Question: What do Google, Facebook, Groupon and Amazon have in common?
Answer: All have formally or through their employees been recruiting in Minnesota in the past year. There are at least another half dozen well funded Silicon Valley startups doing the same.
(hold on… I am waiting for that to sink in for a moment)
With IT unemployment less than 2%, companies of all sizes from the Fortune 500 to the smallest of startups are recognizing that recruiting in Minnesota has been challenging.
For some the challenge has been a nuisance but not an impossible task.
For others… not having appropriate staff levels is costing business.
To set the stage a little bit, it is important to know that for many in IT, the “Great Recession” was a non-event.
Most .Net and Java developers were aware of what was going on but were not impacted by the economy. If their company was in trouble and let some folks go, most found jobs within days or weeks.
Around March of 2010, the Minnesota IT job market came off the bottom and, since then, we have experienced a series of upticks and plateaus in hiring.
Has this gradual but persistent increase in hiring created a “war for talent” in Minnesota?
I think “war” is too extreme. Skirmish might be better, and I have seen a few “battles” the past weeks.
Paul DeBettignies
Will we get to a “war”… yeah, I think so. We are essentially back to peak employment levels of November 2007. For those who remember, hiring back then it was very competitive.
In recent months we have seen a number of tech companies, funded startups, and web development shops hiring full-time internal recruiters. Others are bringing in contract recruiters to help ramp up projects and build talent pools.
Many are taking to LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
Most, however, are doing nothing more than they did two years ago, and it will not surprise you that I think that is a losing strategy.
Som take a step back… think about how your company is doing in recruiting new team members and ask yourself this question… how are you doing?
Are you competing and being aggressive? Or are you sitting back, waiting for folks to come to you?
If the former, congratulations and keep it up.
If the latter, good luck. You will need it.
Paul DeBettignies is Vice President of Recruiting for HireCast Consulting and can be reached at paul (at) hirecastconsulting (dot) com.