might have to do some re-skilling as part of your talent strategy.”
Lisa also highlighted “salary compression” as a key watchout, where the higher salaries offered to new hires could leave the original staff members feeling out of pocket. “Yes, that person might have more equity, but until you go public, it’s meaningless to them.”
In our discussion, Lisa shared details of some helpful tools that helped CrowdStrike secure the right talent. For example, in order to identify the top sales candidates, CrowdStrike used an “AI based behavioral based assessment tool” called PerceptionPredict, which led them to conclude that the key qualities for a salesperson at CrowdStrike included communication, collaboration and grit.
Of course, there is no silver bullet when it comes to securing top talent, and as we covered recently, there’s a time and a place for internal hiring too. Everyone has a part to play in an organisation’s success, or as Lisa says: “No matter what your role – you can impact revenue, you can impact profitability.”
It was great to catch up with Lisa, and if you’d like to check out more Scaling Stories podcasts, you know where to clickety-click.
Hiring during a labour shortage
The labour market right now is tighter than Marlon Brando in spandex. As Phil Strazzulla puts in on LinkedIn: “Simply put, there aren't enough people to do the jobs we need done.”
This unquenchable demand combined with low labour supplies is evident across the board. And as this Financial Times article suggests, turning on the spending taps is all well and good, but do we have the workers to keep up the pace?
But is the solution within our grasp? In response to the FT article, @AlecStapp pithily tweeted:
In case you’re wondering, Alec went on to argue that “increased immigration would help unlock bottlenecks created by large spending programs”.
There’s no shortage of evidence to back up this claim. On Twitter, Science Is Strategic presents data in arguing that “US economic dynamism depends on immigrants”, and in another thread, shares a fascinating glimpse (below) of where talented migrants prefer to study.
That’s the backstory, and next, we’ll look at what this means for you and your hiring plans.
Reskilling in a tight labour market
They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but what about a grizzled software developer?
Given we’re on the subject of skills and talent shortages, it’s worth dusting off the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report from 2020, which made the startling prediction that by 2025, “50% of all employees will need reskilling”.
“The future of work has already arrived for a large majority of the online white-collar workforce,” the report declares. “The window of opportunity to reskill and upskill workers has become shorter in the newly constrained labour market.”
As the report illustrates, the failure to adopt new technologies and drive the industries of the future is not just about headcount shortages, but a profound skills gap.
So which skills do employers see as rising in prominence before 2025? The report offers a checklist which makes for fascinating reading:
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The challenge of reconciling this skills gap with an ever-shrinking workforce can be safely placed on a to-do list marked ‘difficult’.
And as we’ve covered before, the nature of the workforce itself continues to evolve in an era where millions of workers are questioning what they actually want from work. According to the Wall Street Journal (paywall), “part time executive jobs are on the rise”, with a rising number of mid-to-late-career professionals taking on “fractional executive jobs”.
CEOs with MBAs ‘cut wages and do not increase revenue’
There was a time when there was a clear, uninterrupted pathway between sophomore frat parties, studying for a degree and landing a top job. But as is now abundantly clear – those days have long gone the way of ugg boots and lava lamps.
In a Financial Times piece titled ‘Are CEOs with MBAs good for business?’, jointly authored by three professors, the answer is a resounding not really.
It’s perhaps no surprise then, as a Gartner survey reported in HR Brew suggests, that cutting leadership may become a trend. Or as another FT piece puts it, maybe the one per cent are not as smart as they think.
Given the eye-watering cost of a degree, is it any wonder that for many young people, higher education seems less alluring than ever? As the below suggests, people want skills to pay the bills.
Moreover, a thought-provoking Twitter thread by Marc Andreessen put some flesh on the bone in terms of how this might play out.
“We are heading into a world where a flat screen TV that covers your entire wall costs $100, and a four year college degree costs $1 million, and nobody has anything even resembling a proposal on how to fix this.”
For Marc, expensive degrees are just the tip of the iceberg. Marc suggests the battle lines have been drawn between AI-driven innovation and “sectors where technological innovation is not permitted to push down prices”.
Far from AI devouring the entire workforce, Marc states that AI is “already illegal for most of the economy, and will be for virtually all of the economy”.
Jobs will be protected in industries that are “monopolies, oligopolies and cartels”, says Marc, and predicts that “99% of the economy will be the regulated, non-technological sectors”.
He even shares this eye-catching graph to prove it:
No one has a crystal ball, but as FDR might have said were he tweeting today, the only thing that’s certain is uncertainty itself.
Things you might have missed
Recruiting fail
We know these are austere times, but a world where we’re asking candidates to bring their own laptops, desk, chairs and carpets feels a bit much.
Shameless plug
As we’ve covered in this newsletter, the economic picture has meaningfully changed. We recruiters are doing more with less, and it’s become increasingly important to prioritise our time for the things that matter most. And it’s no secret that employee referrals are often the cheapest, fastest and best source of hire.
With this in mind, we’ve launched Powered by Intrro Employee Referrals, a new pay-as-you hire product launch for our all-singing, all-dancing referral platform. Features include:
We wanted to make it simpler than ever to get referrals, and (having listened to your feedback) we’re giving you more of what you want. It’s been a labour of love, so check it out and we hope you enjoy!
Thanks for reading
Once again, thank you for scrolling this far. We’ll be back next week with more hiring and tech tales from planet Intrro.