The war for talent has changed

The argument that the new competitive battleground is hiring the best people has been going on for years. In the past, though, it was thought that best in class people were what was wanted, no matter what area of the business was hiring.

Things are different now, though. The war for talent is still going strong, but the battlefield has changed significantly.

The most obvious place this is occurring is in the technology space.

Pure technology skills are going cheap. Ask for an architect and you get plenty of applications. A database administrator or a coder, and you get lots more. Contractors are far less desirable than permanent staff, simply because the rates are higher. And in any case, temporary staff can be had much more easily when one goes offshore.

These are people who have chosen to specialise in a particular technology set because they thought it sensible to be the best in class at the one thing they do. They thought this would be a sensible career move, surely one that would guarantee their futures. They assumed that any employer would jump at the chance to have them given their wealth of experience and obvious capability.

They were wrong. The battlefield changed. Technical sills – no matter how good –are completely commoditised.

The new war for talent is for people who know how to grow business value and that has little to do with technology. The people you can't easily get are the ones that can spot opportunities, work out how to exploit them, and then, as a bonus, put the gadgets together to make it happen. Theirs is a general knowledge of lots of things, rather than the laser-sharp focus on the specific.

But my comments are equally applicable to the business side as well. The product manager who knows how to twiddle terms and conditions or change interest rates is all very well, but ask them to create a disruptive new product that takes out the competition and you'll likely grow old waiting for a result.

The era of the specialist is over. Specialists you can get by picking up the phone. They're the ones that have all been let go, by the way, as institutions have rationalised their operations, contributing to their own commoditisation.

The generalist, on the other hand, has a very bright future. The fact that so few are available means they'll always command decent salaries. The people who are equally at home on the technology or business side, and who don't really see all that much difference between the two are a rare breed indeed.

In the past, the list of skills on the CV was the most important thing. Now, though, its much more about career achievements: those personal – and unique – contributions individuals have made to their employers' businesses. The ones that make you wonder where your organisation would have been if you'd had the services of that person instead of the competitor down the road.

This new war for talent is as vicious as it ever was. But the battleground is smaller, and the stakes much, much higher.

Comments

[Graham Hill]

Hi James

Uncanny how you blog about so many of things that have been on my mind for some time.

I agree with you about the general commoditisation of today's specialists. In a normally distributed (?) market for talent, I wouldn't expect anythng else. And of course, new specialisms are always coming along and old ones being resurrected as time goes by.

But I think you may overrate the power of generalists to get things done. At least by themseves. By their very nature, generalists can't provide specialist skills to solve specific problems. But they can broker solutions that bring together specialists in flexible, adaptable teams, as and when they are required. Perhaps this is the real skill of the generalist: as a problem specifier, potential solution identifier and specialist resource broker.

Michael Mauboussin of Legg Mason Capital Management wrote about the importance of generalists vs. specialists in an earlier report entitled 'The Importance of Diverse Thinking' - http://tinyurl.com/6zt7hf . The role of brokers to bring people diverse people in organisational networks together to drive innovation has been extensively covered. Rob Cross' paper on 'Masterfoods USA Case Study: Driving Innovation in R&D' is a good example - http://tinyurl.com/9nzmma .

This is a very important area of emerging business practice.

Graham Hill
Customer-driven Innovator

[James Gardner]

@Gramham: I completely agree with you. The point of a generalist is to be a broker of specialists. Clearly, a generalist needs some support in order to make things happen. I think the point I was making is that the reverse never happens: the specialist seems never to be able to solve a strategic problem on their own.

And the strategic problems are the ones where most institutions struggle. That's why I think the Generalists value will continue to rise.

[Iowa_John]

I couldn't agree more-now if only I could convince potential employers of the same!

[Rob Findlay]

This is a good summary of the new talent required - those who are thinkers, intelligent people who create insight from information, advantage from data and technology, and connections with customers, not just business case compliance will always be in demand. Those who execute technical tasks will always live in fear of many others learning the same skills - India and China are exposing this in Western businesses.

Its this new approach that gave someone like me with a Design degree and advertising background a chance to work in a bank in customer experience strategy - multi-discipline/capability/interests will always ensure a diverse career open to opportunities.

[Gareth Bryant]

Good article - you also touch on the territorialism inherent in specialists (I'm sure we've all see those frontend applications developed in clunky ASP because flash/ajax 'aren't that great' or the enterprise database applications attempted to be built in Excel because 'it's amazing what you can do in excel'. Really the issue here is always the 'specialist' is a master of one tool and when presented with a challenge the inevitable shoe-horning occurs.

I guess the blindingly obvious question is that if this is so true, why this isn't getting through to management? This isn't new thinking, it's been around for years - so why do we still find ourselves in an industry with swathes of specialists and precious few generalists?

[James Gardner]

I rather think that management does get it, actually. It the specialists that don't. BUt i can understand that. If you've invested years, maybe decades being the best at something narrow, the new talent war has to be something of an annoyance at least.

[Matt]

I couldn't agree more. User Experience designers fit this role.

Employed to understand both the business problem and the technology but without deep knowledge of either allows them to think without constraints and provide the innovation that's so hard to find.

Specialists are important but it's rare to find one who has the ability to abstract themselves from their discipline.

[Graham Hill]

Hi James

I wonder whether we are making too many broad generalisations about generalists and specialists. Particularly, about either's ability to work effectively as brokers. I think that it is brokering that is the real issue.

I am not aware of any robust research that shows unequivocally that generalists make the best brokers or that specialists make the worst brokers. For example, Fleming & Marx's work on technology brokering in the early days of Silicon Valley showed that the technology social network across hundreds of technologists was almost entirely brokered by just a few very well connected specialists in a few companies.

If brokering is a key ability in today's distributed innovation model, then we should perhaps select for generalists with proven brokering abilities, at the same time not ignoring specialists who have them too.

The last thing we need is another 'them vs. us' battle breaking out.

Graham Hill

[Thomas Barker]

http://www.odesk.com

I look at there and I have to admit - even for me (a techie) there are things I would do better to let someone in Russia with x14 the experience of the specific technology handle.

[Fiona McConnell]

Hi James,
As a marketing/innovation/business development/strategy/technology-loving generalist I applaud your article. Unfortunately, it seems that very few companies that are currently recruiting share your views.

From my experience within banking, scanning on a wide range of interests combined with an ability to connect disparate concepts and applications, enabled me to add value to propositions and problem-solving in many different contexts.

Now, however, the vast majority of jobs advertised require the candidate to have worked in the same role, in the same type of company, in the same industry for anything from 2- 5 years.

Surely this can only lead to "in-breeding" in the thinking within industries (as we've seen within banking over the last few years)?

[James Gardner]

@Fiona: Indeed, there are market challenges at the moment. And many people who would otherwise find work are not doing so. But I think my key point was that commodity skills - those that can be had elsewhere cheaply - are even in less demand.

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