January is the time of year that sees the rich and powerful flock to the snowy mountains of Davos in Switzerland to discuss the most pressing problems currently facing the world. By most measures it is an elite event where one might at least cross paths, if not mix with, the wealthy, the influential and the mighty, from the business community, governments and academia to rock gods and famous philantrophists.

Not only does this event attract the world’s leading exponents of economic and business matters but also political leaders, influential celebrities and a handful of other public figures. So as Bill Gates pledged his millions to fighting aids and David Cameron discussed the political issues within the EU, another topic, of particular interest to us at BraveNewTalent, surfaced frequently throughout the week; the issue of the skills gap!

‘The skills gap’ is a term coined to explain the fact that those newly entering the world of employment do not possess the necessary skills required to fill the advertised vacancies. Essentially, the supply of talent is not meeting the demand of the markets. Furthermore, not enough is being done to provide the training and/or education necessary for applicants to acquire the skills that are needed.

Those who followed the World Economic Forum will have surely recognised that the predominant theme of the week was focused upon the unemployment, especially youth unemployment. Both are issues facing the world in the current disturbing economic climate. This ever-increasing and problematic issue was a prime focal point at Davos, the serene and luxurious location in Switzerland that has been home for the forum since its foundation in 1971, and was discussed in a number of sessions during the week. Highlights included a workshop looking at mobilising skills and revitalising education, a session focused on the gaps in the talent market and an ‘Ideas Lab’ focused on job and growth creation by addressing skill shortages.[1] Common to all of these sessions was the discussion regarding the “lost generation” – those unable to find jobs. The delegates at the World Economic Forum declared that prevention of this looming problem is one of the key aims that the world needs to address quickly.

The fact that it has become such a widely debated issue has undoubtedly been prompted by the somewhat depressing report published, just a week prior to the Forum, by the International Labour Organization. According to the report the world faces the daunting challenge of producing more than 600 million jobs within the next decade “…in order to generate sustainable growth and maintain social cohesion…”. Juan Samovia, the ILO’s Director-General, stated that more than 1.1 billion people are either currently unemployed or are living in poverty. It is clear that statistics like these have impacted greatly on those attending the WEF.[2]

The executive chairman of Google, Eric Schmit, argued on the other hand that there was not a ‘jobs crisis’ as such. But he went on to concede that (in relation to the skills gap) “…unemployment is predominantly the result of inadequate skills among the workforce, a problem that could be addressed with better education.”[3]

Klaus Schwab, the founder of the WEF, has also commented at Davos last week that capital is no longer the most significant resource in the world, now it is Talent; “the old model was Capitalism, the new model is Talentism”[4]. A report published by the WEF however, has reiterated the problem that talent isn’t achieving its full potential, mainly due to a lack of skills training and the consequential skills gap that has developed as a result.

The fact that this topic has been so prevalently debated can only mean good things for those, mainly young people, affected by its existence. With the help of BraveNewTalent, who look to help close this gap, perhaps in a few years time, looking back at Davos 2012 we will be writing about the improved situation with regard to unemployment… or at least the foundations are being laid to construct the bridge between talent and skills.
Lesley is a journalist and current community moderator for BraveNewTalent. If you like her style you can also see her writing about football here.

Sources
http://www.ghanabusinessnews.com/2012/01/15/collaboration-in-talent-mobility-is-key-to-job-creation-wef/
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/world/2012-01/18/c_122603698.htm
http://efareport.wordpress.com/2012/01/24/at-davos-the-skills-gap-is-on-the-guest-list/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/27/eric-schmidt-davos_n_1237142.html

References
[1] http://efareport.wordpress.com/2012/01/24/at-davos-the-skills-gap-is-on-the-guest-list/
[2] ibid
[3] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/27/eric-schmidt-davos_n_1237142.html
[4] http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/world/2012-01/18/c_122603698.htm

The Talent Series Event discussing the Future of Talent in India was held in earlier this month in January 2012. In case you missed it, here are the highlights:

On 6 January BraveNewTalent organized the first event of the in the “Talent Series” – a conversation about Talent and Technology focusing on the Future of Talent in India. About 40 people attended from organizations as varied as KPMG, Amazon, SAP, Hewlett Packard, Genpact, Intel, Oracle and Nike.

