Have you read the 2015 US Job Forecast by Career Builders?
I found some interesting information presented. Even though they found that companies planned to increase their hiring of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) people, the positions that are tied to revenue growth, innovation and customer loyalty, are where most of the job grow will occur. They also found that companies where planning to add more jobs in some of the emerging fields e.g. Cyber security, Managing and interpreting "Big Data".
In addressing the requirements to work with "Big Data" companies also have found that they have additional education requirements. Career Builders found that 28% of the companies surveyed say they’re now hiring more workers with master’s degrees for positions that had been primarily held by workers with four-year degrees. And that 37% are now hiring workers with college degrees for those that had been held by workers with high school diplomas. So it seem that with the changing technology the educational requirements have increased across the board.
Since these changes are for new hires, I wonder what these companies are going to do with the existing employees that do not have the new educational requirements. Is your company undergoing a similar transformation? Does it have retraining programs in effect to increase the skill of employees in these new areas. Putting myself into their position, I would be concerned. These new areas of the business did not even exist when I first started working, and if you could use Lotus 123 you were a data analyst. Things have really changed.
Of additional interest they found that more companies are expecting to hire contract workers up 4% since last year to 46%. However 56% of the companies plan to transition some temporary or contract workers into fulltime, permanent roles. This implies that managing these contract workers from negotiating the contract, selecting the worker, and managing them through the working life cycle will become more important. As the number of contract workers increase the load in managing these workers also increases, and while the existing staff can (I am assuming) manage the current number of contingent workers, will they be able to manage the new work load? For it is not just identifying the worker and starting them working that is involved, you also have to consider such activities the recording their time, paying them, and ensuring compliance with your companies requirements. More involved than just selecting a contract worker.
And with the companies using the contingent work force as a type of screening to identify worker to transition to permanent, do you have an onboarding process defined?
Some links for further information: Managing the Contingent Workforce, OnBoarding, Learning Management
