62% of CIOs are finding it difficult to recruit talent to drive transformation. So writes Access Talent’s Adam Morrell.
Given that IT now is increasingly about adding business value through transformation you could be depriving your organisation of potential growth and efficiencies if you find yourself on the wrong end of this statistic.
In his blog on the subject, Adam suggests that innovative recruitment and developing home grown talent are the best solutions to the challenge.
The latter option can be very productive and you get to mould your talent in the image of your business culture. 74% of the CIO 100 currently operate an apprenticeship scheme to bring on home-grown talent or say that they are developing such a programme – but it takes time – time that you probably do not have.
The first option is more immediate and so long as you have an IT Recruitment partner who has taken time to understand your business you can develop a Project team that is as aligned with your culture as through any apprenticeship scheme.
Then, of course … there is a third option.
If you can’t recruit it or develop it – buy it!
Just about every conceivable part of the Project Management function can now be bought in ‘as a Service’, even the umbrella concept of Project Management itself.
For fun, if you have a spare few minutes, hit up Google and try to find an aspect of the process that cannot be outsourced. When Multisourcing and Project Management met the possibilities became almost endless. There is practically no Project Management service that is not being offered by someone somewhere.
So, of those three options for finding talent to drive transformation;
1 – Recruit
2 – Develop
3 – Buy in ‘as a Service’
Which is best?
Well, the answer is all of them – depending on your circumstances.
To address that 62% of CIOs struggling to recruit change talent – your ‘failure’ may be telling you to try something new.
You may have time for developing home grown talent or engaging in a recruitment process (choosing a recruitment partner with reach and speed will help with this) but the nature of IT Change is that it is happening now.
Business is more competitive than ever – by choosing to outsource you could gain a competitive advantage on competitors who opt to home grow or to recruit using the wrong partner.
You may find that, rather than having ‘settled’ for a third option by buying in Project Management functions, you may unleash greater change potential.
You may find that change can actually be accelerated. Certainly, many organisations find that, with an outsourcing partner, change can be much more aggressively driven and outcomes realised more quickly. When you hire in Project Management functions ‘as a Service’, the consultants driving change are not caught up in organisational politics and they are not thinking about their career with you or their next promotion.
For this reason too, external contractors tend to be more transparent. They have no career agenda that could benefit from hiding an issue. Problems are flagged because sorting them is the quickest way to deliver the project, get paid and move on to the next one.
Major change IT projects thrive in such a dynamic environment.
But it costs more right?
In my experience, usually NOT.
You pay for what you need – with the right partner your business can secure the consistently high-quality Project Delivery you need, often with no net increase in the overall portfolio costs.
For me, though, the most exciting benefit of buying in Project Management as a Service is that it actually works in synergy with the other two options bolstering their case for being part of the transformation mix.
Project Management as a Service helps with developing your team’s competencies by allowing them to work alongside more seasoned Project Managers on projects that normally would be beyond their scope.
From a recruitment perspective, when you hire in Project Managers as a Service you have access to their contacts. On several occasions, a contractor has known ‘just the man for the job’ for a firm that has been unsuccessfully trying to attract talent through the conventional routes. It’s not what you know!
With the right service provider, you can simultaneously address the challenge of improving your own project management capabilities and drive strategic business change through IT, whether that’s with skilled resource provision or a fully Managed Service. For the 62% of CIOs who are finding it difficult to recruit talent to drive transformation, it’s an opportunity to gain background on the 38% who claimed they had no such problems and who currently are looking back at you over their shoulder.
Contact us to learn more about how Stoneseed’s Project Management as a Service can give you access to project management staff, resources and tools at a flexible and predictable cost via a fully structured managed service.
Find out more about Project Management as a Service from Stoneseed
Source: Access Talent blog