Dheeraj Prasad (BraveNewTalent India MD) welcomed everyone and introduced the panel:

Pratik Kumar, VP-HR of Wipro and President, Wipro Infrastructure Engineering, Madan Padaki, CEO of Erudient, a Manipal Group Company, Krishna Prasad, Chief Experience Officer of Dentsu and Lucian Tarnowski, CEO of BraveNewTalent.

Lucian started by explaining that the Talent Series is about the conversation of talent and technology and that it is quite appropriate that it’s happening first in India. India is ground zero for talent. One in four of the world’s workforce in the future will be Indian. Lucian shared how his vision of the Talent Series is modeled like the Renaissance Salon, since we are going through a major shift and second renaissance like the time of the Medicis. Introducing BraveNewTalent, Lucian said that we connect Employers, Employment and Education. The model of talent communities is not something new to India. The origin of communities for learning started in India – and in the new virtual world, India can leapfrog the bricks and mortar model of education to education delivered via the cloud by employers.

Madan Padaki showed a video that questioned the concept of “employability”. In the video Ramesh (an 18 year old from a village, without any skills or education) was taught in seven months to write and speak in English and is now employed and manages a team currently in a rural BPO firm. Madan therefore asserted his hypothesis is there is nothing called employability, and everybody is employable. Madan stressed that we have to change the lens with which we see talent and skills and the current model of certifying learning is dead. Social and informal learning is the future. Technology will be so embedded in learning, that there will be no such thing as ‘technology based learning’ – it will simply be learning, according to Madan.

Pratik shared that technology leads to “Empowerment” in employees where earlier learning and access to information was linked to where people were in the hierarchy. Now it has liberated organization and people from that, knowledge is now available to everyone. It leads to ‘boundarylessness’ – interactions, mentoring, and learning from people across structures and companies. It enables employees to rally and make their point of view heard. The other big factor is Personalization – technology gives us the ability to personalize information and content to an employees needs and interest. This will become more and more important going forward.

Krishna shared that online is growing, access is becoming easier for users and the availability of content is increasing.

Ferose VR (MD of SAP Labs, where the Talent Series was held) shared that the traditional methods of learning are no longer relevant, and at SAP Labs they are getting rid of them. Most traditional forms learning delivers exposure but does not deliver experiences. So, for example, communications training is done by doing theater workshops. That is how the employees gain experience, by actually doing it.

Ferose stated that there is a difference between being intelligent and being interesting. Today’s world needs people who are interesting. For real innovation to happen there has to be an intersection of science and humanities. SAP Labs is therefore exposing people (like engineers) to art, literature, humanities – to foster innovation and creativity.

Lucian asked the panel what they felt the role of employers is in bridging the skills gap in India.

Pratik answered that there are several things that can be done in the precincts of the organizations, but it is an inefficient use of time. It is not the job of organizations to create campuses to upskill people. But unless the government, HRD ministry and the AICTE step up, they will have to, as the inability to get the right kind of talent impacts the future of organizations. It cannot be the job of one organization. Organizations are dissipating their energies doing this individually. They need to collaborate together and form a platform for doing this.

Within the organization we have to liberate the process of learning, asserted Pratik. The line between who you are personally and who are you professionally are getting blurred. The intermingling needs to be seamless. Wipro allowed its employees to bring their own devices to work to enable them to learn on their preferred device.

Madan added that as long as you don’t change what you measure you will never change what people learning. One of the things they did at Merittrac was they pulled out a “long term” team and told them you don’t have any quarterly targets or short term numbers, only focus on the future and they are doing some great work.

Lucian then asked the panel about their thoughts about technology and its use in the recruiting space.

Madan shared an example where they put out a simulation game of a college fest to MBA students to simulate a business problem. Every click when they play the game gives great level of data and analytics as to how they think. The future model would be to get students to play multiplayer games and give different companies different analytics as they want to focus on different set of behaviours from the same simulation.

Pratik shared that the true impact of technology would be in productivity gains in the recruitment process. Wipro has tried out many initiatives to figure out how to get applicants to match to openings and is experimenting currently in using predictive analytics at an experimental level.

Lucian’s next question was that in the age of social media, what the panel thought of companies models of controlling the message and what is the future of corporate communications?

Krishna shared that although digital brought on- to-one messaging, its importance is more than communication and advertising. It’s 70% about insights. There is so much data out there that you need to have an eye for what you want. The lines between Marketing and PR and who controls communications is blurring. Social touches every aspect of the organization and consumers lives. Often it is outsourced to a third party which does not understand the brand and this will have a negative effect on the employer brand.

