The shortage of skilled workers in Switzerland – a myth?!
The shortage of skilled workers in Switzerland – a myth?!
As a personnel service provider, you always have to provide customers and candidates with a certain amount of information, or you will be confronted with deeply rooted myths. For example, many HR managers still think that a personnel service provider should only be used sensibly if either no candidates can be found for a position they have advertised themselves or if it is a senior management position. Another myth, for example, is that recruitment agencies have magical databases and can present 2-3 good candidate dossiers at once. These are nice ideas and can also be the case in individual cases, for example when a personnel service provider has “left over” candidates that are currently known from other mandates. With this approach, the HR managers can quickly find applicants and they can finally be presented to the hiring manager. This is how in-house recruiters or talent acquisition specialists etc. are often measured. Time is certainly also an important aspect when filling an open vacancy, but it is not the decisive factor!
What is going wrong here? In the above example it is clear that there is a lack of a clear recruitment strategy and the necessary knowledge. Today, specialists with a high degree of specialization are mostly sought after and, as we all know, they are difficult to find. Thus, we need a good strategy to successfully meet our recruitment needs. This is fulfilled when we find a suitable person as quickly as possible who has the professional requirements to generate added value for the company as quickly as possible, also fits well into the team or the company on a personal level and finds the development opportunities that are sought and can be provided. These 3 key points must be observed from the beginning and their criteria must be defined. The financial aspects, i.e. the business case, what added value do we expect from the new position, what costs and when, these are other important points that must be determined from the start. This knowledge is usually only available in interdisciplinary teams. To put it simply, the entire wage costs must be available from the start. Salaries are constantly changing, especially for specialists who are in high demand. Conclusion: we need up-to-date knowledge of the market right from the start, otherwise we would be happy to look for the jack of all trades, which, as is well known, does not exist. Then people like to talk about the shortage of skilled workers. The market is not a wish list, no matter how global it is!
We find this challenge today in many industries and in many, if not all, professional groups. For example in IT, but we could also talk about the shortage of skilled workers in gastronomy, but this is less my focus, although it is also an exciting market. With a well-adapted recruitment strategy, we can achieve our goals in any job market! With the necessary knowledge, a portion of innovation and the right use of our resources, we can achieve success together! Innovative companies have long recognized this and give recruitment the necessary attention and involve external service providers from the very beginning. As a result, the value of the company can be increased more quickly and that is a multiple of the resources used.
