Only Themselves to Blame

It behoves CIOs attempting to get the balance right at least to acknowledge that business itself must bear some responsibility for the current talent shortage.

"I think that the IT industry itself has created a big problem in this area," says Bryan Salas, talent intelligence manager for recruitment company Talent International. "When they have an in-demand skill set or they have a need where they demand a specific skill set, they have gone out traditionally to go get a contractor. But what was expedient in the mid nineties is not necessarily the case any longer."

Contractors, in repeatedly coming in to a specific area and working on a specific project, tend to lose their organizational skills, Salas says. And over time, their sheer numbers tend to contribute to the serious dearth of professionals with the business skills needed now and into the future.

Organizations also go wrong by approaching workforce management in a largely haphazard fashion. They hire people expected to be high performers or they seek out those with skills relevant only to a specific point in time and immediately immerse them in a project or projects. Peter Polachi, managing partner with executive search firm Polachi & Company, argues this traditional approach fails to take account of the rapid pace of business change given the rate of technological innovation, as well as the need for certain organizations to adhere to mandatory compliance initiatives. This type of workforce management is reactive rather than proactive, though it does often produce short-term success.

Instead, organizations need to think ahead, he says. As projects are considered, new skill sets are needed to staff them and organizations that take the traditional approach to workforce management are left scrambling to find the right people with the right skills at the right time. The all-too-common result is that the organization does not get the work done, has to outsource it on the fly without enough time to properly vet it or, perhaps worse, bites off more than it can chew, which causes quality to decline precipitously across the board.