The concept of work is getting re-worked.  All this change establishes a new norm. The skills required to get and keep a job are changing dynamically and continuously. Individuals seeking good paying jobs will need to develop and maintain skill sets not for just one lifelong career but skills transfer to multiple and sometimes simultaneous careers.

Tom Friedman in a recent New York Times editorial hit the proverbial nail on the head:

In the past, workers with average skills, doing an average job, could earn an average lifestyle. But, today, average is officially over. Being average just won’t earn you what it used to. It can’t when so many more employers have so much more access to so much more above average cheap foreign labor, cheap robotics, cheap software, cheap automation and cheap genius…Average is over.

Change has always made some jobs obsolete but created new jobs, new products, new services. But the change is happening faster. As a result, we know for sure that with each advance in globalization and the technology revolution, the best jobs will require workers to have more and better education to make them above average.  

Unfortunately discussions about education and re-training miss the scope and magnitude about how work and skills needed to do the work are changing.

The Re-working of Work Requires New Skills

The Institute for the Future (IFTF) recently released new research that suggests that a qualitative shift, perhaps an order of magnitude greater than the outsourcing revolution, could now be taking shape. The very idea of “work” is being re-worked. Talk about telecommuting and the political fetish with the outsourcing football completely miss the big picture.

The IFTF’s recent project with the Apollo Research Institute on the future of work skills describe some of the new work skills required to leverage emerging automation technologies. I’m mentioned several of these skills in previous posts and articles – adaptive thinking, cognitive load management, cross-cultural competency, sense making to name a few.  I’ve also mentioned collaboration as a must-have skill going forward. But again, the scope of collaboration is something that most people don’t yet grasp.

When someone mentions collaboration, the immediate image likely projects people working together, teamwork, and cooperative.  But this picture of collaboration is based on Industrial Age conditions. This makes collaboration serves as the perfect starting point of a discussion about how work and work skills are changing. 

Going forward collaboration is not just a relationship between one human and another but between man and machine. Unlike the John Henry legend where man’s skills challenged the productivity of a steam-hammer or chess champion Garry Kasparov’s brilliance competed against the intelligence of Big Blue, future innovation will depend upon people racing with machines, not against them.

A recent article in The Futurist, Thriving in the Automated Economy, expanded this discussion. The authors believe that the key to winning the race is not to compete against machines but compete with them.  You need to look no further than the art and science of data mining to grasp this concept.

Big data is big and only getting growing bigger at a faster pace. For example, man created 150 exabytes of information in 2005. In 2011, it created over 1,200 exabytes of new information. To provide a point of reference, 5 exabytes equals 37,000 new libraries the size of the Library of Congress. By 2013, the amount of traffic flowing over the Internet is expected to exceed 668 exabytes.

This explosion of data is one thing. Competitive edge comes to the organizations who can understand it. The ability to understand it requires analytical skill sets that few people have. Finding a solution requires not only exceptional “making sense” skills but the ability to collaborate with machines. That is why by 2018, the United States alone could be short 140,000 to 190,000 people with the analytical skills necessary to use big data to make effective decisions.

The concept of work is getting re-worked. Collaborative automated systems will blur the line between “tools” and “co-workers” in next few years. The worker with average skills is or will be a low-skill, low-pay worker very soon.

Thriving in an automated economy requires innovative and collaborative skills few of us possess.  What are some of trends in work and skills required to do the work you see developing? 

Related articles:

New Job Era Arrives

What Jobs Should the U.S. Be Creating?

The wacky relationship between HR and personality testing is an intriguing one. It’s a perplexing one as well. How perplexing it can be was confirmed in a recently released SHRM poll about the use of personality tests for the hiring and promotion of employees.

According to poll of nearly 500 SHRM members, the majority of HR professionals (71%) indicate that personality tests can be useful in predicting job-related behavior or organizational fit. Only 14 percent disagree.

Pre-Hire Assessments Reduce Time and Cost to Hire

But then again, if you believe in the 80-20 rule, where 20 percent of the businesses earn 80 percent of all the success, maybe it isn’t so surprising.

