Bye Bye Skilled Worker Shortage
By: Gehrke, Vetterkind Consultants
Tags: Workers Shortage, Company Strategy, Strategy, Company Culture, Management And Leadership

Bye Bye Skilled Worker Shortage

There is no shortage of skilled workers. Admittedly — a provocative statement. And this, when the popular and trade press as well as HR experts are talking about an increasing shortage of skilled workers. But let’s be clear for once. Yes, our society is ageing. And yes, companies lack specialists in certain areas. But let’s analyse the problem more closely and look for solutions. There’s no such thing as can’t. Gehrke & Vetterkind Consultants Dec 23, 2020·8 min read

01_Are you focused on searching or on finding?

Some time ago I was looking for qualified controllers for my small food company, ideally with a degree, specialising in finance & controlling, a few years of professional experience. Difficult. Because we live in the Stuttgart region in Germany and are a small company. Daimler, Bosch, Porsche, Audi, Lidl, Stihl, Ritter and many other well-known and sought-after companies have their headquarters within a radius of 100 km. We can’t compete with them in terms of salary, social benefits or other benefits such as company cars or bonuses. Our budget for recruiting is manageable. The number of applications received was also manageable. To come straight to the point: We found the perfect employee for us and both sides are happy with the decision.

Our benefits:

A small company with a lot of freedom to make decisions, an office in the middle of Stuttgart and subsidies for public transport, food, petrol and, if desired, leasing of a fancy bike or scooter and an above-average salary for our size. AND: a corporate culture that allows for mistakes and where employees can test and implement their own ideas on their own responsibility. Solution approaches:

We actively contacted people on LinkedIn and XING who obviously had a permanent job and were not looking for a job. HR professionals call this “active sourcing”.

We searched all over Germany. Anyone who still believes in 2021 that an office employee has to sit on site deserves the shortage of skilled workers.

We applied to potential candidates — not the other way round. I.e. as the boss, I applied to the candidates and asked for an interview. An interesting change of perspective that worked.

We didn’t explain long and hard why someone should work for us, but asked the candidates welche Voraussetzungen erfüllt sein müssten, dass sie bei uns arbeiten

A structured process with requirement profile, structured interview and psychological tests helped us to find the right candidates

We made it easy for candidates to apply. No long cover letters, no thousand documents, but one — the CV.

We didn’t take CVs at face value, but talked to the candidates. Because a CV says nothing about whether the applicant is suitable.

We did not work with job profiles, but looked for competences.

We let the applicants design their perfect job and paint it in the most beautiful colours — then we defined the job profile.

We didn’t create one job offer for everyone, but looked at what language our target group spoke and geared our application to that.

02_A strategic personnel plan as a basis

Unfortunately, many companies are looking for skilled workers at the very moment when the need is acute. But that’s like trying to find a life partner just when you’re desperately looking for one. Exactly then you will find no one. The order must be:

Corporate strategy HR strategy Recruiting strategy.

Based on this, you can ask yourself the following questions:

Where do you want your company to be in 3–5 years?

What is your business model in 3–5 years?

If turnover develops like this, what will happen in 2–3 years?

If demographic trends or the number of graduates in MINT school subjects (Mathematics, computer science, natural sciences, technology)develop this way, what will the situation look like in a few years?

Welche Do you need talent for this and what does the market currently look like in this respect?

What options are there to attract these talents talents now or to position the company position the company in their minds?

How can you proceed differently than other companies do? Close consciously exclude the classics such as a job advertisement on

Stepstone or other portals and and look for new ways, e.g.

creative active sourcing, a social media media ad with videos of the employees, etc.

Stepstone or other portals and and look for new ways, e.g. creative active sourcing, a social media media ad with videos of the employees, etc. How can you use your employees as brand ambassadors?

Do people know your company, even if even if they are not from the industry? If not, what can you do to position your company position your company with applicants outside the industry?

What potential lies dormant in your in your own company? Do you know which talents you have and whether they are happy with your current position or would prefer to do something else

Can you create resources by cleverly redistributing tasks or realigning areas and thus, for example, fill another position that is easier to fill? For once, consciously involve your employees in the personnel planning and rely on counter-current planning.

03_Create a clear process

The company Personio conducted a study some time ago and analysed why recruitment fails.

