Another Rant on the Alleged Labor Shortage
By: Yvonne L. Catino
Ok, the holidays are over and I am ready to write up a storm, though perfect to some it may not be. As someone deeply involved in technical recruitment, it occurred to me yesterday that, for technology in particular, there really is not a labor shortage at all; rather there is an American labor shortage. Here is how I came to this:
In doing recent searches for Informatica developers and such, I came across an astounding number of individuals who are on H1bs and none that were US Citizens. Hmmm, I thought to myself, let me go a bit deeper. I did cursory searches for Minneapolis in the major databases of Careerbuilder and Monster and came up loads of candidates, with an astounding 9/10 being H1b visa folks. How is it that the Americans, schooled or not, do not have exposure to this technology? Courtesy of big business’ offshoring efforts for sure. So when clients say we cannot or will not sponsor an H1b right now, but get me someone with similar years of experience and education, internally I say good luck with that…..
I hope that organizations would want to hire the BEST candidate, not necessarily the one that fits into an immigration status (that is where my future paper on recruiting in a flat world comes in). It really is a bit of a conundrum, and will be for the next few years, given all the media hype about the alleged labor shortage.
Seriously, this all started with a generic article on the retiring of boomers and how will we fill their slots. I would think big business would love to have the reduced headcounts to boost profits and executive bonuses (think of it as natural selection), but realistically these boomers are not all going to retire on said day, said year. Please. So let us then look at this vicious cycle from a systems perspective:
Now this is a provincial systems thinking map, but I think you get the idea of where I am coming from. Until employers take hold of their talent management programs, which of course includes recruiting, they will never be able to have a successful recruitment pipeline. I hate using the phrase “thinking outside the box,” but well, it is apropos. Traditional HR policies and programs just will not work in today’s world.
So when I ask hiring managers about the ability to telecommute or virtualization, I get, “oh no, they need to be here in the office.” Being in the seat does not guarantee productivity or efficiency, yet this concept remains a leftover from America’s need for control over employees, back from the Industrial Age, with production lines and such. Maybe as far back as the Puritans, I cannot say for sure. Nonetheless, the time has come for the boundaryless organizations if you want the best and most innovative talent to work for you.
Because of the media hype on the “alleged” labor shortage, candidates are now in a position to negotiate outrageous perks and salaries. Telecommuting is just one example. Another case in point: I was interviewing a Senior level Oracle DBA with about 10 years experience, Bachelors degree, on an H1b, etc, etc. He has a base salary of 98k. When I asked what kind of base he was looking for, his response was “140k”. No, no, I said, base only, not base plus bonus. Oh, how fast he corrected me! He wanted 140k as his base and a bonus. I asked how he could justify such an enormous increase, and these were his EXACT words, “Don’t you know? There’s a labor shortage.” He is not the only one to have made such a comment to me while interviewing, and not the only one to use it as justification for such a huge increase on base.
So how should I wrap up this rant? Read Ricardo Semler’s 7 Day Weekend . It makes complete sense to me.
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Totally agree Yvonne; two years ago I was leading the search for technologists at a Fortune 100 Company - only one catch: the CIO would not consider H1Bs. I told him that eliminated 1/3 to 1/2 of the talent pool before we even pre-qualed then. He couldn’t care less - what a world.