Ford is desperate for talent - what should they do?

There has been plenty of interesting news about venerable auto manufacturer Ford this week. In the same week as the company reported an outstanding quarterly earnings report, ($38B in revenue and more than $1B in profit), it also indicated its plans to hire as many as 3,000 new engineers and other professionals this year.

You might think that for a well-known company like Ford, one that is currently enjoying a run of improving business prospects and results, and in a time where there is still comparatively high overall unemployment and low labor force participation rates in the US, that filling these 3,000 positions would not be terribly challenging. But at least according to comments from some Ford execs, you would be wrong. Check out what they had to say about their hiring challenges:

“It’s much more difficult getting the right people” than it was in decades past, laments Felicia Fields, group vice president of Human Resources for Ford, reflecting a shift in “the type of people” the automaker needs in an era when high technology systems have become as much a part of today’s vehicles as traditional, mechanical devices.

“It’s more difficult, more complex,” she says, and not just because of the different skills workers may need in today’s auto industry. The problem is that Ford is no longer just competing for talent against the likes of GM, or even Volkswagen or Toyota, but also against consumer electronics firms ranging from Apple to Google to Dell.

Ford has to convince some skeptical prospects that the auto industry can offer as much of a challenge as Silicon Valley, while also trying to promote Detroit as an appealing home base – something that can be particularly challenging at a time when the Motor City is in the midst of the largest municipal bankruptcy in American history.

It sure is a bit of a recruiting quandary that Ford is facing. At the same time when growth, a rebound from the lows of the recession, and an aggressive and optimistic strategy calls for expansion, (and more talent to power these plans), they are also faced with competing for talent against foes they are not familiar with, and for many of these positions, having to lure people into a geographic area (greater Detroit), that is less than enticing, (to be charitable).

Yep, having to mix it up with Google and Apple, convincing people that the auto industry is cool, and selling Detroit at the same time? That is a challenge for sure.

So faced with this situation what should be the play for Ford?

Play up the auto industry rebound and a chance to be at the start of that?

Sell the lower cost of living, lifestyle, and I don't know - the Pistons (who are going to be better this year), to the technical talent that would normally head to Silicon Valley or New York?

Raise the comp and ben and perks packages to get them closer to what the talent can demand, (and likely expects) in order to level the playing field with the Valley tech companies?

Something else?

Why is this interesting or relevant to the average HR/Talent pro?

Because today this talent challenge is Ford's problem to solve - tomorrow it may be yours too. 

So what should Ford do?

Is it a business strategy or a talent strategy?

Last year when the annual 'Culture Eats Strategy' discussion flared up, (Reminder: You are supposed to repeat the phrase 'Culture eats Strategy' for variously breakfast/lunch/dinner/the 3:00AM run to Taco Bell over and over again, even if you don't actually know what it means and have no real way of proving it), I offered a slightly alternative take - that 'Talent', or better and less jargony, 'People' might trump both Cullture and Strategy.

After all, 'people', (remember them?), formulate the business strategy, and shape the culture with their behaviors, actions, interactions, etc. Last year I sort of felt that the silly debate about whether culture was more important that strategy mostly missed the point - without a really dialed-in people or talent pipeline (or factory), it really would not matter how great the culture was/is or how on-point the business strategy seemed on paper.Rue de Banlieue, Maurice Utrillo

But it's more fun, especially in blogs and in social media to keep on talking about culture, I get that. So rather than try and make the 'talent' argument again, I wanted to point out (another) recent example of how all things talent - recruiting, development, succession, even something as HR wonkish as the company dress code, are all coming into play as an entire industy, in this case Financial Services, attempts to reinvent itself in the modern age.

Check this excerpt from a recent piece from Business Insider (via Reuters), Banks are Hiring a Bunch of IT Experts, And It's Going to Reshape Wall Street on how the business strategy (moving to a lot more custom-developed IT products and services) is and has to be shaped by a series of HR/Talent programs:

The investment banking industry is heading into a digital revolution that could redraw not only its business model but also the traditional image of its staff.

