Staffing 2012: How Talent and Opportunity Connect - Part 1

By Gerry Crispin and Mark Mehler

(EMA Reporter, January, 2002, a monthly newsletter of the Employment Management Association, a professional emphasis group of the Society for Human Resource Management. Reprinted here with permission) This first of a two-part futuristic account of a job seeker in the year 2012 is intended to examine where today's technology might take us and raise the level of debate about some of the issues we'll encounter along the way.

It was Monday morning and Jaime-Beth Guzman, "JB" to her friends, was already having a bad day at Black Rock Inc., her high-tech employer in Grass Valley. Grass Valley was a growing community nestled in California's historic gold mining country and home to more than 30 other corporate satellite work centers. Her mom had called just minutes before from her home outside Charlotte, N.C. Her mother's minor infirmities were getting worse, "and that spells trouble with a capital T," Jaime thought to herself.

Jaime's drive to build a successful career developing engineering applications for the health care industry was beginning to conflict with her equally strong desire to be near her mom, and she was second-guessing her decision two years earlier to relocate across the continent. She wanted to make a difference in all aspects of her life, and it seemed that something had to give.

To complicate matters, Jaime's significant other, Jim, was struggling as an administrator in a nonprofit agency that was resistant to his ideas. His patience was wearing thin, and lately he had been talking about making a switch. If that weren't enough, Sally, their daughter, was showing exceptional academic potential in a school system that appeared to have trouble challenging her, and Jaime and Jim were becoming concerned.

Knowledge Management

With a few minutes left before her scheduled project meeting, Jaime quickly "drilled" her company's intranet links, navigated to a "support for relatives" option and read the company's elder care policy. She wasn't quite sure how far this policy would go toward solving her problems, however, and touched the "examples" button on her screen to get a better idea of the extent of the policy. A set of frequently asked questions in text with audio options instantly appeared on the screen, but a quick scan of the examples displayed there confirmed her suspicion that none were related, and she pressed the "call me" option with another deft touch.

Immediately, a smiling face appeared in the corner of her screen. She recognized it instantly as Jason Hunter, one of the three HR client support experts working for Black Rock's U.S. human resources function. Jaime smiled back at the screen, recalling the internal networking team she and Jason had participated on last year, while marveling over how quickly connections were made in a company that was spread out over three continents and 40 facilities. She remembered that Jason worked out of Black Rock's Oregon facility three days a week and was on call from home at other times as well.

'High-Tech' Without 'High-Touch'

Jason Hunter looked up at his screen when he heard the tone signaling a customer inquiry. He wasn't surprised to actually see Jaime-Beth because he knew she preferred to maintain her visual-link options in the "on" mode when she worked. There were still many in the company who preferred "voice only." It was also helpful that his employee ID feature offered a printed name under her image and a link to "files" should he need it. Only minutes before, Jason had told the HR customer system that he was ready to receive inquiries. Typically, two of his colleagues also were available during working hours and the system automatically routed connections to whoever was free, or explained why not and offered an estimated response time and an override option to kick up the inquiry to "urgent" if necessary.

Sometimes, when it really got busy, Jason thought fondly of the "old days" when there were three times as many people in the human resources department to serve the company's 2,000 employees and few measures to demonstrate the quality of the service provided. It was a far different story these days.

"Hi, JB," said Jason, "Your 'screenlink' indicates you have a question about our elder care policy. What can I do for you today?" Jaime described her concerns about her mother's situation but quickly realized from Jason's explanation that travel was not covered by the company's elder care plan, nor were there any plans to open a center near Charlotte-at least for the foreseeable future. Before cutting the connection, Jason said, "We're flexible and creative enough to work with you on this. Give me some time to check out a couple options and I'll get back to you before the end of the week. I'll need to access your personal file. Do I have permission?" "Of course," said Jaime. "I appreciate anything you can come up with."

Jaime murmured "break" in order to command her portable to cut the connection with Jason and looked up as Bob Ender walked into the office for their meeting. Bob sat down, placed his wireless portable on the side table and pronounced himself ready. Pressing a customized project icon on her command screen, Jaime automatically alerted all of her project team leaders that they would begin their scheduled meeting in three minutes. She and Bob were the only participants located in Grass Valley. The rest were connecting via wireless portables from whatever facility they had chosen to work out of, although one member did work totally out of his home. The corporate shift out of the cities was accelerated during the last decade by security concerns and by the growing ease and comfort in using multimedia technology applications for everyday communications.

Baby Boomers will trigger changes

Jaime was still amazed that she was able to entice Bob to join her team. Nearly 30 years older than her "thirty-something," Bob had retired early from one of Black Rock's fiercest competitors. He was one of the baby boomers who began leaving corporations in large numbers nearly a decade earlier. It shouldn't have been a major shock to corporate America when younger professionals with technical skills just didn't fill all those empty cubicles-but it was.

