4 ways to build a team equipped with emerging skills

We’ve all heard about how difficult the job market is on the applicant side, with candidates getting very little response from prospective employers. But the hiring side isn’t much easier. Changing demographics, fast-evolving technologies, and the globalization of job opportunities make recruiting and holding onto skilled professionals much more difficult.

And there’s no end in sight. In fact, virtually everybody expects the pace to pick up. Moreover, everything we’ve experienced with gen AI so far will probably be repeated with other innovations including quantum computing, ambient intelligence, and others that haven’t been released yet. As technology continues to change more rapidly than ever, CIOs who want to build and maintain a team with the right skills will need to do these four things.

Be more proactive developing talent from within

IT consultancy Pariveda, with around 700 employees, has always strove to grow the newest skills in-house. The company pushes all its employees, even down to the most junior levels, to read up on emerging trends and experiment. And since the latest hot topic is gen AI, employees are told that as long as they don’t use proprietary information or customer code, they should explore new tools to help develop software. And if they find things that are valuable, they should share them with the rest of the company. “We’ve had folks working with machine learning and AI algorithms for decades,” says Sam Gobrail, the company’s senior director for product and technology. “Now we’re telling them to roll up their sleeves and try all the new gen AI offerings out there.”

Other companies like Neudesic, a fully owned subsidiary of IBM with more than 3,000 employees, use external learning platforms like Coursera and LinkedIn to keep employees up-to-date on things like cloud computing, AI, ML, and data analytics. “These tools help people gain theoretical knowledge,” says Raj Biswas, global VP of industry solutions. “But for practical learning of the same technologies, we rely on the internal learning academy we’ve established.”

And to ensure a strong bench of leaders, Neudesic makes a conscious effort to identify high performers and give them hands-on leadership training through coaching and by exposing them to cross-functional teams and projects. The company also has a knowledge sharing program where senior experts mentor younger employees, passing down valuable insights and skills.

Organizations like Pariveda and Neudesic understand the importance of encouraging continuous learning. Some do this by starting with the youngest employees. Case in point is Toshiba, which brings in fresh recruits from university — people with a good theoretical understanding of the latest technology, and an interest in applying it.

“We hire people who are really interested in learning, and we try to mold them into our environment,” says Leon Roberge, CIO for Toshiba America Business Solutions and Toshiba Global Commerce Solutions. “This approach is helping us catch up to the AI storm enveloping every business unit. We’re currently in the process of vetting and purchasing new AI tools to be implemented as soon as possible.”

To prepare for the future, Roberge created a new role — vice president of IT innovation and strategy — and very recently promoted somebody to do the job. The new team needs data engineers and scientists, and will look outside the company to hire them.

Adopt new methods to find the right candidates from outside

To staff emerging roles, many companies use ChatGPT to improve their job postings, and find the keywords that attract the best candidates. “You have to tweak the job description a little bit,” says Roberge. “Instead of looking for someone with an exact skill set, sometimes you have to look for somebody more junior and indicate you’ll train them.”

But if getting enough responses to an ad is difficult enough, more laborious is sifting through the piles of résumés to find the right candidate since IT departments now get hundreds rather than the couple of dozen that used to come in. To filter all these résumés, many HR departments have turned to AI.

IT leaders have also ramped up on relationship based hiring. Biswas says he has a referral program, and Roberge estimates that around 70% of his hiring is now through referrals. “Instead of looking for objective ways to find the best applicant out of 250 that have very similar profiles, IT leaders are favoring applicants who are referred by colleagues or partners,” says Gobrail.

Another challenge is that by the time you get through a six-month hiring process, the skills you need may have changed. “It’s best to look for somebody who’s highly adaptable,” says Gobrail. “They should have the core skills and be able to demonstrate they’re always learning because the most emerging technologies are changing very rapidly. The best AI engineers aren’t the best because they’ve been doing the same thing for 30 years, it’s because they’ve been learning every year for the past 30 years.”

Work hard to improve retention

Whether you build skills within your organization or hire from outside, measures are needed to prevent losing them to another company. While competitive salaries are important, benefits like career growth opportunities, remote working, work-life balance, and recognition programs are equally compelling.

Neudesic has several non-monetary incentives, including innovation days where employees can work on projects they’re passionate about. “We’ve also implemented quarterly feedback and company-wide recognition programs to make every employee feel valued and heard,” says Biswas.

Well-being initiatives are sometimes used to help employees face the pressures inherent in the high-tech industry where things change very quickly. “We’ve launched several mental health initiatives, which includes access to virtual wellness workshops and flexible working hours,” says Biswas. “This has improved the morale and reduced burnout. And if somebody’s stressed out, their manager advises them to take a couple of weeks leave to relax and recharge.” Since Neudesic offers unlimited paid time off, the employee doesn’t suffer in monetary terms.”

But Pariveda has a different approach, relying on transparent pay and promotional expectations to improve the work environment. “Everybody knows how much everybody else makes, from the new college hire up to the CEO,” says Gobrail. “Everybody in the same cohort makes the same money, adjusted for some locality differences, which are also published.”

According to Gobrail, you’re never pitted against your peer for a promotion — you can both get promoted. This results in a sense of equity and fairness. And when you make the next level, you’ll make the same as every other person at that new level, locality adjustments aside. “It’s never a case where if you negotiated better, you get a better deal and you get a bump up for the rest of your career,” he says.

Keeping skilled people is always important, and its even more important to keep people who have been with the company for a long time, because when they leave, not only do you lose a valuable talent, you lose somebody with deep knowledge of your company and its culture. To keep the brain drain moving in your direction, the best thing to do is to work on your brand.

Build a reputation as a great place to work

Many IT leaders make a conscious effort to help boost their company brand as an attractive place to work. Biswas and other Neudesic executives participate in global conferences and author industry articles to showcase the company as a leader in innovation to help attract top talent.

As for Pariveda, they like to highlight their focus on the triple bottom line: providing social, environmental, and economic benefits. And Gobrail says his company was recently B-Corp certified, meaning it meets high standards of performance, accountability, and transparency. “We’re the largest services firm in North America that’s B-Corp certified,” he says. “This tells our employees and clients we are who we say we are. We really do care about more than just profit.”

Gobrail adds that while other places have transparent promotions and pay, they often find a loophole. “As soon as you go around it a few times, nobody believes it anymore,” he says. “All of these things only work if there’s true follow through day in and day out. Our secret sauce is we live it every day.”