Fifty percent of the respondents of our Bay Area Bioscience Recruiting Trends Survey agree that there is a shortage of STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) talent. There has been much publicized about the shortage and the need for better education starting in elementary school and even earlier. In addition to academia, politicians and business leaders are devoting resources to bridge the gap. Diversity groups are also pushing to get different ethnicities and women engaged in STEM programs. These efforts are all key to the future health of our economy by ensuring organizations have the talent they require to grow and innovate.
As these programs prove to be successful we will continue to see strides made to develop talent and create an extremely competitive workforce. But what can you do now to find the talent with the skill sets your organization needs to succeed?
- Train the employees you have. Instead of hiring a new employee, look internally for someone who already has institutional knowledge and understands your goals and your culture. Creating opportunities for employees to grow and learn is also a great way to retain talent. It’s a win/win. You receive the benefits of having the skill set you need without the cost and resource expenditure of sourcing and onboarding a new employee.
- Work with recruiters that have experience finding talent in these areas and engage them to proactively build relationships. Start planning now! Take stock of the skills sets that are making your organization successful and determine which skill sets will be needed down the road so that you can start building your talent pipeline. And then work with a recruiting service that can help you build relationships with these individuals so that when you need to hire someone outside the organization you can act quickly.
You can check out all the results by downloading the full white paper here.
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