Continue reading »]]> Spending on public and private IT cloud services will generate nearly 14-17 million core jobs worldwide from 2011 to 2015, according to a new study by the analyst firm IDC, commissioned by Microsoft.

[click image to see infographic]

Interesting to me are the shifts in technology across the markets over the years and the effects on jobs and the people skills therein from the days of George II, COBOL CICS DB2 to VAX VMS and a little NT4 for good measure in the host of golden oldies. In relation to Cloud I have not seen any other technology shift that will have such a deep impact on all manner of things since the industrial revolution (and sliced bread of course!).

In fact, what makes this more interesting is a number of other events happening right now at precisely the same which are in effect a ‘perfect storm’. (Andy Headworth describes this perfectly here ‘Perfect Storm’).

These events consist of technology shifts at the same time as a generation shift and that generation indeed are of a different mind-set. On top of that we have the current economic climate of course further driving the needs of cloud as an attractive viability ahead of proof of concept.  Included in the technology mix is social networking, big data, search and mobile as well as ever increasing security demands of cloud ~ which will have to move from its weakness to its strength in a short time.

There are millions of people in legacy IT that move about all the time even – without and resulting net new job creation and that’s what we call normal churn and burn and the current recruitment solution models meet those needs just fine although for many candidates the experience is not great. This movement will increase exponentially with cloud of course,  but.. (and a BIG but) cloud will require evolved recruitment and resourcing and handling techniques and new approach for many recruiters including the hiring process for a better candidate experience, retention, development  and training.  There will be huge skills gaps and skills wars between the markets -  both public and private sectors, and this will on the one hand slow progress on many projects and on the other, an upward  hike of rates and salaries.

What I am getting at is that Recruiters, HR and resourcing departments / direct employers will need to work differently – not least because skill sets are shifting quickly and hence will need to learn their SaaS from their PasS and IaaS, but also because the very people they are looking for will not be in the usual places! I mean that the savvy cloud people are increasingly less likely to be looking on the static  Jobboards where most recruiting models rely in wait and pray in the hopes of talent stumbling into their inbox for that job on offer but more so, the new generation cloud experts and in fact all ilk of candidates external to cloud skills will be developing online profiles and inbound attracting the right employers of choice – the savvy niche recruiters and employers in those social spaces will be engaging directly with these networks.

After all, is Cloud not about online engagement, from collaboration to participation on internal organisation chatter, or online crowded sourcing of contract talent. The Cloud workforce of tomorrow will engage in all levels of active participation and collaboration hence the cloud workforce of tomorrow is obviously engaged in its community.

Recruiters,  Employers as well as outsourcing suppliers, (RPO), business process (BPS) and software & IT suppliers (SITS)  alike will need to learn how to better ‘engage’ with these talent pipelines and attract to brand hence the recruitment future is  longer a transactional process and nor will it be  ‘business as usual’ as in the past e.g. simply broadcasting to them by static means. NO! Recruiters and Employers that will do best  in resourcing in cloud  technologies in the future are the ones that learn to engage with the audience two-way >>before<< they are even looking for a job and the candidate is at a passive level, hence building a great talent pipeline already warmed to your brand for the future  but also, once engaged in employment more effort will be required in retention of the best through better rewards, training and development.

A quick count on current UK jobs advertised related to cloud skills but mostly broadcast in web 1.0 land – there are about 10,000.

Innovators moving forward now require skills eg:

Java .NET SaaS PaaS IaaS, Microsoft Dynamics, Azure

Strategy and Innovation, Change & Mobile Application Development.

Understand the possibilities in cloud computing and how this translates into the business strategy &the programme management to deliver.

Enterprise Architecture

Skills around the cloud such as built-in browsers and knowledge about the users. The architects do not need to build everything as before.

Management Capturing and prioritising demand, assigning resources based on business objectivesand doing projects that deliver business value.

Global Sourcing Negotiating skills. Insights into legal issues of privacy. Also Quality, Risk and Compliance Risk and compliance

Management Transportation and storage of data.

