Competing For Talent

Executive
Guidance
Competing for Talent
in the Digital Age
Confidentiality and Intellectual Property
These materials have been prepared by Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates
(“Gartner”) for the exclusive and individual use of our CEB Leadership Council
member companies. These materials contain valuable confidential and proprietary
information belonging to Gartner, and they may not be shared with any third party
(including independent contractors and consultants) without the prior approval of
Gartner. Gartner retains any and all intellectual property rights in these materials
and requires retention of the copyright mark on all pages reproduced.
Legal Caveat
Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates (“Gartner”) is not able to guarantee the accuracy of
the information or analysis contained in these materials. Furthermore, Gartner is not
engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or any other professional services. Gartner
specifically disclaims liability for any damages, claims, or losses that may arise from
a) any errors or omissions in these materials, whether caused by Gartner or its
sources, or b) reliance upon any recommendation made by Gartner
© 2017 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. CEB173018
Detail about CEB and its subsidiaries, now part of Gartner, can be found at gartner.
com/ceb-offices.
2 Executive Guidance 2017 | Q3 © 2017 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Detail about CEB and its subsidiaries, now part of Gartner, can be found at gartner.com/ceb-offices.
Introduction: Today’s What Many Organizations
4 Labor Market Realities 12 Do Now Isn’t Working

in the Digital Age
6 What are Digital Skills? 14 • Understanding and Confronting

Brand Misperceptions
• Coaching Prospects’
Career Decisions
• Cultivating Critical Talent Supply
• Adopting a Flexible Planning
Strategy
8 Converging Demand • Anticipating Needs and
Available Resources
Conclusion: The Power

10 Changing Dynamics 22 of Market-Driven Sourcing
© 2017 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Competing for Talent in the Digital Age 3
Introduction: Today’s
Labor Market Realities
Digitalization across a range of industries is creating stifle productivity, innovation, and business growth:
enormous competition for new talent skilled in product development initiatives stall, product
navigating and manipulating the digital environment. launches are delayed, new business cannot be
All sectors of the economy now feel pressure to hire won, and existing customers are not served as well.
talent with digital skills, not just sectors once viewed Talent shortages also have a network effect whereby
as sitting on the leading technological edge. existing employees’ engagement and retention suffer
as they must work harder to cover staffing gaps.
Organizations are looking to create new revenue and
value by using digital technologies. Regardless of the As businesses digitalize operations and go-to-market
core industry or function, digital skills are used to models, we see a convergence of needed skills across
update and improve how people experience brands. sectors. This is putting pressure on organizations
Digitalization changes the way companies deliver competing for talent, even as that talent moves away
products or services and, as a result, changes their from traditional online recruiting tools.
operations. In this way, digitalization has a profound
The most progressive organizations are modifying
impact on how organizations must compete for talent.
their traditional approaches to recruiting. They are
Talent shortages are significantly affecting the adopting market-driven approaches and recruiting
business; for example, median time to fill increased strategies to reflect labor market realities as well as
by a staggering 30 business days between 2010 organizational needs.
and 2017. This slowdown in filling critical roles can
What Are
Digital Skills?
Digital skills go beyond
the skills needed to create
new technologies.
6 2017 || Q3
Executive Guidance 2017 Q3 © 2017
© 2017 Gartner,
Gartner, Inc.
Inc. and/or
and/or its
its affiliates.
affiliates. All
All rights
rights reserved.
reserved.
Detail
Detail about
about CEB
CEB and
and its
its subsidiaries,
subsidiaries, now
now part
part of
of Gartner,
Gartner, can
can be
be found
found at
at gartner.com/ceb-offices.
gartner.com/ceb-offices.
Digital skills comprise the ability to develop, implement, The 20 Most In-Demand Digital Skills
and use digital technologies in the workplace. Demand
Java
is highest for the digital skills needed to create new
Technical Support
technologies, including programming languages and
Structured Query Language (SQL)
software development strategies. While talent with
Linux
these specialized skills develop new tools and networks,
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
nearly all companies need talent with a related set of
specialist skills to ensure effective implementation and JavaScript
maintenance of digital technologies in the workplace. Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)
As digitalization continues to expand beyond the IT Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
industry to all sectors, demand for these specialized C/C++
skills will increase. C#
Microsoft .NET Framework
In addition, companies need nontechnical employees
Microsoft SQL Server
with digital skills in order to use digital technology
Python
and, more importantly, capitalize fully on technology
Big Data
opportunities and investments. Digital skills are
therefore in demand across sectors and within roles Systems Integration
that traditionally did not require them. Marketing UNIX
managers, customer service reps, accountants, Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC)
auditors, and lawyers all need to be able to navigate Extensible Markup Language (XML)
the evolving digital landscape, including new software, Web Services
analytical techniques, and reporting platforms. Instrumentation
Note: This list is based on demand for digital skills