A 2011 study by The Aberdeen Group, Assessments 2011: Selecting and Developing for the Future, lends credence to my presumption.  A significant but common theme differentiating Best-in-Class organizations from the laggards in their industry is that these Best-in-Class trust the data coming from pre-employment and personality tests in the talent decision making process. (Best-in-Class companies represent the top 20 percent of aggregate performance scorers and demonstrate their dominance in their industry.) That finding is huge because as any proponent of pre-employment testing can tell you, management and HR’s denial of any validity or reliability coming from personality testing is often an insurmountable roadblock in improving the managing of talent in many organizations.

Participants in the research were asked about the importance placed on assessment data for critical decisions in four areas:

• who to hire,
• who is deemed high-potential, 
• who to interview, and
• who is promoted. 

The report reveals that across the board,

“Best-in-Class companies place greater value on assessment data as part of the decision process. The one decision point with the greatest gap between Best-in-Class and laggards was in helping understand future potential.  The top performing companies know that it’s not enough to just understand the employee’s current capabilities, but what they may be able to do in the future.”

The report also says,

“finding ways to quantify, evaluate, and help make better decisions for the future based on potential is a priority for top performing companies.”

The research offers some very compelling and convincing data for the reluctant executives and managers who run the 82 percent of organizations that don’t use personality tests for hiring and promotion. There’s nothing like good research to wake up a laggard.

Best-in-class organizations set the talent management bar high with the following scores:

• 19 percent year-over-year improvement in hiring manager satisfaction.
• 69 percent of key positions have at least one willing and capable successor identified.
• 73 percent of employees received a rating of “exceeds expectations” on their last performance review.

Compare those scores with the laggards that experience:

• 1% year-over-year decrease in hiring manager satisfaction
• Only 15% of key positions have at least one willing and able successor identified
• Only 16% of employees received rating of “exceed expectations” on last performance review.

Best-in-Class organizations are also 62 percent more likely to have automated assessments as part of the recruitment process, integrating with their Applicant Tracking System (ATS or APS) or career portal (47 percent to 29 percent for the laggards.)  The study found “this automation is yielding impressive performance management improvements in key hiring metrics, including improved hiring manager satisfaction and greater reduction in both time and cost to hire.”

Expanding the Use of Assessments

Best-in-class organizations are using assessments not only to understand the skills and traits employees have today, but also their capacity to grow.

Read more

Helicopter Parents Hover in the Workplace

Helicopter parents first made headlines on college campuses a few years ago, when they began trying to direct everything from their children’s course schedules to which roommate they were assigned. With millennial children now in their 20s, more helicopter parents are showing up in the workplace, sometimes even phoning human resources managers to advocate on their child’s behalf.

Read more

Average is Over

In the past, workers with average skills, doing an average job, could
earn an average lifestyle. But, today, average is officially over. Being
average just won’t earn you what it used to. It can’t when so many more
employers have so much more access to so much more above average cheap
foreign labor, cheap robotics, cheap software, cheap automation and
cheap genius.

Read more

Education Gap Grows Between Rich and Poor, Studies Say

Education was historically considered a great equalizer in American society, capable of lifting less advantaged children and improving their chances for success as adults. But a body of recently published scholarship suggests that the achievement gap between rich and poor children is widening, a development that threatens to dilute education’s leveling effects.       

Read more

10 Ways to Keep Employees Off Twitter

Though Twitter can be a powerful marketing and promotional tool for businesses, it can also cost those same businesses hundreds of lost man hours and reduce productivity. With these ten tips, you can keep the focus on work and off the Twitter feed.

Read more

Helicopter parents are back in the news.  Worse, they’re back in the workplace (or maybe they never really went away but since no one was hiring, their hovering didn’t matter.)

Many hoped that high unemployment rates would make helicopter parents irrelevant.  Tough economic times would smack down the parents and stop them from meddling in their children’s lives. That apparently was wishful thinking.

Image Source: Bostonia, Illustration by Zohar Lazar

For those readers who think that a helicopter parent is an action figure from the “Transformers” series, you are wrong.  A helicopter parent is “a parent who pays extremely close attention to his or her child’s or children’s experiences and problems.”  Once confined to ball games and educational environments, helicopter parents are now entering the workplace. Helicopter parents are so named because, like helicopters, they hover closely, rarely out of reach, whether their children need them or not. 

As pre-teens and adolescents, these Millennial parents were viewed as caring guardians, doing what was expected of a parent – getting involved in their children’s lives.  Parents of children born between 1980 and 2000 have been obsessive about ensuring the safety of their children. Graduation from high school and college apparently hasn’t constrained their intervention.