Lucian stated that the candidates are ahead of the employers and organizations have to get on to the train that is quickly leaving the station. In 2012 we will see social recruiting become mainstream. Talent is now more important than capital, so the Chief Talent Officer has to be more important than the Chief Financial Officer.

There was then an interactive question and answer session between the audience and the panel. We will post the link to the video online as soon as it is ready.

First in The Talent Series – the global events programme hosted by BraveNewTalent – is A Conversation on the Convergence of Talent & Technology.

Held in Bangalore, India at SAP’s HQ, a panel of illustrious speakers join an incredible guestlist of business leaders alongside out own Gautam Ghosh, Dheeraj Pasad and Lucian Tarnowski.

If you couldn’t be there yourself, you can watch live on Ustream or follow all the action on the CoveritLive event: Click Here (opens pop up window so you can view the event.)

You can also contribute yourself to the event by using (and following) the hashtag on Twitter – #TalentSeries

More information on the line up is below.

Krishna Prasad Chief Experience Officer/Head of Digital – Dentsu Krishna’s job is to turn insights into innovations that result in meaningful engagements for consumers, aligning client business goals with customer needs by driving value and relevance – especially where product development blurs with marketing, creativity becomes inseparable from technology, and brand and business strategy converge.

Pratik Kumar Executive VP-HR, Wipro & President, Wipro Infrastructure Engineering Pratik has been associated with Wipro for the last 19 years and is a member of Wipro’s senior leadership team, closely associated with Wipro’s growth over the years, and played a significant role in shaping it into a strong global player. As a professional for over 22 years, Pratik has experience in a variety of areas. Pratik currently leads the Human Resources function for Wipro.Since July 2010 Pratik has assumed leadership of Wipro Infrastructure Engineering business as President, Wipro Infrastructure Engineering. In addition, Pratik continues to lead the Human Resources function for Wipro. Pratik is also a member of the Corporate Executive Council of Wipro.

Madan Padaki CEO, Erudient, a Manipal Group company An active speaker at many forums, specifically on topics pertaining to Assessments, Talent Pools and Employability Enhancement, he is the author of several articles on HR and Employability which have been published in leading publications in India. He serves on the Governing Council of DOEACC (Ministry of IT, Govt. of India) to evaluate IT education in India. He is an active member of NASSCOM, CII, TiE etc.

Moderated by Lucian Tarnowski CEO – BraveNewTalent Lucian (27) is the Founder of BraveNewTalent, the career social network helping talent and employers connect and build relationships leading to employment. Lucian has been honoured as Europe’s youngestYoung Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. He is winner of the Global Enterprising Young Brit of 2009 and was named as one of Britain’s rising business stars.

By Maren Hogan

Hey all, just back from the Illinois State SHRM conference in Chicago, IL. It was an amazing conference with too many great speakers to list. At last count, over 800 HR pros assembled to learn more about social recruiting, employer branding, culture and engagement and of course, compliance. BraveNewTalent was proud to sponsor this amazing conference and we were able to get some amazing video along with fellow vlogging folks like Geoff Webb and Curtis Midkiff from SHRM.

With three keynotes, 6 concurrents at every session and countless conversations over breaks and lunches, it can be tough to choose an overarching theme, but here is my best shot. (I cheated, there are two…)

“You’re being asked to do more with less.” With unemployment in the US hovering just under 10% and HR budgets getting slashed, hiring managers, recruiters and talent professionals the world over are being asked to hire more, better, faster and cheaper…often with a smaller staff then ever before. Speakers like Jennifer McClure, Dwane Lay and Michael VanDervort laid out the stats and followed up with concrete solutions. Social media is not free (especially if you value your time) but it is important and solutions that consolidate and not only help you reach more people but filter and engage with them are becoming more popular than ever. Asked in Jessica Miller Merrell’s session “How do you find time to deal with social media every day?” Merrell pointed to great tools like Hootsuite and Google Plus as automating without losing your voice.

“You have more influence than you think.” Always a big topic at HR conferences, the seat at the table discussion was not even spoken. Instead, luminaries like China Gorman, Ryan Estis and Joe Gerstandt and Jason Lauritsen demanded that HR pros find their power, arm themselves with relevant business information and push the line farther by doing their job. “Talk about what’s going right,” exhorted Gorman. Lauritsen likened internal politicking to good sales and blew my mind with the gem “It’s not about who CAN say NO. It’s about who MUST say YES.” Are you asking the wrong people for permission to be better at your job?

