Stop Complaining You Can't Find
Talent, and Start Looking in the Right Places. Here's How
Successful
employers must make a real commitment to expand their college recruiting
efforts.
Executive director, Ed Kaplan Family Institute for Innovation
and Tech Entrepreneurship, Illinois Institute of Technology
There's a sea change coming in college recruiting and, surprisingly
enough, it's not one that is brought about by new technology. It's simply a
result of the commonsense application by more and more employers of an old
fisherman's rule: fish where the fish are. It saves time, wear and tear, and
you get much better results. It's not a solution for everyone, but if you're
tired of making the same old trips to the same old colleges and seeing the same
young pale faces year after year, it might be just the right strategy for you.
I'm excited about this idea because it's going to be one of the
things we'll be talking about during the talent panel that I'm joining on
Tuesday morning in Chicago as part of Inc.'s Fast Growth Tour. The Kaplan Institute
for Innovation and Tech Entrepreneurship at Illinois Tech is one of the main
sponsors of this event. For my two cents, I'm going to be focusing on the
dramatic shifts which are now taking place in terms of where the smartest
employers are starting to look for their new technical talent. It's not where
you might expect and it's certainly not the way they've done business in the
past.
I've spent a large part of the last year in my new role as
Executive Director of Kaplan learning about and working with groups of highly
motivated and well-trained student engineers, computer scientists and big data
specialists who are getting ready to graduate and enter the workforce. An
amazingly large percentage of these students are the first in their families to
attend college and they're just as committed, hardworking and excited about the
opportunities ahead of them as you might expect. And guess what? When they get
their first critical (and life-changing job), they stick around. They're not
job hoppers or kids with one foot out the door looking for their next gig. You
get double bang for your buck--better recruitment and far stronger and longer
retention.
The big difference (and their particular appeal apart from
strong technical chops) is their diversity and for the tech students at IIT
that's a key part of what's driving the new changes we're seeing on campus.
Every employer I have talked to in the past 5 years (while I was running 1871)
says they desperately want diverse technical talent and then they start whining
that it's just so hard to find. I guess it's just a matter of knowing where you
should be looking. And until these guys wake up, they're absolutely right to be
complaining because they're not going to get any better or different results if
they keep doing the same old stuff and looking in the same old places. They
need to find a better place to fish.
The employers who are already ahead of the pack are making a
serious and substantial change and a real commitment to refocusing their
efforts and attention on those schools and universities whose
students/graduates can help them meet their growing need for diverse talent
across all the critical dimensions--gender, race, geography, etc.--and the
institutions which can provide that essential help now. They have finally
figured out that the talent they need to fill the jobs of the future isn't
going to be found in the places they've looked in the past.
We're going to get further into this conversation during the
panel and cover other issues as well around company culture and how to make
sure that you spend some time "re-recruiting" your best existing
employees so they'll stick around to share their experience and expertise and
to give a helping hand to all the newbies. Hope to see you on the Fast Track in
Chicago on Tuesday.