When the first wave was born in the early 1980s, “Baby on Board” signs began popping up on minivans. They were buckled into child-safety seats, fitted with bike helmets, carpooled to numerous after-school activities. These kids, now our newest generation of employees, are confident, achievement-oriented and used to hovering “helicopter” parents keeping tabs on their every move.

Helicopter parents are now crossing the line from being involved with their children’s employment to actually running the show for them. Remember the big-mouth parent at Little League? That was nothing. Parents of Millennials are continuing the intense oversight this generation has been known for all along: challenging poor grades, negotiating with coaches and helping kids register for college. Over-involved parents meddle in college registration and interfere with students’ dealings with professors, administrators and roommates. Students who get frustrated or confused during registration have been known to interrupt their advisers to whip out a cell phone, speed-dial their parents and hand the phone to the adviser, saying, “Here, talk to my mom.”

Now helicopter parents are going to work. Managers are getting phone calls from parents asking them to hire their 20-something kids. Candidates are stalling on job offers to consult with their parents. Parents are calling hiring managers to negotiate pay packages.

How prevalent is the helicopter parent? It depends.  According to a study at the Collegiate Employment Research Institute at Michigan State University, employers are most likely to feel the whoosh of the hovering parent at larger companies.  For employers with fewer than 60 employers, your chances are 12 percent.  But the number doubles for companies with 61 to 350 employees and nearly triples for over 3,600 employees.  By the way, these brushes with helicopter parents weren’t casual conversations as the study categorized these engagements as “heavy parental contact.”

**** Are You A Helicopter Parent? Take This Quiz! ****

There was a significant difference in parental involvement based on the type of jobs. 

Employers looking to fill positions that require a business background (specifically marketing, finance, hospitality, human resources, ecommerce, business services and sales) saw higher levels of parent involvement. Those seeking to fill engineering, computer and design media, research, scientific and consulting management positions reported the least involvement from parents.

You might be wondering in what activities do these helicopter parents actually engage. The most common activity was parents obtaining information on the company, with or without the knowledge of the child. Four of every ten employers reported this activity.  Thirty-one percent reported submitting a resume on their child’s behalf, while twenty-six percent promoted the son/daughter for the position.

The intervention doesn’t stop at clearing the path to the job either. Fifteen percent of employers complained to the company if their child was not hired. And nearly one out of ten negotiated salary and benefits. 

The list didn’t stop there.  Other incidents that weren’t surveyed but added by employers were:

• Helping their son or daughter complete work assignments so that deadlines are not missed; or reviewing work and making improvements in its quality.

• When being reprimanded or disciplined, the employee refused to meet with or respond to the supervisor before talking with his or her parents.

I personally have heard additional stories from clients and other employers that parents have called when a performance review was not provided promptly and/or if the review was not favorable.

The knee-jerk reaction by many employers to helicopter parents is to eliminate Lil Johnny from consideration.  Unfortunately that response might be cutting off your nose to spite your face. 

Skilled knowledge workers are in short supply and the line to your business is shrinking further as the economy picks up and competition for talent gets stiffer.  Many of the employees that fit your job requirements have helicopter parents hovering around them.  By eliminating a Millennial candidate who arrives at the interview with his or her parent, you are shrinking the qualified pool of talent.

In today’s job market, is that really a good idea?

What’s your experience been with helicopter parents? How have you responded to and worked with hovering parents of candidates and employees?

I’m pleased and honored to share this post from my colleague, friend, and author Edward E. Gordon.  You can read more about Ed below.

The continuing U.S. unemployment crisis has left many workers believing there is no tomorrow. They have good reason. Since mid-2008, six million jobs have vanished.

But oddly enough the nation’s gross domestic product almost doubled to over $15 trillion during the last 10 years. This seems impossible when almost 30 million workers are now unemployed, underemployed, or have given up looking for employment.

Then how is it that with so many workers seeking jobs, 5 million U.S. jobs remain unfilled?  Why can’t businesses fill them with the legions of unemployed Americans? Here are ta few facts driving a new job era.

U.S. productivity is increasing. In manufacturing and most other business sectors it’s not just advanced machines. It’s increasingly evident that many new advanced technologies are digitizing the whole economy.

