By Dilek Ayhan, the managing director of Alarga.

The Global Talent Risks Report 2011 published by the World Economic Forum addresses how industries and countries worldwide will require major increases of highly educated people in their workforces to sustain economic growth. Despite today’s high unemployment rates, the global talent risk is growing. The number of vacant positions will be increasing rapidly. Soon staggering talent gaps will appear in large parts of the world, threatening economic growth. Economies will struggle to remain competitive while organisations will compete for talent on an unprecedented scale. Now, human capital is replacing financial capital as the engine of economic prosperity. Read the rest of this entry »

Anna Mindelöf, Universum´s Talent Strategy Director, continues to blog about her work with Universum’s employer brand. The days before Christmas were hectic and Anna reports, among other things, about how to engage students.

Our internal engagement survey among Universum employees has finally been sent out and closed! We’re now waiting excitedly for the result.

Right now, we’re reorganizing the marketing department, which takes a lot of my time and because of this my colleague Wuendy, instead of me, went to the Shanghai office.

We’re in the final phase of recruiting for a position in the management team. This means plenty of interviews and personality tests to give feedback on. Our sister company NovaAgentum has helped us with the recruitment and I’ve added a few of my own candidates who I found (or they found me) through LinkedIn – an invaluable working tool! Read the rest of this entry »

Anna Mindelöf, Universum's Talent Strategy Director

Anna Mindelöf, Universum´s Talent Strategy Director, continues to blog about her work with Universum’s employer brand. This time Anna has visited the US office and shares her reflections on change leadership and being visible as a HR Director.

A few weeks ago I visited for the first time our US office in Philadelphia. It was really nice and cool to sit on the 18th floor in downtown Philly. While I was there, we still hadn’t signed for our new office in Manhattan, New York. There were many questions around this: “Are we going to close the Philadelphia office?”; “When do we move?” etc. I couldn’t answer the questions then, but that’s not the point, instead we created an environment in which the questions could be asked and somebody listened.

A visible HR Director

One of my objectives as an HR Director is to be visible. It works quite well with Skype, e-mail and phone, but it’s not at all the same thing as meeting the employees in real life. Before the trip, I had sent out an e-mail inviting everyone, who wanted to have a meeting with me, to fix a time. I also booked a “come and have lunch with me” meeting for all employees who could attend. At that meeting, we talked about our culture, our values and how we could step out of our silos and become a better US team. It’s always nice to meet employees who are full of ideas on how we can improve things –what an engagement in our business! Read the rest of this entry »

How employers are taking responsibility for the skills deficit

By Michelle Boyde

As a teenager, struggling with spots and puberty it is hard to transfer your attention from attracting the opposite sex to your future career. Despite this challenge, many employers see a need to target talent pre-university. In February 2010, Rolls-Royce chief executive, Sir John Rose said not enough British students are studying engineering and science, inhibiting efforts to revive industry. This is not news to anyone trying to hire graduates from STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) subjects – The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has said there has been a global decline in graduates in these disciplines for years. For some employers the goal is simply to create employer brand awareness at an earlier age; for others it is an industry focus to secure a long term pipeline of skilled graduates. Read the rest of this entry »