in Australia, China, Germany, South Africa, the
United Kingdom, and the United States.
© 2017
© 2017 Gartner,
Gartner, Inc.
Inc. and/or
and/or its
its affiliates.
affiliates. All
All rights
rights reserved.
reserved. Competing for Talent in the Digital Age 7
Detail
Detail about
about CEB
CEB and
and its
its subsidiaries,
subsidiaries, now
now part
part of
of Gartner,
Gartner, can
can be
be found
found at
Converging
Demand
8 2017 || Q3
Executive Guidance 2017 Q3 © 2017 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Thomas Handcock, HR practice leader with CEB, Handcock’s team has analyzed indexes, including the
now Gartner, observes that the convergence of FTSE 100 and S&P 100, and quantified the extent of
demand across industries places a huge amount this converging demand:
of pressure on an already stressed talent pool. He
“We looked at data from our TalentNeuron™
notes: “This competitive climate hits companies that
platform on all of the job postings done by the
aren’t traditionally associated with those skill sets
S&P 100 companies in 2016, and we found that
particularly hard.”
while they were hiring for close to 9,000 different
New- and old-world industries now compete for the positions, 39% of all the job posting activity was
same talent. Take software developer talent as one focused on just 29 jobs. What’s more, for each of
example: those 29 jobs, most of which are roles that require
digital and analytic skills, we found that 90% of
• Insurance companies looking to assess driver risk
those S&P 100 companies were recruiting for each
are hiring software developers to develop driver-
role. And it’s not limited to just S&P companies;
profiling tools.
this is a trend that we are seeing across all
• Manufacturers planning to digitalize their geographies.
manufacturing processes are trying to hire the
“To put it simply: companies across diverse
same software developers.
industries and across the globe are converging
• The farm-equipment company now needs on the same talent pools.”
software developers to build tractors with artificial
intelligence features that adjust to weather
conditions.
• Then there’s Alphabet/Google and other highly

