On talent

My regular Friday column in Spain’s leading daily Expansión, is called Talent (pdf in Spanish), and highlights the brutal struggle underway in the technology sector — and in others, albeit less markedly — to find the people with the right skills and knowledge.

The dynamism of the tech industries allows us to see with increasing clarity how companies are trying to attract this talent, to the extent that their announcements of new hirings and job offers provide clues to the direction their strategic initiatives might take. If the person or team that shown the ability to develop a project or has set up something that interests me is working in another sector, I will try to bring them over to mine. If they are working on their own project, I will try to buy it and make sure that they stay on as acqui-hires. With each day, access to talent and the ability to attract and retain it have become a key competitive resource.

Meanwhile, in other industries and in other markets, there are companies who still believe that hiring somebody is somehow “doing them a favor.” Wrong. In the talent market you don’t do people favors, but try to become that company which, for whatever reasons, is able to attract the right people, have the right projects, pay the right wages, and offer the right working conditions. In other words, a company able to attract and retain talent.

Below, the text in full.

Talent

A full-scale battle is underway within the technology industry for a strategic, fundamental, and critical asset: talent. This struggle is underway in other sectors, but on nothing like the scale of the tech industry.

Competition to attract the best professionals is a constant. There are no truces. Businesses rob people and teams from other players, to the extent that it is possible to see which direction a company is headed on the basis of who it is hiring.

If you see that Apple is going out of its way to hire executives from companies like PayPal and American Express, then you don’t have to be clairvoyant to work out that it is likely working on a payment system. If it also turns out that these same new hirings were working on loyalty programs, then the task of predicting Apple’s new direction is even easier.

One of the more visible signs of the growing need to attract talent is the abundance of acqui-hires: acquisitions of companies with the aim of incorporating their management or development teams into the buyer’s: something along the lines of: “As I can’t hire you because you’re working on your own project and you won’t abandon it, I’ll buy your project and you with it.”

The importance of focusing on teams (talent attracts more talent) and the development of attractive work environments is now a critical factor. Access to talent is the new competitive advantage, and the strategies to attract and retain it have become key in holding on to that competitive advantage.

Have you asked yourself recently how your company is doing in this regard?

(En español, aquí)