Past history shows that today’s surge in productivity will create tomorrow’s jobs and raise living standards. New jobs will come from rising efficiencies in production and innovative technologies spawning new products and services throughout the entire economy.

The flip side to these breakthroughs is that today’s and tomorrow’s jobs require advanced technical skill levels. A workplace may need fewer people, but they must be better educated and able to work with advanced computer systems. This has become the new normal for employment whether it is in an office, production facility, hospital, law firm or service business.

These digitized jobs present a new problem. The consensus among employers is that people need to be reskilled for the new workplace. The urgent need to create more skilled workers is now a central political and economic concern in communities across America.

A new U.S. job era has arrived. The availability of better-educated talent with up-to-date career skills now largely determines where businesses will locate in the United States or anywhere in the world. Those communities that break down the structural barriers between businesses, education and community groups and collaborate to renew their talent creation and economic systems will attract new businesses and retain current ones. Those that don’t will wither and die.

I have coined the term, Regional Talent Innovation Networks (RETAINs) for such collaborative community ventures that are forming across the United States. (See my earlier blog, “Jobs-Jobs-Jobs” for more information on RETAINs.) They are built upon deeply held American values.

In this election year people are yearning for leadership that will produce solid employment growth. The RETAIN movement needs to be recognized and embraced as a viable way of instituting the  long-term restructuring needed to stimulate employment in this new job era.

About guest blogger Edward Gordon

Edward E. Gordon is a leader with vision.  He is President of Imperial Consulting Corporation in Chicago and Palm Desert, California. Gordon is a recognized international expert on talent, training, careers, and education related to business and economic development. Ed Gordon is the author or co-author of 17 books including Winning the Global Talent Showdown, The 2010 Meltdown, Skill Wars, FutureWork, Closing the Literacy Gap in American Business, Opportunities in Training and Development Careers, Literacy in America, The Tutoring Revolution, Peer Tutoring: A Teacher’s Resource Guide and Tutor Quest.

Jobs. Jobs. Jobs. Is there anyone not talking about jobs these days?  From politicians to economists, Main Street to Wall Street, creating jobs is THE hot topic. And no discussion of job creation is complete without the mention of shortages of skilled workers. 

Well, over the past week weeks, I’ve been bookmarking articles and blogs about careers to avoid, obsolete jobs, and the best jobs to pursue whether you’re an unemployed worker, disengaged employee, or recent graduate or student seeking a good paying career with a future.

Stopping The ‘Brain Drain’ of the U.S. Economy

This article comes with a twist. The first thing that comes to my mind when I hear “brain drain” is the loss of our best talent to foreign countries.  For most of the 80s and 90s, the U.S. was the world’s magnet for the best and the brightest.  But then a funny thing happened. The economies of India and China flourished and the U.S. economy slowed.  Indian and Chinese talent now had more options and many headed home.

Today, the U.S. might be faced with a domestic brain drain. Nearly half of the graduates at some Ivy League schools pursue careers in consulting and finance.  Financially that is rewarding for the graduates. But is this career path siphoning off the best talent from other careers short on talent but long on growth (health care for example). 

Read more about the 2012 version of the brain drain.

Best jobs of the future

24/7 Wall St. and The Guardian  both published stories about the best jobs of the future. These jobs will grow the most in the next decade and have median incomes well above the national average. Almost without exception, these occupations will be in highest demand because of changes in the nation’s (and most developed country) populations and in the way businesses operate,

Read more about the 1. Best Paying Jobs and 2. Jobs of the Future

I also found an article highlighting the Best-Paying Jobs for Women. Interesting that a search on Google did not produce a single result featuring the best paying jobs for men!

Read more about the Best-Paying Jobs for Women.

Avoid These Jobs

If jobs like lector, copy boy, bowling pin setter, bone crusher, or telegraph editor were high on your list of dream jobs,  STOP and read more about:

1. 15 Careers to Avoid and 2. Obsolete Jobs

The news about jobs is getting better.  The unemployment rate dipped for the fifth straight month to 8.3 percent.  The number of jobs being created has been rising at a rate of 200,000 each month, topped by 243,000 jobs added in January alone.

That is great news for the economy and fuel for a surge on Wall Street, where the Nasdaq hit an 11-year high and the Dow Jones Industrial Average reached a peak not seen since 2008.