valued tech stars, which already loom large on the
radar screens of top software developer talent.
Changing
Dynamics
10 2017 || Q3
© 2017 Gartner,
Gartner, Inc.
Inc. and/or
and/or its
its affiliates.
affiliates. All
All rights
rights reserved.
reserved.
Detail
Detail about
about CEB
CEB and
and its
its subsidiaries,
subsidiaries, now
now part
part of
of Gartner,
Gartner, can
can be
be found
found at
Some in-demand jobs and roles are rooted in With organizational talent needs constantly changing,
consumer-driven behavioral changes, like the way we new jobs emerging, and existing jobs changing
shop and buy things. But sometimes the demand for from within, every company needs to review its
new skills is driven by organizational dynamics and recruiting strategy.
the recognition that there are better ways to perform
It seems particularly reasonable to Dunstan Arthur,
certain jobs, which can have equally long-term effects.
Talent Management practice director with CEB, now
Jobs are changing and often require different skills.
Gartner: “Increasingly, it is hard to use static job
Recruiting for new roles that are unfamiliar to legacy descriptions as the nature of jobs change.”
management tends to lengthen the hiring process.
It requires input from an increasing number of
individuals to measure how the candidate might fit
in the organization. If well managed, this process will
yield good results; but if it’s managed poorly, time to
hire for critical roles will increase.
What Many
Organizations Do
Now Isn’t Working
12 2017 || Q3
© 2017 Gartner,
Gartner, Inc.
Inc. and/or
and/or its
its affiliates.
affiliates. All
All rights
rights reserved.
reserved.
Detail
Detail about
about CEB
CEB and
and its
its subsidiaries,
subsidiaries, now
now part
part of
of Gartner,
Gartner, can
can be
be found
found at
Our data analysis and ongoing discussions with Recruiting leaders have revealed four common barriers
to competing effectively for critical talent:
Static brand attributes Changes in prospect Overly specific hiring Lack of supply
(e.g., location, industry, behavior make it demands from managers exacerbates competition
size) limit access to harder for recruiters who have a fixed and as educational institutions
certain talent pools that to effectively engage uncompromising idea struggle to produce
don’t like these essential with them. of the kind of person enough students with
facts about a company. they want to hire and in-demand skills.
the way to do the job can
make it difficult to find
viable talent.
Conventional recruiting strategies cannot change these fundamental dynamics, and the following mistakes
are often made:
Promoting appealing Focusing too much Prioritizing preferred Assuming more pay
brand attributes, which on developing a sales skills and experience translates to more quality
isn’t enough to stand pitch and not enough instead of looking for hires and underestimating
out amid the noise on offering a transparent what is truly needed other value drivers among
from online jobs sites look into the role and to get the job done top talent
addressing candidates’
career goals and skills
in the Digital Age
14 2017 || Q3
© 2017 Gartner,
Gartner, Inc.
Inc. and/or
and/or its
its affiliates.
affiliates. All
All rights
rights reserved.
reserved.
Detail
Detail about
about CEB
CEB and
and its
its subsidiaries,
subsidiaries, now
now part
part of
of Gartner,
Gartner, can
can be
be found
found at
Innovative businesses are identifying available local
and global talent by taking a proactive, analytics-
based approach to anticipating and filling skill gaps. The New Sourcing
They are designing bottom-up processes to project
skill needs for the next three to five years. Strategies
Businesses will always want better talent faster. • Understanding and Confronting
Traditionally, Recruiting functions have focused Brand Misperceptions
their efforts on doing their best to deliver what the • Coaching Prospects’ Career Decisions
business wants. The best organizations, however,
• Cultivating Critical Talent Supply
recognize that this “service delivery model”
cannot sustainably support the long-term digital • Adopting a Flexible Planning Strategy
transformation of the enterprise. They are taking a • Anticipating Needs and Available
more labor market–centric view of their Resources
recruitment process.
Understanding and Confronting
Brand Misperceptions
Many organizations struggle with weak employment The challenge of fully controlling your brand story
brand attributes. Employment brands are nowhere puts greater pressure on static brand attributes such
near as differentiated as organizations think they as location and industry, particularly because critical
are, and they generally coalesce around a handful talent can afford to be picky about where they work
of blandly aspirational messages related to career and what sort of company they work for.
development and social responsibility.
AT&T found greater success in recruiting efforts when
If you don’t believe this, think about your industry or it addressed candidates’ company misperceptions.
talent competitors and take a look at their careers The company understood from its market research
sites—are their messages really that different and that there were two reasons recent college graduates
unique from each other and from your organization’s? were not accepting their job offers: the company’s
location in Dallas and a perception that the industry
Undifferentiated employment brands produce a lot
was not exciting or innovative.
of “white noise” candidates can easily tune out. And
