Mar 30 2007
Business Week article on areas of global human resource shortage
Business Week has a timely article in its April 2007 issue on areas of work where different industries in different geographies are facing a severe human resource shortage. The article notes that the supply for several key professionals including engineers, plumbers, electricians, lab technicians, accountants(!), skilled manufacturing workers, equipment operators, and other such hands on professions is very squeezed. The list is topped by - guess what - the Sales Representative :-)
I was reminded of a thought experiment i once did that if there were a Third World War, and we went back to the stone age, what kinds of ‘professional’ skills would I need to be able to survive? I suspect story telling, teaching, cooking, and playing some kind of music that crowds can tolerate might be somewhere on top of that list…
Regarding the labor shortage in India, the article notes that ” The labor squeeze in India gets lots of attention. Oddly, though, Manpower’s survey found that employers in India reported the least problems filling jobs: Just 9% said they had difficulty, vs. 41% in the U.S. and 82% in Mexico. The explanation? Manpower’s staff thinks turnover is so rapid in India that employers figure if they really need to fill a job, they’ll lure someone away from another company. But stealing scarce talent from rivals isn’t a strategy for the long run. That’s why employers are on an all-out campaign to increase training and raise education levels. While India produces 400,000 engineering graduates a year, few have the skills and language abilities to work in an advanced multinational corporation. Some 1.3 million people applied to tech-services giant Infosys Technologies Ltd. (INFY ) last year, for instance, but the company says only 2% of those were employable. For business, it seems, there’s no shortage of work involved in easing worker shortages.”