Does this mean the U.S. economy has found a cure for the recession or a strategy to relieve and mask the symptoms of a deeper, more serious problem?   The truth is that it’s likely a little of both.  Unfortunately that means that sooner than later the problem will resurface, much like an untreated cancer eventually weakens and destroys the functions of the body. 

Much of our unemployment since the recession has been the result of massive layoffs in construction and manufacturing.  Creating new jobs in manufacturing, according to many politicos, bureaucrats, economists, and executives, are the key to our recovery.  With more people working, more consumption will take place and more homes will be built and purchased, putting millions of unemployed construction workers back to work.  That all makes sense.

Except (you likely knew that was coming)… that the manufacturing jobs we need to create aren’t the manufacturing jobs that existed pre-2008. We don’t need workers to just make things. We need workers who make the things that make things and then make those “thing-makers” work in seamless integrated systems. 

And that’s the problem.  We have a lot of people who are really good at making things. But so does the rest of the world…and they are willing to work more hours for less money.  That’s one reason why the U.S. economy is struggling to create jobs. To compete, many of the old manufacturing jobs are gone forever. If those jobs exist, they have been automated, requiring maybe one worker to do the job of five or ten workers just a few years ago.  In other words, we could have our manufacturing output humming at record levels and still employ a fraction of the workers that did the same job 10 years ago.

****15 Careers to Avoid****

What the U.S. does better than anyone else in the world is make the things that make things. Unfortunately we don’t have enough of those skilled workers or the workers who can service those thing-makers.  We need workers who can spot a faulty circuit board, not count nuts and bolts. We need workers who can design, troubleshoot and repair a defective robotic arm, not manufacture the components of the robot.

For politicians and especially low skill workers, that situation places job creation at a painful crossroad.  For millions of workers over the past few decades, low skill jobs were the ticket to the middle class and upward mobility. But that has all changed.  Good paying careers dependent on low skill workers are gone.  That leaves tens of millions of past and future workers stuck in jobs that offer at best bare bone living wages and no future.

To create jobs that ensure workers can earn a living wage and entertain the possibility of moving up requires answers to three interrelated questions:

1. What products should be made and supported in the U.S.?
2. What jobs can and should be created that provide good living wages, upward mobility, and still keep the U.S. competitive?
3. What needs to be done to train and re-train millions of low-skilled and under-skilled U.S. workers to do these jobs?

****Best Paying Jobs of the Future****

The order in which we answer the questions is critical. We first must determine what products (or services) should be made in the U.S.  Unfortunately we seem to be attempting to solve the job creation problem in reverse order. We want to train and re-train for many jobs that might be obsolete or become low-paying in the very near future.  And not all jobs that might be created help the U.S. become or remain competitive.

The U.S. is at the proverbial fork in the road.  What road should we take? What products and services should be make and support?

Professionalism in young workers has decreased according to one third of human resources professionals and management. That’s according to a new survey from the Center for Professional Excellence at York College.

The obvious question becomes – have attitudes and ethics standards slipped or are they just different and reflect different times.

According to David Polk, whose firm, the Polk-Lepson Research Group, conducted the survey, “Current business leaders and HR professionals do not believe that the definition of professionalism should change over time. (They) say young employees need to learn to conform to ‘current standards’ of professionalism rather than the standards be modified in response to larger society changes.”

Hmmm, do I sense a bit of hypocrisy here?  Assuming most if not all the HR pros and managers are Gen X and Baby Boomers, aren’t these the same generations that tested, challenged, and changed the standards?  Generation Y – the Millennial Generation – wasn’t even born yet when casual Friday, then casual attire every day, hit the workplace.  There was a time when men weren’t allowed to wear long hair and facial hair, not even a mustache. Women had to wear skirts or dresses, hosiery, and heels, none of those open-toed, open-backed, sandal-like shoes. And we won’t even get into men with piercings and women with tattoos!

Are these managers suggesting that it’s time to go back to the good old days of our parents and grandparents?

If so, then memories can’t be selective.  With those fond memories of higher standards of professionalism comes smoke-filled offices, terminations for pregnancy, and racially and gender segregated workplaces.

Admittedly, there are a lot of workers who lack professionalism.  They feel entitled, dress like they are headed to the beach, and misuse technology.  This group of workers share many bad attitudes and other less desirable work traits except one – AGE. 