Compounding the problem of the boomers was the continued and dramatic decrease in technical graduates from U.S. colleges during the 1990s and the first years of the 21st century, when Jaime received her degree. She was one of 40 in her university to graduate with a computer science degree in 2001 and one of only three women in her class. The 23,000 computer science graduates in the U.S. that year were a sharp contrast to nearly 40,000 in 1991, especially considering that many of her fellow students weren't eligible to work in the United States. Still, it was hard for her to find a job during her first year. She supplemented contract work with continuing education-mostly e-learning courses that resulted in two technical certifications.

With talent so scarce during the years of hyper competition that began after the recession of 2001-2002, Jaime eventually had to swat away uninvited opportunities like so many flies at a picnic. The late 1990s "War for Talent" was a 1960s "Love-in" by comparison. At the same time, many companies began taking a longer view and joined together to educate high school students about the value of careers in most-needed fields like technology and health care. Only now, nearly a decade later, were these efforts beginning to bear fruit.

Lots of companies simply folded during those times. Hundreds of other firms were forced to relocate their operations overseas. U.S. immigration quotas had become more restrictive despite intensive lobbying from IT, pharmaceutical, health care, hospitality and other affected industries. Growth in a recovering economy nearly stalled for want of a pair of hands. There were plenty of MBAs, accountants and business majors, but they couldn't manage, finance and sell what they couldn't create. The technicians, engineers and scientists in the thousands of technical specialties, along with the people who teach them, provide the real engine underlying a service economy, and they were missing.

Only then did companies begin to realize how important it was to fit jobs to people instead of the other way around, to learn how to recognize the potential for success and to teach the skills necessary to succeed. Companies like Black Rock saw the wisdom of decentralizing their work centers-creating small networking hubs for people and technology in places where people wanted to live. "High touch" multi-media applications exploded, removing the need for collecting large numbers of people in one place.

Attitude Adjustments Needed

The boomers were hampered by an additional problem. It seems silly now, but ageism was still embedded in our working psyche, laws to the contrary notwithstanding. Managers resisted hiring folks they might have to train on the latest skills and technical languages. The thought of managing someone "old," let alone trying to "teach an old dog new tricks," conjured up images that made managers decide it wasn't worth the effort. "Overqualified" or "too highly paid" was the mantra used by too many hiring managers to legally avoid targeting the "AARPs," as we began calling them. Companies had to rethink how they branded their web sites and publications with images and copy depicting "energetic" (read young) folks willing to work long hours.

Firms realized that no amount of money was going to attract the best and the brightest of a younger generation to sustain a growing economy as large as that of the United States because the best and brightest just weren't there in the numbers that were needed. This was the trigger that changed both attitude about work and how work was engineered.

The boomers wouldn't commit to a regular schedule. They still wanted to make a difference in a work setting, but had little to prove by working 18-hour days week after week. They wanted to customize their work around their new interests-travel, connecting with grandchildren, etc.-so companies needed to be much more flexible about work arrangements. It was this attention on how to keep the boomers engaged that caused us once more to reinvent the workplace-for everyone.

Job Seekers Participate in Selection Process

Companies had been moving in the direction of cataloguing the skills, experiences, roles and responsibilities needed to accomplish projects, tasks and functions. Unfortunately, there were so many competing approaches that no real attention was paid in the employment marketplace beyond the academic community. Traditional job descriptions had to be replaced in favor of far more flexible arrangements that mapped and valued jobs in a way that allowed people with the interests and capabilities to understand and compare them. This meant that a standard approach was needed, but it didn't happen without a fight.

Companies, indeed most employment professionals, were still stuck on trying to improve one-sided selection tools. "What we need are better tools to help us hire for style and train for skills," they would say. Efforts to differentiate potential candidates based on personality factors and other selection criteria were extremely popular-and flawed. There were several reasons for this, but the most important one was the simple fact that the candidates most in demand were the least likely to provide the data. They were increasingly concerned about privacy and the extent that information ranging from SAT scores to gene profiles was being collected with few controls and little disclosure. These professionals recognized that, if they knew more about the goals, challenges, opportunities and flexibility-even the "personality" of the company-they could participate in a more balanced selection process.

The idea that the job seeker would participate on an equal level in the selection process developed slowly as an outgrowth of alliances made at the turn of the century between the Department of Labor and a number of major online job boards. The job boards adopted a common set of requirements that companies used to describe their jobs. It became practical for job seekers to search and compare similar positions and for companies to deliver a consistent message wherever job seekers might gather. The outcome was that job seekers could truly focus on researching and selecting the culture and conditions of the companies they were considering, while demonstrating to these same companies that the skills they sought were the skills they had or could acquire.

In the next issue, read more about Jaime-Beth's job search, along with tips about how to develop a staffing vision for your company's future.

These articles are based on the foreword to the 2002 edition of CareerXroads: The Directory to Job, Resume and Career Management Sites by Gerry Crispin, SPHR, and Mark Mehler. This is the seventh edition of the book, an independent reference guide to job sites. If you have questions or comments about the scenario pictured in these articles, you can visit Crispin and Mehler at CareerXroads, or reach them at mmc@careerxroads.com.

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