Stuck with dwindling profits in an era of poor returns and heavy regulation, the likes of Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase and HSBC are battling to hire the best software programmers, systems engineers and data analysts, to help them get ahead via new technology and cost-cutting.

With IT expertise now a must for the boardroom, banks' conservative workplaces are likely to undergo cultural change as they welcome ambitious, differently-minded people. "Traditionally, banks have been a lot more narrow in their (hiring) focus. Now collectively they have realized the need to be more creative," said Jeffrey Wallis, managing partner at SunGard Consulting Services, specializing in financial firms.

But the latest wave of technology hires has come about because banks are aiming more specifically to grow revenues by developing tailor-made products and mobile applications based on clients' trading patterns. To do that, they need to attract the top quantitative analysts and software developers - which may mean allowing some of them to work in shorts and tee-shirts from Palo Alto, California, rather than in suit and tie from a skyscraper in London's Canary Wharf.

There's more of the same in the piece, particularly on how some recent and high-profile external executive hires into the financial services industry have what are best described as 'traditional' IT backgrounds, rather than a twenty year career in banking or finance. Addtionally, the financial services firms need to 'seek out' this new kind of talent is highlighted - and how it is even driving decisions around company office locations - with Palo Alto, Tel Aviv, and Singapore just some of the tech centers where they are opening up shop to chase tech talent.

The point of all this, and dredging up the tiresome Culture v. Strategy meme?

It's that the culture argument continually neglects the role that talent plays in organizational success - in executing the business strategy and then in turn creating the type of culture that will attact and allow the right talent to achieve that success.  The story about how the financial services industry is attempting to move laterally to embrace new technology and the types of people that can create these technologies is only partially one about culture. 

It is mostly about identifying the talent needed to execute on the strategy, and developing HR/Talent strategies to deliver that talent.

Your Top Ten Most Wanted Recruits

Earlier this week the FBI announced the capture of one of the fugitives on its 'Top Ten Most Wanted' list, a man named Walter Williams, who had been sought for a number of accused crimes and interestingly had only been named as a 'Top Ten Most Wanted' person one day prior to his capture.  The surge in attention and interest in Williams' case once he was placed on the Top Ten list was considered the primary reason for his rapid arrest, but even at one day, he doesn't get the distinction as being the 'fastest to be apprehended after making the Top Ten' - back in 1969 a man was captured a mere two hours after being named to the list.

Overall, including the now in custody Williams, a total of 500 people have been on this list over the years, with 94% of them eventually getting captured. And while not all of that success can be directly attributed to the attention and following upsurge in tips and calls from the public that generally stem from a case being featured on the list, it certainly has become an extremely effective tool and mechanism for the FBI to bring widespread attention and focus on individual fugitives, and does in most cases lead to their capture.Excellent.

The Top Ten Most Wanted list is successful as a policing tool because it is well known, it rallies the public behind an important cause, there are often monetary rewards attached to successful apprehensions, and finally, and I think most importantly, it is extremely precise in what it asks. The FBI asks the public for help in finding specific, named individuals. They provide the most recent picture of the fugitive that they can. They publish the relevant details of the fugitive's back story to help paint a more full picture of what citizens should be on the watch for.

Simply put, the FBI  asks for help in finding this very person - not someone like him or her, or someone that might have a similar background as someone else unrelated to the case but may be more familiar, or even to find someone who would have been likely to do the same kinds of things that the Top Ten fugitive is accused of doing.

What's the point you might be wondering? (If you have hung on this far, and thank you if you have).

It's that when most organizations go about hiring, and particularly when they try to engage their exisiting employees in the hiring process via referral programs, they are usually not at all precise about what they are looking for. They ask open and murky questions like, 'Do you know anyone who might be a good fit here?' or 'We need to add a few more engineers - here is the job description - do you know anyone who has that kind of background?'

Only in pretty rare circumstances do we or can we engage the organization's current employees to help in finding and attracting specific individuals or can provide candidate profiles that are so precise that employees themselves can more easily identify potential candidates on their own. It would be pretty cool if instead of asking employees to do the kinds of mental and historical exercises that are required to actually succeed at providing hireable referrals, we instead could post a list of Top Ten 'most wanted' recruits like the FBI does.

