Digital acceleration is happening at a record pace across the globe.  From Quantum biology, nanotechnology, and exoplanet astronomy to blockchain and metaverse, the digital frontiers are expanding at a rapid pace (Michael Bhaskar – Human Frontiers-2021).  Yet Economists like Tyler Cowen have rung the alarm around Great Stagnation, and many similar economists have called this a big idea famine or an innovation illusion.  (the famous Peter Theil quote – “We wanted flying cars. Instead, we got 140 characters.” — Peter Thiel).  Despite all the criticisms, the acceleration is happening at a record pace.  But the question is, why do such stagnation theories gain momentum?  There is perhaps an Alignment Problem between ground-level realities.  In our recent focus group discussions with mid-size and large-sized companies, Recruiters reported the following Mis-Alignment between the company’s vision and execution (a sample of 20 executives spread across ten companies – so please treat this as a small sample study)

Here are some examples of misalignment

• Remote Hiring:  Executive Leadership pushing for Remote hiring without fully understanding the tactical labor law challenges that may arise
• Flexibility:  Many call center leaders/supervisors  do not fully understand Cloud Call Centers, and trying to manage the pre-pandemic way that results in attrition
• Ever Expanding Recruiter Responsibility:  As attrition happens, existing Recruiters are often expected to pick up additional responsibilities without additional bandwidth
• Changing recruiter Role:  Recruiters play a significant Digital Marketing role to ensure candidates will join
• Compensation Data Challenge:  All the data sources often have a “lagging effect,” so we are often using a dataset that is not setting us for success
• Automation not understood well:  Many Job descriptions do not reflect the modern stack and the effect of Digital and Automation on the job

Few more pointers came out of the discussions.  But you can see the trend.  There is an apparent misalignment in certain areas between planning and execution

As we were reflecting on what could be a good set of utilities for Workforce Planners and Recruiters, one thing that came to the rescue was Models and Metrics.  Not necessarily as a solution to all the problems but as a mechanism to communicate the challenges.  (As I am typing, subconsciously, I have been reminded of the George Box quote – All Models are wrong).  But all models have utility value.  So we believe in them, provided the assumptions are documented well

We believe the following models can bring more alignment between Workforce Planners, Recruiters, and Executive Leadership

Emerging Opportunities Model – Workforce Planners

This model is mainly helpful for Workforce Planners.  Google just opened an AI Center in Nairobi- Kenya.  The project is part of the company’s commitment to invest $1 billion in Africa over the next five years.  The Nairobi hub follows the opening of an artificial intelligence research center in Accra, Ghana.  This does not necessarily mean that Nairobi is primed for all companies to enter.  But Google is trying to enable Internet access and improve the mobile experience through this center by leveraging AI.  So in about 3 to 5 years, this location will have an ecosystem that understands mobile devices experience.  This more profound understanding of these opportunities will be beneficial in long-range planning.  Such opportunities are there in LatAM and EMEA. .  Chile is making considerable strides in Web3.0; for example, the snapshot below shows some of the talent opportunities that can grow in 3 years. 

• Imagine this; it is now a real possibility that the next innovation in iOS/Android talent could come from Nairobi in 3 to 5 years as opposed to Bengaluru.
• It is now a real possibility a highly diverse software product development team can be built from Mexico.  (You may have observed electric car – maker Zacua leveraged only Women Engineers and Mechanics to build their latest electric vehicle from Puebla)

Planning velocity is a combinatory index of the number of relevant job openings and the rate at which new job openings are posted by you in a given labor market.   Each market can behave very differently within your ecosystem.  Here is a sample map of all locations of an example company.  In some markets, you may have low hiring velocity but higher success rates.  You may want to test that a bit more.  (provided the labor market upper boundary conditions permit).  The talent pool size is represented as the bubble size in this graphic below. 

Such a model brings in alignment and questions.  Sometimes, the market may be good, but our internal processes and efficiencies may not be good.  We can look at historical data and plot a distribution

Expected yearly hiring by job family by targeted MSAs (Metropolitan Statistical Area)

The key questions that can bring alignment are as follows:

• What is the current expected throughout (hiring) for a job family?
• What is the variability around that?  (lower limit and upper limit)
• What should I do to increase that?
• What factors are internal and what factors are external

Such probing models will improve the throughput of your system and bring alignment