In yesterday’s post, that mentioned that the talent war has just begun, we discussed Don Klock’s keynote at last week’s NPX workshop, put on by the The Mpower Group. In his keynote, Don, a Senior Global Procurement / Supply Chain Executive with over 30 years of experience with multiple major multinationals who is now with the Rutgers Business School, Don noted that, as a result of the severe skilled talent shortage,

Why? Because, to put it in the colourful euphemism us North Americans understand so well, you’ll be up sh*t creek without a paddle otherwise. And while Seth Green, Matthew Lillard, and Dax Shepard might have parlayed their situation into a 69 Million gross for Paramount, you won’t be so lucky.

Fortunately, a resource strategy isn’t that hard. A simple one consists of:

• an internal skills assessment
  to define your skills (& talent) gap
• a training and development program
  to take the both the resources you have, and the resources you bring in, to the next level
• a recruiting plan
  to get that talent

Or course, the recruiting plan can be quit an exercise. After all, where do you look? Internally? Externally? Do you use a recruiting firm? Do you use a temporary staffing agency to keep the canoe afloat in the interim? Do you rotate your top performers through temporary assignments to make sure all critical functions, and tasks, get addressed? Do you just outsource? And if you look external, where? Universities? Industry Associations? Job Boards? Your competitors? The answer is typically — as Don notes — all of the above. You need talent, and you need to get it wherever its, whenever you can, through any means necessary.

This will obviously take some work.

1. First, you will have to identify how you will relate to your job pool.
   These days, talent wants challenging work, good benefits, life/work balance, advancement opportunities, the right culture, and the right management in addition to a good salary. And, in fact, chances are culture, life/work balance, and organizational mission are more important to them. For the Millennials, a lack of focus on environmental stewardship is unthinkable and a kiss-of-death to your organizational future.
2. Then you have to get that message out there.
   You’ll need a great job description, a great corporate message, and a great communicator leading the charge. And this person will have to connect to your talent wherever they are — job fairs, industry events, and on-line social networks like LinkedIn.
3. Finally, you have to rope them in during the interview process.
   An interview is a two-way street now. They are interviewing you as critically as you are interviewing them, if not more so. Not only is their unemployment rate as skilled, college-educated talent, approaching an all-time low, but they know that, in many industries, there are not enough people to meet the demand and that they have the power. You will need to address all of their concerns, and (honestly) demonstrate that your organization is not only paying better but also providing a better work/life balance while providing challenging work and advancement opportunities, and that they will shape the path of the organization going forward. (Of course, if all this isn’t true, then your organization has a big problem as it’s not going to attract much talent until it is.)

Of course, if your organization does all this right it will be one of the few in a position to find, attract, and retain talented resources, which will soon be the supply chain’s number one talent. Almost 25% of the North American workforce is now eligible for (early) retirement. The only reason they are hanging on is the down economy. When it bounces back, they’re gone, and you’re down another 25% (or more) if you’re not ready. So get ready.

This was a central theme of the NPX keynote by Don Klock, Clinical Associate Professor of Supply Chain Management & Marketing Science at Rutgers Business School, a Senior Global Procurement / Supply Chain Executive with over 30 years of experience with multiple major multinationals, including Colgate Palmolive.

Even though unemployment is still near a fifty-five (55) year plus all time high, which was around 10.5% back in the early 80s, it’s becoming harder and harder to fill vacant positions due to the shift in the North American economy which resulted in most Blue Collar jobs being outsourced and the need for more highly skilled white collar workers than the North American economy has traditionally produced. Couple this with declining birth rates in the developed and developing world (even though the global population just hit 7 Billion) and a relatively constant number of University graduates over the last 5 years in North America (approximately 3 Million a year in the US, which is less than 1% of the US population attaining a University degree each year), and the problem starts to take shape. There’s not enough blue collar jobs for those without college degrees, and more jobs that require college degrees and experience than there are college graduates to fill them. When you break down the unemployment rate, as this article in MarketWatch on the “white-collar recession, blue-collar depression” did last year, when the official overall U.S. unemployment rate was 9.6%, and the “underemployment” rate topped 17%, you find that unemployment is less than 4.5% among college graduates vs about 10.8% for those with a high-school diploma and 14.3% for those without one.

This is largely due to the loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs, which have decreased 40% over the last 20 years. The jobs that remain are outsourcing and supply chain management, which involve a lot of skill, experience, and education — which a large percentage of the U.S. population does not have. That’s why we have large multinationals with 500 jobs and no one to fill them!

That’s why, as Don says, the demand for suitably qualified procurement professionals is on the rise and the job of retention and recruiting talent is much more difficult than it has been historically. And that’s why, if your organization is to survive the supply chain talent war, it needs a supply chain resource strategy. Without one, your organization will be left in the dust as your competitors acquire the limited supply of talent that is currently available.

So what should you do? We’ll discuss Don’s suggestion in our next post on the talent gap.