Age has little or anything to do with it.  Just look around and check out your workplace.  Who is arriving late on a regular basis? Who are wearing piercings and tattoos? And when it comes to technology, undoubtedly there is a fixation with digital devices but is that distraction any worse than taking a smoke break every few minutes?  And speaking about technology, isn’t it an abuse of technology when older workers refuse to adapt?

And I can’t help but laugh at the one-third of respondents who agreed that “not understanding the urgency required for completing assignments,” is the worst mistake new employees make.  Really?  This is a generational issue.

The results of this survey shouldn’t surprise anyone. For many managers, I can hear and see them declaring “I told you so.”  But I urge everyone to take a step back and look around.  Think back to when you entered the workplace and how things changed.  Before using the good old days as your standard of professionalism, take off the filters.

Other key findings in the survey include:

33.1: Percentage of HR professionals who believe that the presence of professionalism in new employees has decreased.

36.5: Percentage of managers who believe that the presence of professionalism in new employees has decreased.

50.5: Percentage of HR professionals who said younger employees feel a sense of entitlement. That’s down from 60.9 percent in 2009.

97.1: Percentage of HR professionals who said IT misuse has stayed the same or gotten worse in the past year.

26.9: Percentage of managers who reported that electronic devices and social media contributed to employees being less focused at work.

39.9: Percentage of HR professionals who said not dressing up for a job interview is a mistake. Other mistakes include being late for the interview — 29.1 percent — and not knowing about the company — 25.9 percent.

32.6: Percentage of manager who cite “not understanding the urgency required for completing assignments,” as the worst mistake new employees make.

The bankruptcy of former photo giant Kodak is loaded with lessons that business owners can learn.  The fact that Kodak invented the digital camera over 35 years ago, a decade or more before its competition, makes the story even more tragic.  The lessons business owners and management can learn from the fall of Kodak are compelling and relevant.

Besides never capitalizing on the digital-camera technology it helped create, Kodak ignored the marketplace.  That’s what happens when management thinks it knows what’s best for its customers and stops listening and adapting.  It ignored technology even though its world-class laboratories were introducing new products years ahead of the competition. Kodak management continued to believe it could introduce new products when it was ready, not the consumer.

Social media didn’t exist when Kodak decided that paternalism was in its best interest. Today, turning a deaf ear to your customer could be a near-fatal strategy. Just look at the response to the Netflix subscription brouhaha following by the Verizon fee fiasco.  Had social media been a primary mode of communication in the 80s and 90s, Kodak’s fall would have been much faster and deeper.

The truth is that by the time Kodak go into the game, it was too late.  Kodak was outclassed by more nimble competitors with better products that didn’t even exist just a few years earlier.  For nearly 30 years, it was classic David and Goliath and David slayed Goliath over and over again.

Whenever Kodak took a shot at getting into the digital game, it tried to knock one out of the park.  Unfortunately they were playing in the ballpark.  They viewed Fuji and the like as its primary competition. It completely ignored companies like Apple, Intel, Nokia, and Motorola whose technology made film photography obsolete.

In 1975 Kodak invented what was then referred to as a “film-less” camera. Management killed it because if introduced, it believed film-less photography would cannibalize its existing business. How many businesses today are fighting to keep fading products and services alive to preserve its own existence, ignoring revolutionary changes in the marketplace and radically different consumer wants.

Fortunate for Kodak, it got a 2^nd chance to revolutionize how consumers took photos.  In 1995 Kodak brought its first digital camera to market, the DC40. This was years before many others would get into the digital game. Kodak never took advantage of its early start. Embracing digital photography meant cannibalizing its own business.

Few people could envision the world today where 2.5 billion photos are uploaded to Facebook daily and shared with family, friends, and even complete strangers. Sharing via the Web is by far the biggest way people use their photos today and again Kodak had a chance to be the leader in this business. It purchased the Ofoto service in 2001 but took four years to relaunch the service as Kodak EasyShare Gallery.  As anyone knows, technology doesn’t wait for you to catch up.  Thinking its history and one time world dominance  could stall change, it dragged its feet. By the time EasyShare Gallery launched, Facebook, Flickr, Picasa, Photobucket and others were becoming household names. Kodak went from industry leader to also-ran.

