I don’t know that anyone actually misquoted the author of this piece as much as expressed opinions about populations that can add to the mix. The population isn’t as small as we’re led to believe. And the other thing I saw (and knowing Lou as I do, he has as well) was food for a future article on those areas.

As to bullet points, that one’s baffling as well. Again, I didn’t see bullet points but concerns about populations and search strategies that were missing. Lou talked about tools. But I’ve read one of his books and gone through the updates of another. He is thorough and will get to the missing topics as time passes.

Based on the title, I know I was expecting to learn about why the talent crisis is not and, like Chicken Little’s alert, we need not heed the scream.

Isn’t it wonderful that we have free expression in the article reviews and in the Forum?

Viva

It’s the leadership who is responsible for educating its employees and creating understanding between them. For starters, it might help if flex time is offered to ‘parents’ not just ‘mothers’ or better yet, offered across the board wherever possible. There are many times when my husband can easily step in to help with our children while I am attending a conference, etc.

Your wife’s example shows that this can and does work. A company with vision and commitment to company success through individual success should be able to help each person understand what it takes to be a team and win. It sounds like much work needs to be done to create a more supportive atmosphere, but it can be done.

Thank you again for sharing your story. I appreciate the chance to learn about it.

Best wishes,

If you’d like to reach an underutilized segment of the talent pool, I suggest including your postings there. You will surely receive more responses than you expect, and from very qualified applicants.

Here I am opening my big mouth again. We introduced ‘flex time’, and ‘nanny on site’, and ‘work from home when the kids are sick’ for our working Mothers back in the 80′s and early 90′s.

The LAST people in the world who would understand this type of thinking are the traditional, 9 to 5 (only interview 11 to 3 with 2 hours out for lunch) HR types.

One thing the women who worked in and built our little company learned right off the bat, much to their chagrin, was not to expect anything from HR women (the few men weren’t so bad)except disdain and accusations of ‘unprofessionalism’ when it was learned that the Mothers worked from home. HR would react with ‘professional horror’ if there was the occasional noise of babies or toddlers in the background.

Just FYI, I don’t thinks have changed all that much from what I can see.

We have a photo of my spouse, who worked for the company, sitting at her home office desk with our son on her knee while she scanned resumes (she was an actual TECHNICAL Recruiter) and maintained a 1.3 to 1 submittal to hit ratio for contract Engineers with clients like (as?) G.E., Lockheed, Martin Marietta, MacDoug, et al.

It CAN, and should, be a common and accepted practice…but it ‘ain’t’.

END

The companies that we work with realize that by the year 2010, almost one in three workers will be at least 50 years old.

Undeniably, changes in workforce composition and capabilities are right around the corner. What effect they will have on specific organizations remains to be seen. We recommend that all companies take a pro-active approach in planning for the future.

Lou – Thank you for another great article!

As Geraghty and Coppinger pointed out, there are pools of qualified talent that are needlessly overlooked. And as I pointed out in another thread, there are things we can be doing now in order to develop the talent we desire in our apocalyptic year.

And as I’ve pointed out in one of my blogs (can’t remember which of the three), there are reasons why we’re overlooking the female population, making odd choices, and totally ignoring others.

Additionally, in a 2000 (or was it ’99) article (Facing the Facts), I talk about yet another population that gets overlooked and then dismissed when they are identified — the disabled.

It’s still my contention that the talent crisis is illusory.

Viva

# Innovators. The technology enthusiasts.
# Early Adopters. The visionaries.
# Early Majority

if not….you will beat your head against the wall and get nowhere. I like to think that Lockheed Martin (for as large a corporation as it is 135,000) is an ‘early adopter’.

But regardless…..more specifics about getting corporate buy-in and affecting change management in a timely fashion would be appreciated.

BTW, the promise to not end your article by jumping the shark over global warming went unfulfilled.

Also, I totally disagree about your point with more corporate recruiters. Our company has hired 6 GREAT recruiters and our turnover is less than 5%. Perhaps there’s some angst from the agency world that corporate recruiters are becoming more educated making it difficult to argue for 30% retainer fees? ;-)

Finally, Lou, don’t be fooled by the man made global warming hype machine. I’m pasting an op/ed below which offers some insight:

The Weather Channel Mess
January 18, 2007 | James Spann | Op/Ed

Well, well. Some ?climate expert? on ?The Weather Channel? wants to take away AMS certification from those of us who believe the recent ?global warming? is a natural process. So much for ?tolerance?, huh? I have been in operational meteorology since 1978, and I know dozens and dozens of broadcast meteorologists all over the country. Our big job: look at a large volume of raw data and come up with a public weather forecast for the next seven days. I do not know of a single TV meteorologist who buys into the man-made global warming hype. I know there must be a few out there,
but I can?t find them. Here are the basic facts you need to know:

*Billions of dollars of grant money is flowing into the pockets of those on the man-made global warming bandwagon. No man-made global warming, the money
dries up. This is big money, make no mistake about it. Always follow the money trail and it tells a story. Even the lady at ?The Weather Channel? probably gets paid good money for a prime time show on climate change. No man-made global warming, no show, and no salary. Nothing wrong with making money at all, but when money becomes the motivation for a scientific
conclusion, then we have a problem. For many, global warming is a big cash grab.

*The climate of this planet has been changing since God put the planet here. It will always change, and the warming in the last 10 years is not much difference than the warming we saw in the 1930s and other decades. And, lets not forget we are at the end of the ice age in which ice covered most of North America and Northern Europe.

If you don?t like to listen to me, find another meteorologist with no tie to grant money for research on the subject. I would not listen to anyone that is a politician, a journalist, or someone in science who is generating revenue from this issue.

In fact, I encourage you to listen to WeatherBrains episode number 12,featuring Alabama State Climatologist John Christy, and WeatherBrains episode number 17, featuring Dr. William Gray of Colorado State University, one of the most brilliant minds in our science. WeatherBrains, by the way, is our weekly 30 minute netcast. I have nothing against ?The Weather Channel?, but they have crossed the line into a political and cultural region where I simply won?t go.

High volume, low margin recruiting is a part of the recruiting industry as much as the single, exclusive, high fee recruiting. We must be able to build recruiting departments that can handle it all! It’s up to management to be as creative as much as the individual recruiter. And I don’t mean beating the recruiters if they don’t have enough calls per day either. I mean leveraging the strengths of the TEAM with the best tools, people and processes.