Skills Emergency

Just wanted to say thanks to Sam and the team at Chinwag for inviting me to be on the panel at the Digital Skills Emergency debate last night. Some interesting points raised and it soon become apparent how massive a topic this is. We really only managed to scratch the surface in the time available

From my own perspective the key issues for companies in this space are how they widen their talent pools, be cleverer about how they recruit and how they increase the sophistication of their staff retention strategies. It was interesting to see that companies like Conchango and AMV are already embracing these concepts and moving to more direct sourcing models.

Overall though I think there is a long way to go. It's crazy that most companies in an industry with such an acute skill shortage aren't even advertising their vacancies on their own web sites, let alone considering broader branding, attraction and sourcing strategies. It's only a small first step in solving a deeply complex issue but surely one worth taking!!!

Chinwag have produced a really good report on the issues which is available to download from here

Comments

[Sam Michel]

Thanks for joining the panel last night, Matt. It was great to have you in our gang!

You're not kidding about scratching the surface. As chair, I dutifully prepared some talking points and I didn't get past the first two. We ended up going for an hour and 45 minutes. It might be the longest Chinwag Live ever.

I suspect we could've run on for quite a while, especially with so many good contributions coming from the audience as well as the panel.

It'd be good to have a look at this again in six months and see how things have (hopefully) moved forwards.

[Andy Headworth]

Matt,

I have to share your frustration with clients, who regularly moan about not getting the right calibre of candidates. Then when you dig deeper, you find that they are reliant on agencies, and have no strategy of direct resourcing of any sort at all! It is then surprising that when you mention direct recruiting, they then look at you as if you have two heads!!
They will only learn when it costs them shed loads of cash on fees!!

Well done on the blog results.

Andy