A major economic reality of modern day Australia is almost all industry sectors are plagued by a shortage of skilled staff.

Take a quick scan of the media:

• Mining industry needs 87,000 new workers by 2010
• One in three vacancies by 2012 will be in the property/construction industry
• Regardless of the state of the economy, demand for accounting talent never seems to cease

Not one sector seems to be immune from the scourge.

Faced with a national shortage, major industry sectors are drawing battle lines and bracing for a fight, which is increasingly fought at the gateway of new talent -  universities.  For the IT industry in particular, the fight is not only for the hearts and minds of a new generation of students, but fending off other industries fishing from the same talent pool.

On her part, the average student is armed to the teeth with information - unlike the past, each enrolling new student knows exactly how much she is worth, and what career options each industry offers. At the same time, the range of opportunities and career choices available, locally and globally, to a new generation of students. seems to improve every day.

Clearly, the first major profession to bore the brunt of a flat world (outsourcing), and for other myriad reasons (industry volatility, short-life of degrees, continuous up-skilling, no broad gender appeal etc) the IT profession is almost always faced with an uphill battle to sell itself.  And yet, the IT industry has no other option but to reach out.

MIS is igniting fresh debates on the perennial issue of IT skills shortage in Australia.

It is clear, supply side problems are caused by a combination of myriad factors (I previously took part in a similar discussion here) and rightly so, there is no ‘one solution’ to the problem . Any serious attempt at addressing IT skills shortage, at the very least, will require a collaborative approach by various stakeholders - employers, the business community, professional associations, industry bodies, talent service providers, education & training houses and public policy makers.

The National ICT Career Week is a collaborative attempt at addressing one aspect of the problem. It is a long overdue initiative.

Malcolm Gladwell (author of bestsellers Blink and the Tipping Point) is back, and true to character, takes a fascinating look at the problem of finding the right talent. 

According to Malcolm, pre-hiring tests and assessments are largely useless in determining how a new hire will perform in the real world.  Drawing on examples of professional sports in USA, Malcolm highlights what he called the mismatch problem -  "the criteria we use to to assess someone’s ability to do a job is radically out of step with the actual demands of the job itself". And his conclusion is that there is a mismatch problem in most professions today - teachers, lawyers, police, airlines and so on.

"Mismatch problems grows as the complexity of occupations grow. The world, and the demands of the workplace, has profoundly changed, but the way we hire hasn’t changed", he adds.

If you are in the business of hiring talent, here are a few questions Malcolm’s presentation raised - how do you go about figuring out the right talent for your company? Is there any co-relation between how you screen candidates and how they perform at work?  Are assessment tools ineffective to find talent? If you have a mismatch problem, what would you do to rectify it?

• Deb Loveridge, Vedior’s CEO, Asia-Pacific, argues that "recruitment companies that care attract the right talent" 
• Sheryle Moon, Managing Director, Julia  Ross, rants on 457 Visa restrictions placed on recruitment firms.
• AFR BOSS announced Young Executive 2008 Winners. "This year’s winners are really aware of their own personal desires and achievements that are non work related" declared the judges.
• In the US, AllianceQ launched with the aim to cut recruitment cost, ban recruitment firms and share candidates.  Some aspects of the model looks very similar to the Cyberlynx experiment in Australia.
• Interesting Harvard Business Review article on Zappos, an online shoe retailing company, which offers new employees bribes to quit , if they think they are not a good fit.
• Finally, Linkedin introduced DirectAds, which will allow employers/members to "specify the audience that will see their ads".

Recruitment is marketing, full stop.

At its core, talent attraction and recruitment is marketing.  If you are an employer, you are faced with job seekers armed to the teeth with choices.  Bad luck, the skills shortage problem is not going away soon, either.

So,  Sydney University’s student recruitment function is placed under the marketing department. It’s a sign of the times. Whether it is about acquiring new new staff or students, recruitment is all about reaching out and selling your brand.

If you are thinking of hiring staff, talk to your marketing department first.

Australia’s No 1 Job board SEEK makes further inroad into China’s fast growing employment classifieds market, by increasing its stake in local job board Zhaoping.com to 49.2.% . Marketing recruitment firm, Aquent, also moved into India’s burgeoning recruitment market, confirming its acquisition of  Professionele Consulting.

Given the enormous long-term potential offered by both China and India, it is surprising that Australian talent service providers (considering our close proximity to the region and existing good trading relationship in other sectors) are not swarming to the region.  Already, both China and India are top source of outbound talent, it is only a matter of time that the local employment market in the two growing countries will mimic the sophistication of those in the west. In India, for instance, returning expats (inbound talent), keen to capitalise on India’s growing economic prowess, are driving demand for recruitment services.

Do the math - If 1% of India’s estimated 500 million workforce change their employer in a calendar year ( a conservative number given attrition rate is as high as 15-20% in some sectors like call centre), there are around 5 million employment transactions (either job board activity or recruitment placement) taking place.

From here, it looks like SEEK and Aquent are making the right move.