Is lateral talent-hiring going to end soon?

What are the HR teams busy with these days? Only two things, employee hiring, and retention. There is a huge demand in the market and for tech talent and hundreds and thousands of job openings. Sounds like a flourishing economy. Doesn’t it?

However, talent crunch is not a good problem to have. It is a great eye-opener for the lack of vision and preparedness. Several articles are being written on this topic and these two in specific have shown the depth of the issue.

Tech talent crunch to last for a decade: IBM

‘War on talent’ is real: Indian IT firms to hire 450,000 in second half of FY22

The more I read such things and speak to my clients and peers in the industry, I do feel that lateral hiring is going to be a thing of the past. We might see lateral hiring only for specific roles and the rest will stagnate. I’ve told this before and am a huge proponent of hiring freshers and teaching them rather than attempting to solve the demands of lateral talent.

Large organizations are rapidly changing their model by hiring freshers in huge numbers and preparing them for regular and specialized roles. What is heartening to see is that the mid-sized and smaller organizations too started following the same model.

It is a hands-on skill that is important and not the number of years with just theoretical knowledge. The digital and the agile age needs talent who can move at the same pace as the change in customer expectations. This means a rapid turnaround for reskilling and that too with execution skills.

IMO, the candidates who are exploiting the market and job shopping for extra dollars will have to think twice as the enterprises have started executing on their plan-B. For the rest, there’s always a huge market for loyalty and commitment.

Let me know what you think.