Car-makers get regular reports of car sales, then they plan production around these sales trends. They order the parts they need and arrange their shipping based on these plans.
All of the steps involved in getting the resources required to meet business goals are (together) called a supply chain.
And you can create a supply chain for skills. You figure out what skills you'll need to meet your customers needs. You draw up a list of these skill requirements and then you recruit to satisfy the needs.
The list is called a taxonomy and you have to keep it up to date to maintain the proper skills inventory for your needs.
Business planners use skills taxonomies and reports of available talent pools to assess the realism of their plans and to develop plans of action and budgets to supply the people they need.
As talent becomes a scarce resource, this sort of skills planning will become more important. Right now, IBM is a leader in this field.
Some of us have been doing this for years - but I wonder if a great post would be one that lists the resources that we use to get such data.
I know that various companies have their own in-house research teams, some have one or two sourcing gurus that dig for the data, and many out-source the information gathering.
It would be interesting to hear how both the large and small organizations create this taxonomy as well as talent pool reports.
I always find it fascinating how resourceful the small business can be when it thinks big and has an urgent timeline.
Posted by: RecruiterGuy | Apr 15, 2008 at 07:55 AM
A talent supply chain? I had never heard of this, thanks for the post.
I guess cross functional teams such as ones that Japanese car makers use could do with a well balanced talent supply chain...
Posted by: Supply Chain Information | May 26, 2009 at 06:28 AM