Communications of the ACM
A Winning Strategy in the War For Talent
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Despite a massive surplus of people looking for work, technology companies are still having a hard time finding talent. When big companies like Zynga, Facebook and Groupon need to take out billboards to find employees, it's easy to see how the competition weighs on small- and medium-sized companies. For employers, it's important to recognize the factors involved in the imbalance between demand and supply of local talent. A classic problem is that the right talent is not where the jobs are. Thus, companies should "manufacture" talent, investing in training their teams and in paying to relocate the right people to fill key vacancies.
While talent is always a worthwhile investment, relocating skilled workers isn't going to be enough to close the gap between the growing demand for talent and the limited local supply. Why relocate the worker when it's so much easier to relocate the work? While some positions still must be filled locally, in a world with email, instant messaging, desktop sharing and video conferencing, more jobs can be easily moved out of the office and onto the home desk of the best-qualified candidate, wherever he or she may be. At some companies, remote contractors outnumber in-house talent by four to one.
From GigaOM
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