if candidates are interested in your organization, So the company sought to change people’s minds. It
candidates have access to a wide set of unofficial brought college graduates to Dallas; introduced them
and unvarnished sources of information about your to the entrepreneurial community; took them to see
employment proposition. For example, candidates its social media command center; and hung out with
can use social media to crowdsource information, them at AT&T Stadium (home of the Dallas Cowboys),
check reviews on Glassdoor, or look up the profiles where they got to see AT&T technology in action (and
of potential team members on networking sites. play some football, of course).
“It’s really trying to lift the hood on all the innovative
things the company is doing that you as a consumer
don’t know about and wouldn’t see,” explains
Handcock. “Instead of ignoring candidate objections,
AT&T tackled them head-on by highlighting innovation
that drives excitement about the company and
its jobs.”
Best Practice
AT&T confronts its brand weaknesses by
diagnosing and embracing brand attributes
that were not attraction drivers for critical
talent segments.
Coaching Prospects’
Career Decisions
Increasingly, top talent is unplugging from popular Here is how progressive organizations are preparing
networking platforms to escape the relentless to change how they engage with candidates and think
recruiting. Handcock offers a solution: about skill pools:
“One of the things the most effective recruiters • Building candidate personas—A large investment
are doing to reach job seekers numbed by an service company built candidate personas
overload of recruitment outreach is to reposition to uncover what motivates critical marketing
themselves as career coaches. Rather than just talent. These personas inform job descriptions,
trying to sell the job, they prompt prospects to segmented employment branding, and (in some
think about their career goals and where their cases) job design. Building candidate personas
strengths lie, and they help prospects consider is a key technique in taking a candidate-centric
their options.” approach that outlines the best personality and
candidate attributes for different jobs.
Engaging more deeply with prospects opens the door
to an authentic discussion about job opportunities. • Hiring for a team—Successful organizations have
This transparent approach to matching qualifications, found that digitalization has driven them to take
aptitude, and attitude increases the likelihood a more personal look at individual candidates and
of hiring the right candidates. Even deflecting what’s required of them. They hire team members
a mismatch by steering a candidate to a better with sufficient skills and a suitable temperament
company fit ultimately benefits the company and to fit in and collaborate with a team and adapt as
its brand. job requirements change.
Cultivating Critical
Talent Supply
“Attracting candidates isn’t hard. Attracting good allows organizations to recruit from larger or different
ones is. Most organizations need to sift out the talent pools. For example, a fintech company hiring
unsuitable ones, but they need to do this without for positions with a mix of technical and financial skills
risking brand damage,” says Arthur. might seek two members of a team, one to provide
the technical skill and the other to provide financial
Candidates are a recognized stakeholder in the
industry experience.
hiring process. This status is driven by scarcity in
some sectors as well as candidate expectations. It is also worth considering whether to remove
Organizations are learning to build in interactive certain barriers to applying for a position online.
touchpoints that mirror the candidates’ journey and Doing so will garner a high volume of applications
allow candidates to explore and evaluate the role and quickly but require more work to filter out unqualified
the organization while informing candidates’ decision candidates. Some organizations find the volume
to commit to a full application. yields more individuals with the intelligence,
aptitude, and temperament needed to collaborate
“It means treating candidates with respect, making
on new business growth opportunities. These
hiring a two-way process with transparency and
organizations are rewriting job descriptions to
feedback as standard,” says Arthur.
attract candidates flexible enough to be productive
One effective way to enlarge the size of the available as role responsibilities evolve and change. They are
“right talent” pool is to separate the skills, intelligence, also getting creative about tracking down potential
and temperament required to do a job from its candidates at trade shows, conferences, and other
description. Disaggregating the job and its duties events where they are likely to gather.
Adopting a Flexible
Planning Strategy
Recruiting is typically dependent on an annual, top- kinds of jobs there are going to be, and if there are
down hiring plan, which lacks the precision to guide any planned requisitions that have been canceled.”
resource allocation. An effective alternative is adding
This bottom-up forecast data is corroborated with
a bottom-up approach. Because functional leaders
top-down hiring projections from Finance, which
and their teams generate critical data on how jobs are
helps resolve discrepancies between the top-down
changing, it makes sense to turn to them for hiring
forecast and requisition reality in the lines of business.
insights. They are the first to know the skills and
temperament required for the job.
The global engineering company CH2M recognized

