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– Hi, I’m Will, and I’m
back today drinking a `
from Tuckerman Brewing Company
in Conway, New Hampshire.
Let’s see what we got.
(lid clicks)
(light music)
There’s far more head than beer.
(record scratches)
(cheerful music)
(board scratches)
(punch thuds)
Wait about 10 minutes
until I can actually take a sip of this
and get something other than head.
Smells good.
The head is nice. (laughs)
Hi, I’m Will, and today,
I wanna talk about
hunting purple squirrels.
No, no, no, I’m not talking
about catching squirrels
that fell in a bucket of paint.
In the staffing industry,
purple squirrels are the term
for workers with an ideal
but impossible to find
mix of skills, experience,
or other credentials.
Employers hunting these purple squirrels
may be well intentioned
but such overly restrictive requirements
lead to unfilled positions,
overworked teams,
and lost productivity.
(light music)
It’s actually really good.
It’s really smooth. I like that.
As an alternative,
employers can reevaluate the skills
they recruit for in the market,
that is, the skills they buy,
and identify the skills
they should train or build
in their existing workforce.
Think of it this way.
If you go to McDonald’s,
you may wanna order a Big
Mac with the normal toppings
but maybe you want to
add something off menu,
like jalapenos, and build a
new Big Mac to fit your tastes.
The same goes for your workforce.
Maybe building workers with
off-menu skills is better
or cheaper for your organization
than buying workers with the
skills they already have.
This video is not sponsored by McDonald’s.
Talk of burgers and Big
Macs is making me hungry.
I just need a burger to go
with the beer right now.
This is easier said than done, however.
And many organizations still
have a buy-first mentality.
For example, nearly 70% of workers
with the most valuable
tech skills were sourced
from outside their current organization.
This means that employers are fighting
for the same pool of scarce workers,
forcing them to poach from one another
and sending salaries
into the stratosphere.
By contrast, building your
workers through targeted learning
and development enables you to
grow the universe of workers
with mission-critical skills,
expand and diversify the
talent pools you recruit from,
and boost retention and employee morale.
That said, not all training
initiatives produce
the same return on investment,
and some skills simply
can’t be trained quickly
or cost effectively.
So how can you determine
the best skills to build
rather than buy?
First, inventory the
skills your team has today.
You can’t prioritize skills to build
if you don’t know what skills you have.
So taking an inventory
of your team’s current
skills is foundational
for all build versus buy decisions.
(light music)
Second, anticipate the skills
your team will need tomorrow.
This requires peering
into your crystal ball
to anticipate the skills
you need to be future-ready.
This may include looking at new skills
your competitors are hiring,
skills related to new technologies,
or skills that support
your strategic goals.
Third, compare the effort
to buy the skills you need
versus the effort to build them.
For example, take cloud security skills.
The effort to buy cloud
security skills is high
since they increase time to fill
and come with a salary
premium close to $15,000.
However, you probably
don’t need to spend $15,000
to train existing workers
in cloud security skills
so the effort to build is relatively low.
Therefore, building cloud security skills
in your team could produce a strong return
on your training investment.
While these steps can help
you determine whether to build
or buy the skills you need,
it’s important to remember
that buying versus building
isn’t an either/or decision.
The key takeaway, therefore,
is that it is best to pursue the right mix
of building and buying
the skills you need,
data about your workforce
will help you do this.
This may not always land
you a purple squirrel,
but it will help you diversify
your talent sourcing strategies
and enable you to maximize the return
on your workforce development dollars.
If you want more advice on how to build
versus buy the skills you
need in your workforce,
feel free to reach out to us.
Or go to this link here,
which has more practical
advice about how to determine
which skills you should build versus buy.
I’m Will Markow, signing off a beer with
Emsi Burning Glass.
So happy Friday. Till next time.
(light music)