John Sumser has taken up bird-spotting. In a pastoral post aptly titled Idealization John shares what he has learned about the fowl and the foul in his circumnavigation of Schollenberger Park. Not to be outdone I too have been walking off the pounds around the lake where I live, similarly musing on bird life and the nature of recruiting, the idealized and the real.
Bringing a couple of threads together…
It seems to me that the perennial crowing about the so-called War for Talent is starting to wear a little thin. Perhaps like other well worn marketing glibbery we’ll never quite shake the phrase from our collective consciousness. Among industry old-timers one imagines the phrase will take on the same iconographic status as “go to work on an egg.” Who knows?
Like the birds, maybe we’ll start to evolve through some form of accelerated natural selection and emerge better equipped to deal with the nature of things, the imbalance of labor demand and supply being one of them.
I think of peacocks, parrots or painted buntings as I lap the lake. These birds have developed an obvious response to the disproportionate number of males to females by evolving brilliant plumage. As far as “go-to-work-on-an-egg” strategies go perhaps there something to be learned from understanding how the cocks attract the chicks in paradise. Again, who knows?
As I wade through the bird droppings that pepper my archives I see recruiting bloggers, pundits and know-it-alls — myself included — have laid a lot of emphasis on sourcing and sourcing strategy as a first-line response in the “war for talent.” We have all but sidelined the conversation on employer branding and other forms of attraction. I wonder why.
Yet, as I think about it, perhaps understanding how to adapt to the shortage of skilled labor, like birds do in their evolving undeniable beauty, is a better long-term solution than having bird-brain recruiters hen-pecking candidates all day long. Peck, peck, peck!
Tomorrow I shall do two laps, thinking of dodos no doubt.
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