How ya gonna keep ‘em down on the farm?

In the telecom industry, where talent makes all the competitive difference, it’s a seller’s market for the best and the brightest, despite unemployment in the U.S. still hovering around 10%. Good people know that even during the recession they can find another position.

Several factors are multiplying the opportunities for such talent:

• The innovators and high-growth international players described in our first column in this series (“Innovation and the new economics,” Jan. 4, 2010) will be seeking experienced telecom talent to help them accelerate their market penetration. In fact, in the past six months companies like those on Fast Company’s 2010 list of the world’s most innovative companies (topped by Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Google and Huawei) have ramped up hiring to pre-empt competitors.
• In fast-developing telecoms markets such as Africa, China, India and the Middle East, local talent is scarce, compelling companies to look elsewhere to fill the gaps.
• Telecommunications is now seen as an almost magical engine of economic growth, a view embodied in such diverse phenomena as the 2009 stimulus package, Davos 2010 and recent ITU regional forums.
• Demographics will continue to shrink the talent pool as retirement reduces the percentage of executives aged 35 to 44 from its current level of 30% to just 18% over the next five years.

Ambitious and talented telecom executives understand that they can gain dramatic professional acceleration in highly innovative corporate environments and burgeoning markets abroad. In China, for example, the number of fixed and mobile subscriptions in five years will top 950 million. In India, now the world's fastest growing telecom market, the total number of mobile users is expected to nearly double in two years to over 500 million.  

Similarly, the Asian telecom market (Singapore, Japan, Australia, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Philippines, South Korea, Thailand, Pakistan and Indonesia) has surpassed the North American market in total revenues and is growing at twice the rate. Africa and the Middle East are projected to grow at a compound annual rate of 8.6% between 2007 and 2012. The breakout career opportunities in all those fast-paced markets, driven by growth in mobile voice, next generation networks, broadband and data will lure more and more top telecom talent.

New directions in talent management
Unfortunately, many companies are approaching this new global competition for talent largely unarmed. Last year, my firm found in a survey of more than 1000 top executives from the U.S., Germany, the U.K. and France that only half of the respondents believed that they were successful at identifying top performers and high-potential executives within their own organizations — to say nothing of hiring and integrating talent from the outside in largely unknown and complex geographies and cultures.

Meanwhile, to retain top talent likely to be besieged with exciting and challenging opportunities elsewhere, exemplary companies are taking action. They are directly involving CEOs in recruiting senior managers. They are training senior leaders in recruitment as a rigorous discipline. These leaders are learning how to assess candidates, the issues involved in internal versus external candidates, and how to use outside professional help. Other actions include:

• Establishing employee engagement programs to create a feeling of corporate community even with far-flung employees.
• Leveraging Web technologies to support the recruiting and retention strategies.
• Increasing the focus of CEOs on supporting and fostering growing talent within their organization.
• Establishing plans to manage a mid-2010 business up-turn (when turnover rates will increase as much as 50% once the job market heats up).
• Building world-class organizations where employees want to stay.

It’s a steep challenge. But these companies are well on their way to creating next-generation best practices in talent management.

Laura Lee Gentry is telecommunications practice leader for the Americas for Egon Zehnder International.