It also ignored what has become a critical blindspot in the vision of many business leaders.  It’s not always your competitor who is the biggest threat to sustainability and growing marketshare. Sometimes it’s a new technology that makes your product obsolete.

While worried about Fuji, Kodak ignored cellphones and how digital sharing would change the way consumers interacted with their photos.  Still thinking that like a print company, Kodak launched a line of digital frames and photo printers. If it couldn’t make photo paper, it could at least help consumers print photos at home and then frame them, right?  Wrong again. Its frames didn’t include wifi and only worked when they were plugged in.  And most recently, it completely ignored the mobile revolution and was a very late entry into the app marketplace.

it was a virtual non-presence in mobile apps (no, SmileMaker doesn’t count), which cemented the company’s irrelevance in the way people experience photos today. There are no Kodak moments in mobile.

There are three critical lessons here for all business owners and management.

1. Be nimble. Be quick. Change is inevitable and it is happening faster than ever before. You can’t be afraid to cannibalize your own business in the name of progress. Learn from RIM, the owners of the once-dominant Blackberry, who allowed the iPhone and Android phone to erode their marketshare. Learn from Sony whose hesitance to develop a digital Walkman allowed the iPod to replace it.  Learn from Blockbuster which ignored Netflix.
2. Your competition may not be who you think it is. Learn from Sears and K-Mart which felt that two failing former giants was better than one. Sears had one of the world’s best known brand names – Kenmore. Instead of leveraging this asset, it squandered it.  It focused on Walmart and Target as its biggest threat, despite neither of those retailers selling large appliances. Sears ignored how Amazon was changing the way consumers buy everything, including large home appliances not just books and music.
3. Listen, listen, listen. Companies may own their brand and they may manage it. But social media changed ownership. You don’t own your brand anymore – your consumers do. Silence is no longer golden. If you are not listening, you are not playing on the same field as your competition.

Kodak’s misguided attempts to slow changing consumer buying habits and a malignant reluctance to innovate killed an industry and American manufacturing icon.  After over a century of inovative leadership, another corporate giant has fallen.  What can you learn from Kodak so that history does not repeat itself?

How many job applicants does it take to find one qualified candidate?  While the question sounds like the preamble to a funny punch line, the answer is no laughing matter.

According to an article last week in the Wall Street Journal, it takes many more than most employers think (or at least want to accept.) I repeat – a lot more.  The actual numbers are numbing.

For example, an infographic presented in the article revealed that it takes approximately 1,000 online views by candidates to get 100 candidates to complete the application.  Out of that, 25 applications are selected for review, then 4 to 6 candidates are recommended for an interview. When all is said and done, companies may find their one diamond in the rough only after 1,000 candidates view the job posting.  If those numbers hold up, it is clear that the impending war for talent is no longer imminent or pending. It’s here today.

Not one to rely only exclusively on hearsay, I was prompted by the article to review 25 jobs posted on our applicant processing system by clients during the last 3 months.  The results don’t only confirm the findings presented in the Wall Street Journal but throw up an even bigger gauntlet to challenge employers. The best views-to-applicant scenario was 10 percent. But a more common scenario was as low as 1 percent.

Top 5 Most Successful Campaigns

5 Most Challenging Campaigns

Unfortunately for many companies, as good or bad as those results are, the job search does not always end when the one lonely qualified candidate is identified and offered the job. According to research presented by Talent Function Group, LLC, “the chosen applicant accepts the offer only 80% of the time.” That situation leads to two options – offer the job to your second choice (if there is one) or go back to the drawing board.  Neither choice is desirable when a company’s productivity and competitive advantage are on the line and dependent on a minimum time to hire and high quality of hire.

To win the war for talent moving forward, nearly every employer will need to cast the widest possible sourcing net to attract, identify, and hire qualified candidates. In addition, operations and sales managers don’t have the time to waste interviewing candidates who can’t do the job.

The competition for recruiting qualified skilled workers poses a formidable challenge for most organizations. Management has a choice: deal with a “resu-mess” which will inundate recruiting and human resource staffs, which are already running lean; or insist on applicant processing automation to build a talent pool of qualified candidates, reduce the time-to-hire, and ultimately improve the quality of employees. 

One highly effective, efficient, and affordable applicant processing solution is Prevue APS Pro.  Contact us today for a no-obligation demo.