As the economy continues its growth and companies continue hiring, finding basic, qualified candidates, remains challenging. The U.S. is at virtually “full employment” for skilled workers. Finding the A-List Premier Talent continues to be increasingly more difficult. It takes longer to find fewer “stars”. The skills required by marketers have evolved into a world of data management, driven by the ever increasing ability of digital to “track” what you like, what you do, where you do it and with whom. The skill set(s) are constantly changing . .. and rapidly.
The challenge of matching pinpoint target marketing and the development of engaging content becomes ever more complex. Analyzing the data takes math, statistics and engineering skills! There are simply not enough employees who understand this evolution of data, targeting and content and know what to do with it.
For the first time in years, companies and especially advertising agencies are hiring in advance of need. If they see someone with exceptional insight, or an unusually appropriate background or experience, they’re more likely to hire. Business is remaining predictably solid. The ability to quickly hire top talent with the acquisition of a new account is gone. In some cases, even having the right talent to make a competitive and compelling (and winning) pitch for new business might not be a reality.
Clients are getting smarter and having higher expectations too. They don’t want to have some agency “all-star” team pitching them while subsequently having their business run by uninspired or complacent agency “staffers”. The pitch team will work on the business they win, or that agency might not win the business.
As a result, the business of recruiting is strong and undergoing an evolution of its own. Job Boards are losing (or have lost) favor. LinkedIn has become the recruiting database of choice for employers and most third party recruiters. How do recruiters provide value beyond what their clients can deliver by themselves?
The answer is sophisticated database research coupled with experienced and intelligent recruiting techniques. The goal is to quickly identify all of the candidates with a particular skillset (and perhaps in a particular geographic area with a specific amount of experience), contact them and talk to them. The goal is to have the new candidate start in 60 days or less.
I’ll be writing more about how we can make that happen.