How Do We Better Recruit Resource Planners

A few weeks ago I attended the inaugural National Planning Conference, many coffees were drank, cake was eaten and best practice shared across an ever growing community built on the foundations of openness and celebrating innovation.

Douglas Jackson were there in force with both myself and our new planning and analytical specialist, Perry Fletcher, both of us were there to absorb and learn as much as we can from the planning and operational support community.

One theme was present throughout a number of the sessions, but also in many of the breakout and one to one conversations I had with various leaders and organisations.

How Do We Better Recruit Resource Planners?

Over the past two years, there seems to have been an explosion in the amount of requirements for experienced and managerial level Resource Planners and all levels of Analysts.

More organisations are hiring and developing their planning, intelligence and insight functions to meet the increased demand of customer, employee and business needs, but where will all this fresh, experienced talent come from?

Of course there are the traditional recruitment channels and utilising an industry recruitment specialist, which will help, but what happens if the talent just does not exist with those skills, experience and or, for the salary, in the geographical area you require? It can be a bit like looking for a needle in a haystack.

Some of the points and discussions raised, I have tried to summarise here:

• We need to find talent that is not currently in planning – YES
• Do we know what this person looks like? – NO
• Is it absurd to expect new recruits to this area to tell us how to bridge the gap between operations and analytics – YES
• How do we identify the key elements to make a successful hire – DON’T KNOW.
• Do many employers still expect successful experienced recruitment regardless?  – DEFINITELY

Effective Resource Planning and Enhanced Business Intelligence is one of, if not the most, innovative and progressive markets I have ever had the pleasure to work in. The rate of change being experienced, the open sharing of ideas and celebration of best practice is a shining light in the dark to most other sectors.

Yet recruitment and how we go about recruiting for talent within this area seems to be late to the party.

I include recruitment consultants, internal recruiters and hiring managers in this.

Why do we all seem to believe that recruitment practices from 15 years ago, when The Forum was founded, will still be applicable today?

Talent is scarce, employers are keen to keep their best talent and this industry often comes with an incredible and admirable, (yet frustrating for some!), sense of loyalty, with many managers and employees forming strong friendships and mutually agreed development paths.

It is now time to consider alternative routes to hire and a change in the skills we screen for, as well as how we assess and interview these potential applicants.

This change, if made, should then yield greater long-term results and potentially new, fresh ideas and thinking. We want hungry, disruptive, game changing talent to take our business, planning and analytics to the next level!

What do you think, or what have your experiences been? We’d love to hear how you are developing talent in this increasingly competitive market.

Want to know more? – We are here to help, whether that be an active campaign, a full review of your recruitment strategy, advice and insight in to the current talent environment, or an informal discussion about your future plans, direction and different alternatives.

Douglas Jackson are Customer Contact Specialists and have a specialist team that recruits exclusively within the Resource Planning, Business/Customer Intelligence, CRM and Analytics recruitment markets.

Contact us at www.douglas-jackson.com Tel: 0345 620 9720, or email Perry Fletcher at perry@douglas-jackson.com

Douglas Jackson specialising in the recruitment of executive, managerial and analyst professionals across Customer Contact, Customer Intelligence, Customer Analytics, technical programmes and change, analytics and support roles including; Resource Planning, Scheduling, Forecasting, Workforce Management, WFM, Management Information, Business Intelligence, Big Data, Customer Insight, Telephony and CRM.