Project Delivery Skills regarding specification and deployment of ICT-solution. Knowledge about standards and webservice design.

IT Support and Execution –  Brokers and translaters between business and vendors.

Recruiters get busy and understand how to engage with your audience.!

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My observation update today  is that recruitment companies dependency on IT systems and the need for embracing new platforms and social tools has never been greater for operational excellence & value and reach. The potential and stakes are higher than ever in recruitment as we see a meeting of a generation shift and a technology shift to-boot – hence we will need to move processes on to engagement of value for a better client and candidate experience that WILL be expected. So Carpe-Diem!

However the conundrum is that many recruiters (organisations generally) are stuck in a constraint-focused spiral on costs and not value e.g. either as a cost centre approach or a centre of strategic value. Business executives and accountants generally don’t always see value generated in proportion to the amount of IT spending. As a result, they view IT as a department or business entity and evil that needs to be constrained rather than embraced to further excellence.

And now for Cloud and all its silver lining of opportunity,  is mostly driven by cost saving fist before the value of better working, collaboration and resilience etc..

This primary focus on cost reduction then minimizes IT’s ability to deliver strategic value, which erodes the business / users confidence in IT management or overall strategy. This lack of confidence from the business prevents them from elevating the value discussion above a cost focus. Hence spiral conundrum!

Fortunately my company is right behind IT development and strategy for the long term, but I can see many external examples in the recruitment business that are not behind the real challenge ~ but in social recruiting / media projects,  there are cry’s to see ROI immediately when even existing legacy systems and processes ROI are not even known or measured correctly. But certainly, time and investment is needed and the ultimate ROI will be ‘being here’ into the future.

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Here is my timeline of the recruitment industry – perhaps a resume of the recruitment industry itself! This includes significant milestones but overall, I jotted it down from a technology standpoint in order to demonstrate that change in recruitment process and methods  is a predominant part of our history. Like all industry sectors I guess, but for recruitment at least, there are several social media sceptics that tend on the one hand to accept past change whilst on the other, do not accept change that may indeed be happening even in front of thy very eyes! As I discover later, this is because as well as being on the cusp of technology shift, we are also on generation shift at the same time.

Andy Headworth describes this perfectly as the ‘Perfect Storm’

The next year will see the take up, realisation and means for innovators in recruitment to put the conversation back into recruiting and to some extent back to the past where quality and relationship and expertise value matter.  Oh what opportunity lies ahead.. and challenge!

Timeline

OK I start at 1480 but probably even Moses saw job adverts written in stone much earlier.

1480 to present recruitment press advertising

1960 AGY start-ups & AGY ACT > selling the concept of the sub-contractors

1960 to 1997 Hard copy CV files search

1985 to present Common computer database file search

1988 to present database code search

1984 to present fax come along [invented in 1854 !] >

fax was king until>>>

1995 to present [born 1954]email

1996 to present [born 1984] web 1.0

1996 to present jobboards [and the age of quantity]

.. multiple CV’s en mass, low service to candidates/experience

1996 to present candidates switched to jobboards

1998 to present recruiters advertise most / all jobs

1998 to present recruiters swamped with CV’s – time to invent more de duplication software!

1998 to present Google [search engine] came along

2001 to present online central CV concept

2001 to present job posting sites come along

2002 to present online database searches

2003 to present Web 2.0 is here [LinkedIn etc. and now 100's of others]

2006 to present candidates build online profiles [cv type]

2007 to present Candidates get automated feeds rather than search online

2008 to present job aggregators arrive

2008 to present recruiters develop SEO and job indexing on their own websites

2009 to present candidates  shift to Google search for jobs [trend]

2009 to present candidates build communities of likeminded skill sets

2012 to future >>>now YOU ARE HERE>>

• Recruiters develop inbound digital tools to attract the ‘right’ candidates
• Candidates get social savvy and develop online profiles to inbound attract the right jobs and the right Recruiters brands by niche
• Direct Employers, Clients & HR develop inbound digital tools to attract the ‘right’ candidates
• Direct messages on social sites overtake email
• Recruiters & Direct Employers build communities of like-minded candidates / skills
• Recruiters connect to ‘looking’ candidates as well as ‘passive’ candidates [pipelining] and stay connected to ‘not looking’ candidates [e.g will be one day looking..] 
• Joined up media is happening – Video and multimedia formats build client and candidate profiles
• Mobile Apps & platforms accelerate for web2. no need for that dusty PC and in-box full of spam. On the move and want it now mind-set. More Smartphones than people on the planet and tablets overtake the PC.
• Skill Shortage especially new technologies replacing legacy e.g. Cloud.

