All the talent you need is already at your fingertips

Everyone loves to complain about a talent pipeline – but so few leaders are doing something, or anything, to fix it. Just like CEOs should encourage their teams to be solution-oriented at all costs, they need to take their own advice and invest in multiple ways to address the labour needs of their businesses.

One often overlooked tactic is the good old fashioned, “grow your own.” Invest in people early as opposed to relying on headhunting talent from other companies and have a very strong internal talent growth and development programme. Not only does it offer an alternative to hiring job hoppers who will hop again shortly after being hired to their firm, but it creates a loyalty and a mutual reliance between the employee and the company, that creates not only a great workforce, but also a great company culture – one of reward and meritocracy.

This type of strategy focuses more on the individual’s core skills potential, rather than their experience only. We will see this manifest in many ways. We’re going to see more retail and customer service people heading to high-powered sales jobs. More university graduates will head straight to engineering and customer success jobs where they already have much of the required tech skills needed, mostly through certifications.

If we’re doing it right, gone are the days of only relying on headhunters and internal recruiting teams to poach talent at an ever-increasing price from within the industry. Rather, new opportunities will be created for an often-overlooked segment of the employee base, that only needs mentoring and development to become the core of any company’s workforce.