that top-down hiring forecasts from its Finance team
were neither timely nor accurate enough to help Best Practice
Recruiting allocate resources as needs changed. In
CH2M gains insight on hiring demand by
order to generate a more timely and granular estimate
providing visibility into the recruiting process,
of hiring volume, CH2M took its lead in forecasting
collecting bidirectional hiring data, and
from on-the-ground talent managers tasked with
showing the business the implications of
collecting information on quarterly estimates of
hiring volume changes.
expected reductions, turnover, replacements, and the
need for new hires.
Handcock explains, “CH2M polls its people on the

front lines where hiring decisions are made and
crowdsources a perspective around how much hiring
will happen over the next three to four months, what
Anticipating Needs
and Available Resources
The best companies use labor market intelligence to

avoid supply shortages and identify emergent needs
based on changes in the marketplace. They recognize Best Practice
that the style of doing some jobs changes rapidly.
Philips leverages unique insight on labor
And they are optimizing search criteria to identify
market dynamics to better understand new
new talent pools.
and unfamiliar talent demand.
Recognizing this need, Philips has invested in a team
of three researchers who constantly collect and
monitor labor market intelligence used to anticipate
labor market risks. The team tracks and analyzes what
the company’s competitors are doing, industry trends,
candidate profile changes, and macroeconomic
conditions—all of which inform its advice and
guidance for the business.
Conclusion: The Power
of Market-Driven
Sourcing
22 2017 || Q3
© 2017 Gartner,
Gartner, Inc.
Inc. and/or
and/or its
its affiliates.
affiliates. All
All rights
rights reserved.
reserved.
Detail
Detail about
about CEB
CEB and
and its
its subsidiaries,
subsidiaries, now
now part
part of
of Gartner,
Gartner, can
can be
be found
found at
Organizations that adopt a more market-driven
approach are far better placed to be able to
compete for critical talent. The best recruiters will
help anticipate organizational needs and the talent
market instead of simply acting as a hiring service.
Compared to recruiters who follow the defined needs
of the organization, their flexible yet evidence-based
approach allows them to realize cost savings of US$1.8
million per 1,000 vacancies and hire 22% more
employees per year.
Furthermore, Handcock says the most progressive

organizations are adopting agile operating models for
not just talent acquisition but other critical processes
as well. “They are creating their own continuous
planning mechanisms that enable them to sense and
respond to changing demand patterns and establish
flexible resource management,” he explains.
With a market-driven sourcing strategy, organizations

can drive toward more frequent—or real-time—
forecasting that will help close the gap between
planning and execution.
About CEB, Now Gartner About Gartner
Leading organizations worldwide rely on CEB Gartner, Inc. (NYSE: IT) is the world’s leading research
services to harness their untapped potential and and advisory company. The company helps business
grow. Now offered by Gartner, CEB best practices leaders across all major functions in every industry
and technology solutions equip clients with the and enterprise size with the objective insights
intelligence to effectively manage talent, customers, they need to make the right decisions. Gartner’s
and operations. More information is available at comprehensive suite of services delivers strategic
gartner.com/ceb. advice and proven best practices to help clients
succeed in their mission-critical priorities. Gartner
is headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, USA,
and has more than 13,000 associates serving clients
in 11,000 enterprises in 100 countries. For more
information, visit gartner.com.
© 2017 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.


Competing For Talent

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Competing For Talent

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Executive

Competing for Talent

6 What are Digital Skills? 14 • Understanding and Confronting

Conclusion: The Power

Note: This list is based on demand for digital skills

• Then there’s Alphabet/Google and other highly

The global engineering company CH2M recognized

Handcock explains, “CH2M polls its people on the

The best companies use labor market intelligence to

Furthermore, Handcock says the most progressive

With a market-driven sourcing strategy, organizations

© 2017 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

You might also like