I probably missed something?

on my Opportunity Collision graph, the point in time looks like this:

With shifts clearly happening fast why are so many recruiters and most organisations not noticing or avoiding change that will ultimately benefit or even keep them in business? Without change and innovation there cannot be growth and existing models and technology and methods etc. cannot come into the future.

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What is preventing progress in the adoption of social media in recruitment?

The progress (or lack of it) and the early barriers in social media adoption ( for many businesses – not just Recruitment),  may originate in the genes of currently successful people and in many cases at the very heart of the C-Suit itself.

Thankfully, there are some great examples of c-suit innovators adopting socialrecruiting. Perhaps leading so far is not recruiter businesses but are the direct employers and HR – so well done to them.

If around today,  would even Mozart be into community building and conversation?

If Mozart was a time traveler and arrived  in 2012, then he certainly would have had wild staring eyes of disbelief when after listening to an orchestra performing a masterpiece to perfection , that when revealed, the source was in fact a mere iPod and sound system and without an orchestra nor an audience in sight.  Would Mozart then deny such existence of the marvel before him? His disbelief would be short-lived I’m sure – but how would you explain it to him?

Well you would have to go right back to the very start, get in his clogs of the 1700’s and understand where his mind-set is coming from in order to explain  the marvel and evolution of electric and sound and digital. Mozart being innovative already and his inherent trait to learn would provide an ideal platform for the take up and acceptance of such marvel. The same would be true of social media engagement with his audience. He would be joining the conversation in no time and inbound marketing his wider audience to his talents and brand pretty quickly I suspect!

For the socialrecruiting naysayers of today then, reluctance to change or learn anything new with an open mind is often fiercely avoided outright!

Blind denial?

The primary  barrier overall then is fear and  protectionism because the current recruitment model being operated is 100% profit stream in the traditional sense and enjoys a year on year growth path. So the existing C-Suit are already successful in business and what worked before will work will in future! Wont it..?

This is  overall then, a mind-set fault of self-destruction. Doh!

Going forward

We’re quickly moving from a time of mass communications to one of masses of communicators.  That is I discover, the moving from the web1.0 outbound interrupt mind-set to web2.0 inbound conversation and engagement mind-set!

Recruiters will evolve further to be talent engagement networkers of needs and wants [what we have done always really..] but more quality and niche, less churn and burn. Jobboards and job posting sites will end -  in their current form at least, and static CRMs will become dynamic and connected in a cloud with powerful trend analytics to better drive strategy. Email is already becoming kaput… power through experience, engagement and conversation will be a new order.

Your clients and candidates have already shifted to social channels now moving to a plateau of productivity,  It’s no longer about you. Your phone and email and response from static jobs ads will stop buzzing. Time to evolve..  don’t wait for some time travel miracle to happen.

How  to Influence?

When the revolution of fax came – the words ‘trust me’ was enough to convince the C-Suit to get one! But alas, the new-fangled ‘social media’ thingy will need influencers to work harder but with some sensibility in order to shift C-Suit mind-set!  Business leaders must allow and encourage experimentation. Edison did not have proven ROI for his 999 experiments on how NOT to make a light bulb. The need to evolve from gas lamps existed and so too did the ready audience.

The biggest ROI is being in business tomorrow but it’s no use evangelising with hype and news of the end is nigh!

Big company, small company, it’s the mind-set that counts and measured teaching and reassurance is required. It’s not just influence in the concept of social media itself, but applying it in real terms to the today recruitment industry model and process.

So how do you influence?

What would you do?