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The steady demise of our existing workplace is now a severe reality. Talent is in more demand than ever before and the search for the right skills and capabilities are intense. Industries have reported suboptimal results for the lack of right talent. According to a report by Monster's Future of Work: 2021 Global Outlook, the top challenge that employers have identified for 2021 is identifying candidates with the right skills. However, keeping in mind today's hybrid working culture, there are other interesting aspects that cannot be overlooked, including working flexibility and the emergence of new jobs that warrant new skills and capabilities.
It is estimated that most of the present day jobs and that of the future can be done remotely and that between 140-170 million jobs will get created with the advent of further technological innovations. With the technological support, organisations are rapidly moving towards remote working in the areas where physical interface is either nonexistent or negligible.
As things stand on the talent front, skill-gaps are at an all time high and will continue to be so in the near future. In fact, 87% of employers say they are struggling to fill positions as a result of the skills-gap, despite a high degree of unemployment. This paucity of skilled workers has directly negated the business outcomes and profitability as per a survey conducted on CEOs in 2019 by PwC, which reflects that 52% of the respondents (industry) have reported talent-cost escalation, 55% have experienced inability to innovate, 44% were unable to pursue market opportunities, 47% were facing challenges in terms of quality and customer-expectation and lastly, 22% of the respondents had to abort or delay their strategic initiatives. Such is the enormity of the skill gap. It is indeed worrisome that the world, despite having a surplus of workforce, is terribly short of churning out the present-day skills.
The task at hand for talent acquisition will, therefore, assume more importance than what it used to be.Making talent available on a real-time basis is emerging as one of the most critical deliverables for talent acquisition professionals. The most important challenge for this vertical will be to create a facilitating ecosystem, which will support the present-day talent-feed delivery mechanism. Search firms and staffing outfits will have to bid good-bye to the existing talent-feed culture and reinvent to stay relevant.
In crisis lies the opportunity – the appetite for risk-taking will increase manifold as traditional talent-sourcing will no more be an option. I see a plethora of opportunities for those who are willing to sift as freelance recruiters with the ability to deliver on a real-time basis. Freelancers having the right access to the required feed will be a better bet and there is distinct possibility that they will emerge as the biggest challengers to the existing big names. The big search-firms are like big ships – limiting their speed and response time – and therefore the need to restructure and create speedboats will be more paramount than ever. Those in the talent acquisition space – be it internal or external – must embrace the emerging reality that skills and capabilities from the past are now obsolete. They have to redesign and restructure with contemporary skills and capabilities.
The traditional process of hiring strategic and critical roles is also seeing another transformation in the leadership and critical assignments space and this emerging product (albeit more pronounced in the west) is interim leadership. These countries have embraced interim leadership without a wink and are reaping the benefits of this intake. Interim leadership which, in essence, provides talents in very critical and/or leadership roles for precise tasks and a specified tenure, has been gaining global popularity. Such roles usually come with a tenure of six months to two years, as against the engagement of full-time resources, though the need could be for a limited period. It is heartening that India, amongst a few other countries, have made a modest, but a promising kickoff in the intake of interim resources. There are a few success stories already, and these enterprises are coming out with repeat requests for such resources. The start is encouraging and with repeated success stories, it is only a matter of time for this product to establish itself as a cost-efficient talent intake.
Finally and factually the talent acquisition space has indeed been experiencing the transition of the function in the last two years and there will be a surge in the speed of this change in the impending future.One of the dimensions in the changes, which has had a profound effect so far, is the acceptance of diversity, remote and dispersed workforce. Organisations are willing to source the right talents overlooking geographical boundaries, age and disabilities. While this transition has had an adverse impact on those who could not catch up with the emerging reality, it has opened ample doors for freelancers and other networked entrepreneurs who are open to collaborations.
The ones who are adventurous, flexible, digitally literate, can boast of a flair in networking, have an appetite for learning and are blessed with a creative mind will be the best bets for this profession. And those delivering results will chalk out a position of eminence in the industry.
By: Partha Pratim Dasgupta
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