Attracting Top Talent: The Rise of the New Collar Worker

As stated by Investopedia, “there is no sector of the economy that technology does not touch and that does not rely upon the technology sector to improve quality, productivity, and profitability”. The dynamic and pervasive nature of technology means that all companies are essentially tech companies which, undoubtedly, is having an impact on recruitment and talent acquisition.

According to IBM, five years from now, over a third of skills (35%) that are considered important in today’s workforce will have changed. This massive amount of change is disrupting the way companies work, and the way employees develop skills. The most basic level of technical knowledge and talent needed for a company to simply function — let alone compete in the market — is unprecedentedly high. This challenge has meant that companies are now forced to rethink traditional recruitment methods — namely, the scope and inclusivity of their search.

There has been significant conversation surrounding the apparent deficit of talent in the tech space and the repercussions that this will have down the line. However, another key factor in the difficulty in hiring tech talent is outdated strategies that do not take into account a significant portion of the modern workforce in this field — specifically, so-called “new collar workers”. To fulfil recruitment requirements, companies need to first and foremost invest time and research into understanding this new generation of workers and how to attract them.

“New Collar Workers” & The Myth of Missing Talent

A recent Gartner survey ranked a lack of talent, the number one obstacle keeping CIOs globally from achieving their objectives. Of the CIOs on the TechRepublic Jury Panel surveyed, 83% of them claimed they struggle to find tech talent. This sentiment has been repeated by many publications exploring the changing tech industry and the quest to fill the increasing number of now essential roles. Conversely, results from a survey conducted by Indeed Hiring Lab between 2014 to 2018 suggest that tech job seekers are better matched to current job opportunities in the field than job seekers in the overall economy, signalling a smaller “skills gap” within tech than the economy at large.

Many have taken this to mean that the lack of talent has been overstated or exaggerated. However, it would probably be more accurate to say that the difficulty attracting talent isn’t the result of a deficit of talent but of recruitment strategies that are not fit for purpose. The talent is there, but the means of finding it are not. Companies need to shift their approach to finding and recruiting new talent and focus on skills and traits as opposed to traditional academic qualifications. This requires looking beyond resumes and seeking things like potential and merit over experience.

“New collar” jobs are roles that don’t necessarily require a traditional education path or formal higher education but the right mix of in-demand soft and technical skills. IBM CEO Ginni Rometty originally coined the term in a 2016 open letter on the challenges faced when hiring for technical jobs in the economy’s apparent “war for talent”. These positions can already be found in many of the tech industries fastest growing fields — from cybersecurity and cloud computing to cognitive business and digital design.

According to ZipRecruiter’s Labor Economist, Mitch Downey, tech is a natural space for new collar opportunities for two reasons:

1. Since the field changes so rapidly, workers must continuously build and adopt new abilities (rather than relying on formal university training).

2. These jobs often require niche skills (like programming in a particular language, or data analysis methods) that can be learned by anyone.

Jen Crozier, President of the IBM Foundation and VP of IBM Corporate Citizenship, similarly argues that “capabilities and the skills are even more important than the degree because things change so quickly in a lot of hot new fields: cybersecurity, analytics, cognitive, even things we’re doing within marketing or design.”

Implications for Attracting Top Talent

As stated, this new generation of workers will, of course, have huge implications for companies and will require a total culture shift when it comes to strategies for finding and retaining talent. Many of these candidates are currently completely overlooked or disregarded in traditional recruitment efforts. From a more pragmatic position, Forbes contributor Scholley Bubenik proposes that hiring managers should make a list of traits and skills necessary for success on the job and develop interview questions to assess these traits and skills. In addition to the interview, hiring managers need to look for previous school and work experience that utilised these traits in a different role.

Many companies have already begun rethinking requirements for the workforce, with IBM unsurprisingly at the forefront for the big corporations — new collar workers already make up between 10 and 15 per cent of their U.S. hiring. However, as noted by Rometty, many of the new collar jobs that employers in various industries demand remain largely unfilled. This is particularly true of larger companies who are often more reluctant to move away from the status quo. On the other hand, smaller companies are more likely to be creative to fill positions due to the amount of competition they face.

Final Thoughts

The talent pool within the tech industry is significantly broader and more diverse than some might assume; however, this hasn’t made finding top-tier quality talent any easier. Simply knowing that the talent is there and acknowledging that many of the open position can be filled by new collar workers is only the first step; the second step is developing the mechanisms to find and hire them. And, this for many businesses has not yet been fully developed. This is also put forward by The Motley Fool, a financial services company, who add the point that “many of the workers who might fit these positions are not yet looking for them”.

Platforms like WorkFork offer an easy solution to this. WorkFork’s in-built assessment feature means that, regardless of educational background, all candidates go through two evaluatory stages. Stage one is an aptitude test that is administered to all candidates who apply for any WorkFork vacancy and must be passed to move to stage two. Stage two is a specialised skills assessment designed to shortlist and match the right candidates with the appropriate job. Ultimately, in keeping with the current nature of the technology industry, skill and ability take precedent.