Michael's Blog

If you would take the time to talk to any senior level executive today they would tell you that talent management and the lack of employable talent is one of their most pressing challenges.  The lack of IT talent is well documented and many of these firms are outsourcing their talent needs to foreign countries. Research shows that on top of this baby boomers, the most populous age group are retiring at the rate of 6,000 individuals a day and the generation that follows has already shown that they have other interest outside of pure work.

I remember back in the 80’s President Ronald Regan spoke about making this country strong by growing the technology business and developing the talent that we need to continue our dominance in this sector. However, a strange set of occurrences has developed along our technological supremacy journey.  As more corporations become more  “globalized” they have determined that less was more and started outsourcing their IT departments to foreign countries which has cost jobs and  discouraged workers.  This resulted in resentment from American workers who loved application development and working in the IT industry but  watched their jobs erode and continually went to foreign countries.

Corporate America is a fickle bunch because today the cost of doing business overseas has become more costly because of the add-on cost of translations, work processes and the de-valued dollar. Meanwhile, more and more firms look to have the work done domestically but complain they cannot find enough talent. 

Those of us in the consulting business that provided IT talent as well as informational technological leadership have adapted to globalization and we can find talent anywhere at anytime regardless of physical location.  However, I find inadequacies in hiring practices and I wonder how some organizations hire any staff at all.  As strategic as some of these organizations are in many of their departments they still try to hire subjectively and more times than not they get burned.  Who gets blamed for this?  The responsible party that shoulders the blame is usually the consultant that presents the candidate to the client in the first place.

In our consulting practice we focus on how IT can transform business into a competitive advantage.  Our focus goes far beyond application development and enterprise integration.  We pride ourselves in being a full-service IT outsourcing firm that can handles everything from application development and integration to process automation.  There is also another critical offering that organizations need as well and that is qualified staff to handle internal projects.  The staffing of internal projects is a part of talent management which is on the mind of every C-level executive today. I would welcome the challenge from any organization professing to have difficulties with hiring and can show them where problems with their hiring approach are.  We believe that hiring needs to be strategic and mapped to a set of goals and objectives similar to any other strategic initiative throughout the organization.  If you cannot find the right people today, don’t blame the market. The problem is likely internal, and it is within your control.