Dive Brief:
- A Kansas City recruitment initiative, TeamKC, held its second annual summit addressing the talent shortage challenge that the more than 500 area employers in attendance face.
- The summit included presentations from national talent leadership, conversations on innovative approaches to attract and recruit new hires and ways to boost engagement as the market continues to squeeze businesses. "We can't keep saying that world around us has changed, but keep delivering HR in the same way," Lucy Adams, CEO of Disruptive HR and the event's keynote speaker, told the group.
- With an unemployment rate of only 3%, Kansas City is challenged to attract workers willing to relocate to the Midwestern hub, as well as train students and upskill existing workers, Team KC said in a press release. The city's initiative includes a city-wide career network and the MyKC program geared toward interns and recent grads.
Dive Insight:
The Kansas City initiative embodies the type of creative response the talent shortage has made necessary. The program's collaborative nature may be unusual, but the city's approach — and that of the employers joining the effort — aligns with what other organizations have done to combat talent shortage in terms of innovation.
The Wichita State University Campus of Applied Sciences and Technology, for example, launched its Wichita Promise Move program in July. The project pays for people who live 75 miles outside of Wichita, Kansas, to relocate there and provides them housing, cost-of-living stipends and free tuition for aviation sheet metal assembly or process mechanic painter schooling. The goal: enroll both locals and non-locals, and shuttle them into area jobs.
Many companies are looking beyond the traditional recruitment method to address the challenges of today's tight applicant market. With unemployment hovering around historic lows, some of the older tactics, like job fairs, are getting a new twist. The internet may have changed recruiting, but innovation is still needed to optimize the benefits the web provides, while overcoming some of its downsides — like higher levels of competition. Employers are finding that everything matters in the recruitment pipeline, from an enticing website application page to a flawless candidate experience.