95% of applicants turn down a job because they don’t hear from the company for too long / because the application process takes too long.

From the company’s point of view, 97% of applicants do not meet the requirements of the job advertisement.

In both cases, the reason for this is that the application process is not structured and at least partially automated, and many managers do not understand that successful human resources work is a well-coordinated interaction between the human resources department and the specialist department. The success rate can easily be increased by 50%, if not by 70–80%, if there is a consistently known and accepted application process that is also lived in practice.

It is also important to understand that applications alone are not a valid selection tool. Again and again we hear the answer to the question of how personnel selection works: We have looked at the documents, invited the candidate to an interview and then rejected or hired him. This model can work, but in 90% of cases it will not. There are too many factors that cannot be taken into account by this type of personnel selection.

Our suggestion for a clear process:

Automate what can be automated. Everything that can be done by software should not be done by your staff. Use the freed-up time to get to know interesting candidates

Use an applicant management software that you can use to control the advertisement, application and selection process. Good software-as-aservice solutions (Saas) are also available for smaller companies

Create standardised requirement profiles with a division into TARGET/CAN criteria and a weighting of the requirements. Develop an interview kit with an expert for a structured interview and develop a template/interview sheet for it

Part of an interview sheet should also be an overview of the common perception and assessment errors that we humans make in every interview- Decide on psychological testing procedures and qualify some employees in your company for the use of these procedures. Recommend at least one intelligence test (e.g. the WIT-2 test) and one scientifically based personality test (e.g. the Bochum Personality Questionnaire).

Have the HR department and the specialist departments work together to create a selection process from the above steps that is accepted by both sides

Consider how this selection process can be integrated into your company’s everyday life in a playful way. Every employee should know the process and have internalised it.

04_Knowing and developing your own employees

The greatest potential for countering the shortage of skilled workers lies dormant within your own company. How often have we experienced in practice that abilities, interests, the will and commitment to further development and more commitment to the company are simply ignored.

The result is usually a “switch” to doing things by the book, up to and including internal resignation, which is then followed by actual resignation at some point. You’ll never see this employee again.

That’s what happened to an entrepreneur we know. He then tried to win the employee back with a not inconsiderable salary increase and the promise of a new job. The money was not the problem for the employee. And he no longer believed the promise that he would finally be heard.Our first tip is to abolish the annual appraisal interviews, if you are still implementing them. A mutual assessment of strengths and weaknesses once a year will not bring your company any further. Instead, establish a feedback culture that allows performance and behaviour to be reflected at any time and look for new formats in which managers and employees regularly exchange ideas and in which the topics are really substantial. And make sure that these discussions can be followed up and implementation can be measured.If staff express a desire to develop, work out a concrete timetable and measures for development. And if the desired job or position does not exist at the moment, consider: How could you create the job in a different way? Or when would there be a suitable option and how can you keep the employees until it is realised?

05_Developing an employer brand

Many SMEs believe that their own product and their own company must be so attractive that applicants will come by themselves. Here we should consider that we entrepreneurs are often victims of a perception bias. For us, our company is the best in the world. Because it is our baby.

In addition, there is a phenomenon that cognitive psychologists call confirmation bias. We humans tend to select and interpret information in such a way that it corresponds to our own expectations. This means in this example: We will transfer positive information about our company to all areas and think that our company is the best, most well-known and most sought-after company. I still remember how I founded my food company and after two years of intensive marketing work and cooperation within our target group, I believed that everyone must have heard of us by now. A misjudgement. A survey of the target group showed that we were not even known by 5% of the target group.

It is therefore of great importance that you develop an employer brand derived from your brand strategy for your company. Because even if your target group may know you, that does not mean that you are known in the labour market. The Job Trends study, which surveyed more than 16,000 managers and employees, showed that a strong employer brand can reduce recruiting costs by up to 50%, increase employee fit and reduce turnover by up to 28%. And what should be of particular interest to you as an entrepreneur: Customer satisfaction increased by up to 12%, business performance by up to 16% and ROI by 12%.

You would like to know more? Gehrke & Vetterkind Consultants can help you

We are a consultancy for SMEs, based in Stuttgart, Germany. We are working mainly for company founders and managing directors.

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Author and Copyright: Daniel Vetterkind, Gehrke & Vetterkind Consultants, 2020