I spend a lot of time talking to HR professionals, who give me the gift of their time. To listen to what I have to say, to try what I have to offer, to learn a little bit more from my experience. You know what they all have in common? They’re willing to try, to reach a little farther and in two words…Man Up (or perhaps more appropriately given the female-to-male ratio at most HR conferences) WOMAN Up!

You don’t know the answer to the question? Take advantage of demos, webinars, conferences and blogs to build your knowledge base.

Team’s been thinned out? Use new technologies that help you build your brand in less time.

Need more qualified and better candidates? Figure out how to use filtering and sorting to reach the right folks.

Did your budget get pulled out from under you? Give free tools a try and learn how to organically boost your talent base. (What you really thought that wasn’t gonna be there?)

By Maren Hogan

I was recently in San Antonio for Talent Net Live, held at Rackspace Hosting. Robert Scoble kicked the day off for a large group of HR and Recruiting pros. While not a recruiter or involved in talent management himself, Scobleizer has frequently been courted by companies, large and small and has paid particular attention to what brings talent to the table. And some of his ideas, while simplified here, made a lot of sense.

Cultural fit is important. This seems like a no-brainer. But often in in a down economy (as jobseekers) or when we’re desperate for a technical resource (as hiring managers) we overlook what should be red flags. Assessing cultural fit goes both ways though. As information about companies, internal teams and even hiring process, goes online, companies expect jobseekers to know ‘what they’re getting into.” Similarly, as employers build their brand and have the “inside” advantage, they need to focus more on who they hire and teach to the skill.

People want to work on inspiring projects. Right? Easy to say if you’re Robert Scoble, but what about the rest of us? In fact, that very question was leveled at him, both from the talent perspective and from repressed HR reps who felt they were trying to effect change. Scoble’s answer? In not so many words…if you’re not inspired by your project, company, manager or team, work somewhere else.

Working from home increases loyalty and productivity. Yep, take it from a home working devotee, it does indeed. This is important to note from a hiring perspective, as the opposite is usually assumed and even cited as a reason for employees to have less freedom.

Build your brand around social objects. Or in other words (in my words) don’t yap on and on about your company solution, talk about what you have in common with your customers. The object is the search for the perfect career journey and the other commonalities we share, not whether we both list “career social networks” on our eHarmony profile

Use the rock star method to hire smarter people. Scoble is right, this guy is not as right, you can read my response here. Rock stars (regardless of your feelings about the terminology) make the rest of the team up their game. When I found out this guy was coming on board here, as well as this one, I knew I had to be in tip top form to keep up.

Hire people who are passionate about your industry and will translate that passion to your customers. Scoble said, “Do you really think Mike Rowe wants to go through a vat of crap on his weekends? No, but he’s getting paid a ****load of money (no pun intended) to do it.” That money makes Rowe passionate about something decidedly less sexy, which brings me to my, er, Robert’s next point…

You have to make SOMETHING sexy. If it’s not the company, then the project, if not the project, then the workspace, if not the workspace then the perks or the arrangement, if not that, then the tools. SOMETHING.

And when frustrated job seekers or HR pros raised their hands in frustration “What if NONE of that is sexy? What if I can’t affect any change?” the answer from Scoble (and myself) is “Don’t Work There!!”

PS TalentNetLive is a great conference that started in March at SXSW, went through San Antonio in July and will finish next week in Dallas. BraveNewTalent is a sponsor and I’ll be discussing Talent Communities and Sourcing.

By Maren Hogan

This week, BraveNewTalent focuses on the specifics of recruiting for retail. Retail specific recruiting and sourcing can be difficult on the one hand because potential candidates are overwhelming and have a multitude of skills. On the flip side, the opportunities with which to interact with your soon-to-be employees can be deeply integrated with marketing and of course recruiting efforts can work within retail locations.

Our Talent Community platform is being used by leading retail employers every day to source, recruit and distribute jobs to jobseekers. BraveNewTalent’s social recruiting tools address many of the recruiting maxims unique to recruiting in retail.

Maxim #1: Turn every employee into a brand ambassador. Allowing your employees in-store, at corporate headquarters and in distribution locations to “toot the company horn” is a very powerful thing. Using a system well equipped to handle referrals that also allows your talent acquisition function to tap into the entire available social graph harnesses that power to create great hires.

