Today you can hardly open a magazine without being confronted with the issue of labour shortages. So you want to grow as a company, to build something new, develop, create new jobs – and you can’t find the right people. According to recruiters , it can generally take between six to nine months to fill a position. The official statistics of the German Federal Employment Agency show that your average position, whether academic or not, remains unoccupied for 120 days. Three months in which other colleagues have to take on the work. This in turn can often lead to work overload and possibly even absence from work. So this is a serious economic factor. But how can the situation be remedied?
First of all, it is extremely important to find out which skills a new employee should have. It is not enough to simply take the job description of the colleague who has left. Or, in the case of newly created position, to take the job description of a similar position. What is required is an exact analysis of the competencies and skills that are required in the company, department or team in order to achieve the strategic objectives.
Before one turns to external means, it is always advisable to first have a good look at one’s own employees and their potentials. Because, they may often have the required skills, only that these were not required in the past as they did not play an important role. For example, there might be a machine operator in production who in his spare time is a successful artist. If a company is looking for creative minds, this could certainly be a good option… Or if you are looking for a new executive, you might overlook a consultant who has not yet led his own team, but is in fact the chairman of a tennis club and has proven his leadership skills in that role. In many cases, you can move the vacancy to a region where staffing is easier to accomplish. For example, if a new branch or a new territory is to be set up, it is always a good idea to ask your current staff whether anyone wants to move there. Again and again I see the astonished faces of HR managers when they hear that an employee who has just built a house and had children is still prepared to move, as the child care or school infrastructure is better there. Finding new staff is often easier at headquarters than at a subsidiary.
It is therefore possible to meet a shortage of skilled staff in a different way and at the same time hit multiple birds with one stone: you fill a vacancy, help to develop a new, motivated staff member and cut-short the time required to find a new employee as the position that has to be filled is in an area with a greater supply of suitable candidates. Sounds complicated? But it’s not. I’ll show you how to do it.
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