The arrival of the Millennials of Generation Y taking the seats of retiring Baby Boomers signals it’s time to upgrade career site employment brands with Web 2.0 technology and fire up online social network recruiting connections.

Why? Because connection & collaboration drive career choices for Gen Y. Social utilities are beneficial for the enterprise in both recruiting and daily work. However, this issue carries controversy as social network profiles spark debate about appropriate use of the tools to make social networking job connections.

But there’s no debate when it comes to attracting candidates with technology. Innovative career sites can enhance your employment brand. Register for the webcast: Career Site 2.0: 11 Essential Elements on Tuesday, August 26, 2008 at 2 p.m. ET / 11 a.m. PT to learn more.

There’s no doubt the competition level is high in China with the Summer Olympics. And it may be the same on the business front. It seems that hiring and retaining world-class talent is just as competitive.

The McKinsey article, How to address China's growing talent shortage, opens by highlighting the trials:

“The growing need for talented managers in China represents by far the biggest management challenge facing multinationals and locally owned businesses alike…44 percent of the executives at Chinese companies surveyed by The McKinsey Quarterly reported that insufficient talent was the biggest barrier to their global ambitions…”

The article, Chinese ‘Pay Now, Worry Later’ Mentality May Be Retention Killer, describes the hurdles associated with the sport of job-hopping and notes:

“Organizations can mitigate some of their recruiting and retention woes without throwing money at talent. Implementing some basic building blocks of effective reward-program management into compensation considerations might be a good place to start.”

So the judges would say that unified recruiting and performance management practices and a strong employee value proposition are compulsories for the competition in China as they are worldwide.

The Beijing Olympics surely contributed to other business talent shortages by creating hundreds of thousands of jobs to work on the event. Estimates for the 2012 London Olympics peg this number at 100,000 with 27,000 in service industries.

Predicting the future is more art than science, but it can be instructive to speculate on scenarios and extrapolate on trends. In the PricewaterhouseCoopers study Managing tomorrow’s people*: The future of work to 2020 three key themes emerged:

1. Business models will change dramatically.
2. People management will present one of the greatest business challenges.
3. The role of HR will undergo fundamental change.

The report paints HR in the corporate landscape as passively standing at a crossroads with its service baggage where it will choose to become the heart of the organization, drive social responsibility, or get outsourced for acting too transactional while retaining the people sourcing function.

In line with these themes, unified talent management offers HR a combined process, strategic, and bottom line approach to become the heart of business performance. It’s part of our vision of The Future of Talent Management: The Four Stages of Evolution.

Rich man, poor man,
Beggar man, thief.
Doctor, lawyer,
Indian chief!

That’s the traditional counting rhyme. Depending on which positions you are trying to fill, here’s some interesting rankings of job types: wanted or not, easy and hard to fill, and those in demand:

The 10 Hardest Jobs to Fill Worldwide, as reported by employers for 2008:
1. Skilled Manual Trades
2. Sales Representatives
3. Technicians
4. Engineers
5. Management/Executives
6. Laborers
7. Secretaries/Administrative Assistants
8. Drivers
9. Accounting & Finance Staff
10. IT Staff

The top 5 of the Top 20 Most Recession-Proof Professions:
1. Sales Representative/Business Development
2. Software Design/Development
3. Nursing
4. Accounting & Finance Executive
5. Accounting Staff

The occupations at the top of the Most Prestigious Occupations list:
• Firefighter (57% say "very great prestige");
• Scientist (56%);
• Doctor (53%);
• Nurse (52%);
• Teacher (52%)
When the numbers for "very great" and "considerable prestige" are added, all of these occupations are very favorably regarded by 74 percent or more of all adults.

The Least Prestigious Occupations:
Only 15 percent or fewer adults regard the following occupations as having very great prestige:
• Real estate agent/broker (6%);
• Stock broker (10%);
• Banker (15%);
• Accountant (15%);
• Entertainer (15%)
Substantial majorities of adults (from 61% to 83%) believe that these occupations have "hardly any" or only "some" prestige.

But there are also trends that bear watching. It’s a good time to be an IT worker. Green industries offer job growth opportunity. And the Federal commission calls for two million poll workers. Let’s hope they do a better job hiring for those positions than when the Justice Department hired lawyers!

Eighty-five percent (85%) of employers concerned with hiring creative people say they can't find the applicants they seek.

This quote comes from The Conference Board: Ready to Innovate: Are Educators and Executives Aligned on the Creative Readiness of the U.S. Workforce?

While spontaneity, poise, and enthusiasm may play well in interviews, there are better ways to consistently gauge creativity across a wider range of candidates:

• Interdisciplinary history of abilities, certifications, and experience.
• Problem identification, analysis, and articulation.
• Focused assessments and prescreening exercises.

HR and recruiters need to think creatively when designing their employment brands, attracting creative talent, and building optimal profiles based on traits of their own high performers. They also need a consistent and disciplined hiring process.

For the strategy to succeed, close the loop between the recruiting and performance process so you recruit and review on the same system to drive quality of hire.

Stephen J. Dubner of Freakonomics fame weighs in on measuring innovation and asks some experts for their opinions. Note Seth Godin’s take; it applies to innovation, talent management…and life in general:

"Innovation happens long before the benefit is realized… And if we embrace the process, not the event, we win."