Companies everywhere are experiencing labour and skills shortages due in part to the mass retirement of baby boomers and the global competition for talent. Time to fill cycles are getting longer and vacancy rates are increasing.

So one has to ask: Is this a good time for employers to take a more rigorous talent acquisition approach?

Some forward thinking companies believe now is the time to refine their selection process. As boomers retire at a rate of one every 8 seconds over the next decade backfilling them won't be easy. Armed with this knowledge and experiencing current talent shortages these companies have taken a novel approach which they call quality of hire. Their approach is to hire only the very best applicants who have a lot of headroom and then grow their skills from within. This is a strategy that will help ensure they are hiring their leaders of tomorrow when the tsunami comes ashore.

"We are moving aggressively toward measuring "Quality of Hire" as part of our talent acquisition strategy. Employee attrition is a big issue facing us. We need to address it in a way that ensures that we are not just filling vacancies but we are hiring the very best. So we are implementing programs that will allow us to better identify job candidates that will fit well with our culture." said the Vice President of Human Resources, $500 M + web services company.

Aberdeen Report 2007 Report - "The Global War for Talent: Getting What You Want Won't Be Easy

The strategic shift to quality hiring programs is in part fuelled by wake up calls from management gurus like Jim Collins author of Good to Great- "Get the right people on the bus and in the right seat" and Peter Drucker - "66% of hiring decisions will prove to be a mistake."

As the war for talent intensifies companies can no longer afford to hire or keep marginal performing employees.

A global competition for talent, boomer retirement, and an abundance of skill shortages is a perfect storm. So what can you do now to ensure your organization survives unscathed?

A 300 bed hospital has implemented an innovative nurse grad placement strategy in their effort to reduce turnover and optimise talent.They take a unique approach at matching the grad to their new department.

When new grads arrive they know very little about them. They don't know anything about their working style. Do they like to work quickly and assertively, or do they prefer to work methodically and at a slower pace? Do they prefer to make independent decisions or prefer to be closely directed? These working behaviours and many others are evaluated and matched with the department's culture to ensure a good fit.

For example the working culture in emergency is different from intensive care which is different from paediatrics etc. Placing nurse grads in the right seat on the bus goes a long way toward reducing turnover and improving performance especially at this most critical step of the young nurse's career.

Studies and research confirm that technical skills are important but they are only part of the success equation. Equally important is the way in which the technical skills get applied which is referred to as contextual skills. Selecting a person based on their contextual skills is taking on more importance in the selection process and is best illustrated in the example below.

A fortune 100 company, a global manufacturing leader has a program for identifying and measuring the skills of prospective team leaders on their assembly lines. As part of their six sigma continuous improvement process they set out to hire and promote only team leaders with the right technical skills and the right contextual skills such as perseverance, self confidence, problem solving, and more.

"In order to optimise our process improvement initiatives we must have the right people on board and that means people who have a combination of skills" said the Director of Human Resources, $36 Billion Global Manufacturing Company.

What can you start doing now?

* Review your company's time to fill cycles and vacancy rates. Do you see alarming trends?
* Forecast boomer retirement. How many, when, what departments will be hardest hit.
* Inventory the skill sets of the impending retirees. What special talents and skills do these people have.

Catalogue them, or measure them now. These are the people you are looking to replace. Capture their high performance DNA so to speak before they leave.

Now is the time to act with deliberate purpose and a clear strategic plan.

- DeTimes