HR or Recruiting could then slap the list up on the break room wall next to the minimum wage laws poster with a big sign that reads 'Know any of these people? Help deliver one of them to XYZ Corp and a $10,000 reward is yours'.

Could you even create that kind of list do you think? Or maybe you have it already - the Top 10 dream recruits you'd love to convince to come to your organization. And if you do have that kind of a list, is it tucked away in a file on your PC or in a folder of your ATS or is it plastered all over the company in hopes of enlisting your 'public's' help?

Happy Thursday.

#HRHappyHour 164 PODCAST - 'The 8 Man Rotation Takes on Rutgers'

HR Happy Hour 164 - 'The 8 Man Rotation Takes on Rutgers'

This week in what can only be called a very special HR Happy Hour, the entire 8 Man Rotation crew - Kris Dunn, Tim Sackett, Lance Haun, Matt 'akaBruno' Stollak, and Steve Boese take a deep dive into the Rutgers University hiring, firing, and public relations disasters of recent months.

From an abusive men's basketball coach, to internal university and state government politics, to a high-profile new hire that may have some skeletons in her closet - the series of stories that have emerged from the banks of the old Raritan have provided almost a perfect series of case studies on the intersection of sports and HR.

An no one is better equipped to talk sports, HR, and what it means for the HR and Talent pro than the 8 Man Rotation crew. So check out the podcast as our team breaks down the Rutgers situation and offers some insights about what it means for your shop.

You can listen to the show on the show page here, using the widget player below, and of course on iTunes or Stitcher radio (for you smartphone types), just search the podcast area for 'HR Happy Hour'.

Listen to internet radio with Steve Boese on BlogTalkRadio

Thanks to KD, Tim, Lance, and Matt for jumping in to the conversation on very short notice.

NOTE:

Finally, for listeners of the show a quick reminder. For the next little while anyway, co-host Trish McFarlane and I will be doing the HR Happy Hour Shows more as a traditional podcast - recorded in advance, perhaps a little shorter than the live shows were, and hopefully posted to the site every other week. With our schedules and lots of travel on the horizon this year, doing the shows 'live' on Thursday nights has become increasingly challenging. Trish and I hope that by changing how the shows are produced it will allow us the opportunity to continue doing the show/podcast in a way that will work with our schedules as well as our future guests.

Have a great weekend!

Jagger, Warhol, and another guy you've never heard of

Check the letter below, a fairly famous one at that, written in 1969 from the Rolling Stones Mick Jagger to the artist Andy Warhol regarding Warhol's impending collaboration with the band on the cover art for their soon to be released album:

In three short paragraphs, and with 100 words give or take, Mick schools us all on the difference between the Talent - himself, the band, and of course Warhol; and the 'support' types like the unfortunate Mr. Al Steckler, who will look 'nervous' and can essentially be ignored.

I post a lot on this blog, perhaps too much, about the challenge and threat that increased automation and robot technology pose to the workforce and workplaces of the future. But I don't think that the changes and potential disruption that more powerful automation technologies, smarter artificial intelligences, and the increasing acceptance of robots in all kinds of workplace environments can be ignored. The primary challenge for many of us, and certainly for the next generation of workers, will be to find ways to ensure we can continue to create value - unique, hard to copy, and certainly hard to automate value.

This is not really a new requirement, although the pace of technological advances are making it more pressing. Back in 1969, Mick Jagger already it pegged. People like himself and Andy Warhol, well they were the creators. They were the important parts in the machine. And they'd enjoy the spoils - did you catch the line in the letter were Mick basically tells Warhol to name his price for creating the album cover art?

In 1969, for a non-creative, non-essential type like Steckler the worst think likely to happen was he'd be ignored and maybe marginalized a little. In 2013, the risks of being someone branded as a non-creative, worrying, nervous, functionary I think are far worse.  We can get a robot to handle those jobs soon enough. 

And the robots won't get nervous or bother the talent.

Have a great week all!