The Talent Scarcity Myth

Most business people believe there is a talent crisis.

Why? Because every professional conference in Human Resources or Retention or Recruiting, starts with a version of:nn * Talent is scarce because the population is agingn * You must spend big dollars on … whatever the conference is about … to either recruit (or retain) people.

And because there are thousands of articles published every year – published or promoted by six powerful groups – to learn who, see a recent article in ShortList.

I hadn’t realised just how many articles and press releases were written on the subject until I talked to the editors of a couple of recruitment and HR magazines!

Now, to believe that talent is scarce and will get worse pre-supposes other beliefs:

1. About what talent is – with the ideal, and scarce, talent being aged 25 to 35, working full time

2. About the processes that are effective at finding talent

3. About how recruitment firms need to operate

4. And that the economic laws of Supply and Demand don’t work (yes, Dorothy, really!)

My argument is that all these beliefs can be rethought. None is set in stone and we will challenge each over the next few weeks.

One thing we learnt once we started the debate on The Skills Shortage Myth: that there are lots of surveys done of recruiters and CEOs, who all say that there is a scarcity. But this presupposes 2 facts: that talent is defined very narrowly; and that they use existing recruitment methodologies - but they don’t know of the alternatives. So, they answer as they see it from existing knowledge.

For now it is enough to begin the debate: That McKinsey’s War for Talent is a phoney war. The real war, in some ways a tougher war, is the ‘War to get the Resources to get the Job Done’. To see the first skirmishes about the Scarcity Myth

It is not just semantics. It is a different war requiring a different focus, different skills and a different mindset.

Over the next few weeks we will examine the first of the 4 beliefs underpinning the Myth: The absurdly tight definition of the talent being fought over. We will start by looking at one unutilised, large and extraordinarily talented group of people: The best and the youngest of Gen Y – undergraduate university students.