Maxim #2: Create a focused online presence. Our community platform lets the voice of your company shine through with blog posts, RSS feeds, YouTube videos and more. All available positions, company news, social media links and a Q&A forum that lets you guide applicants through the process.

Maxim #3: “Drip” your frequently open opportunities. Our free unlimited job postings help retail companies (click here to see retail case studies) attract and source the talent they need. Our clients include L’Oreal, Tesco.com, Arcadia Group and Starbucks. The integration with networks like Facebook, LinkedIn and more spread the word to where candidates are spending their time.

Maxim #4: Stem the tide. Can’t find the one perfect candidate out of a thousand resumes? Use BraveNewTalent’s listing, sorting and filtering capabilities to select the right group and message them one at a time, in a group or in their entirety, right from the employer dashboard.

In Canada, retail positions are up by 61% from last year according to this blog post. In May, retail recruiting slipped to 3.5% (from April’s number of 3.7%) in the Americas, according to Kronos while maintaining a 19-month high in the UK. With need increasing in the Americas, the UK and globally, recruiting for retail has never been more important. For every unique challenge the vertical presents, it has an equally exciting upside. According to the Jobvite Social Recruiting Survey, 89% of companies will recruit from social networks this year. Talent Communities build on social recruiting, allowing you to source, engage and develop your future hires.

If you haven’t already, join us! Building a Talent Community is free and takes just a few minutes to set up. Register now>>

By Maren Hogan

We’ve been busy little bees over here at BraveNewTalent, trying to incorporate new features, update campaigns, onboard new clients and spread our community tentacles to the farthest edge of the globe. Meanwhile, back on the ranch, in the States I’ve been trying to build up education around Talent Communities. And it’s not easy. For many, Talent Communities are just an HR Tech salesperson’s amped up consumer communities (nope), for others, they’re a proprietary network that only goes one way (not that either) and for still more the very concept is vague and ambiguous and doesn’t really mean much in the grand scheme of things.

At TalentNetLive (#TNL for you Twitter youngsters) Monster’s Matt Charney and myself decided to see if we could get to the bottom of the Talent Community issues and thought (rightfully so) that the quickest way to decoding a Talent Community would be to define it. But even at this embryonic stage, we found ourselves trying to manage consensus, and it wasn’t easy. But thanks to many smart corporate recruiters and curious and intelligent HR Professionals, we were able to come up with some standards:

- Rules of Engagement. Whether they’re set by the community manager, common knowledge within in the confines of the community or simply emerge as a sort of communal martial law, rules of engagement are a community commonality.

- Common Interest. In many communities, this is because everyone DOES the same thing or is interested in the same thing. In Talent Communities, it can be that or the Employer and its internal advocates can serve as the “nucleus of shared interest”.

- It has to be at LEAST two way. Carrie Corbin from AT&T cited some pretty incredible statistics but was quick to point out that her network was not a proper community as there was no interaction from the community back to AT&T. It was all one way.

- Communities tend to be transitory. Particularly Talent Communities. People join for a time, then lurk, the participate and finally move back to lurking and/or becoming a “tour guide” for the community itself.

What are some of your must-haves for talent communities? Did you build it yourself or use a platform? Any ideas on what a Talent Community is NOT?

Here is how we’ve defined it here at BraveNewTalent: “A Talent Community is a place, sometimes online, that is created for targeted, qualified individuals to engage with company representatives to develop a sustainable pipeline for sourcing, recruiting, training and development.”

By Ramon Bez,
Head of Marketing & Talent Words™

Facebook just launched Real-Time Targeting adverts, a feature that will speed up the delivery of ads in real-time based on a set of qualified actions a person takes on the site.

For example, if I update my status with “This is why I love being a lawyer in London”, I will immediately qualify to see ads from employers who targeted people who are Lawyers based in London, all in real-time.

At BraveNewTalent we’re excited about it because it makes Talent Words™ more efficient than ever. Users have always discussed their professional lives on Facebook, talking about jobs and careers with their friends even though most of them wouldn’t want employers to check their personal profiles.

Employers can now use Talent Words™ to attract their ideal candidates at the very moment they are discussing their careers, but bring them to the safe environment that is their Talent Communities on BraveNewTalent, and engage with them professionally outside Facebook.

Exciting times!