I think it is time we put to rest the “War for Talent” cliche. We do not talk about the “War for Customers”, “War for Market Share” or “War for Cash Flow” (though maybe that could be the next great business book innovation / management guru fad). It has completely colored and distorted the views of corporate executives, causing perverse behaviors in companies such as excessive bonuses, a revolving door of employees, and a total lack of employee engagement.

The new focus in corporate America is not going to be on talent acquisition. The real innovation is the concept of workforce planning and analysis where companies take an in depth view of their talent and aligning that talent as needed by the organization. Most of the gains in efficiency and productivity have already been squeezed from re-engineering processes, restructuring companies and re-architecting technology, so the only area left remains in better leveraging human capital.

Companies are starting to come to the realization that they need better incentives to get employees to stay longer. What is the best incentive to get people to stay? Keep them engaged in work that best leverages their skills, allow them to plot their career paths with transparency and implement a fairer measure of performance. This all goes to the need to a consistent and tangible metric to gauge the workforce and aligning the workforce to the work needed.

Instead of bringing out tired bromides of supposed strategy experts, it is time to seriously dissect some of the “truisms” of work, workers and the relationship between the two. It is not a hunt to bring in outside talent that is limiting the progress of organizations, rather it is the misalignment of the talent companies already have. It is the skills that go underutilized in jobs, the jobs that are disconnected with organizational goals, and the gaps between the skills needed verses the skills possessed by the workforce.

And what of the shortage of talent due to generational and societal trends? As our current economic dilemma painfully demonstrates, we actually had a significant oversupply of workers for the needs of the US workforce. With the economy in recovery, many of the jobs lost will never come back and the shrinking of the unemployment numbers will in large part come from older workers leaving the workforce faster than anticipated.

As for the issue of educational standards not meeting the needs of the US economy, this is a red herring. While the educational system needs retooling, there is a greater percentage of students attending college and earning degrees than at any time in US history. This is also true of high school diplomas, where the 1 out of 5 drop out rate is actually an IMPROVEMENT on the historical trends (US Census Bureau). While conflicted organizations such as ASTD may trot out numbers saying 30% of college graduated entering the workforce need “remediation” training, this seems highly specious at best when the numbers show greater levels of education every decade.

It is important to also consider that the workforce of the future is not the workforce as restricted within the boundaries of the US. It is now a global workforce and companies from start-ups to Fortune 500 companies are leveraging this global pool of talent and labor to get work accomplished. Furthermore, this talent is becoming more educated and more skilled. If a company does not find the talent it is looking for, they really are not trying hard enough or do not understand what they are looking for.

So the inability to fine-tune the workforce to the needs of the organization is in fact the real challenge over the next ten years. The war for talent is simply a symptom of this chronic misalignment of talent.

NEW YORK, March 3/PR Newswire/ – WingSpread^TM (http://www.wingspreadco.com), a leading provider of Human Capital Optimization solutions, has released a new whitepaper on Human Capital Risk to address the challenges faced by companies planning their workforce needs.

Corporations are faced with serious dislocations in their workforces through downsizings, restructurings, and bankruptcies due to the current economic environment.  As the outlook improves however, those same businesses will be scrambling to rebuild their workforces and acquire the talent needed for growth.  Human Capital Risk enables companies to better understand the gaps in their workforce and prepare for unforeseen changes in the competition, marketplace, and economy.

“As we come out of this recession, companies are asking for a better way to analyze their workforce needs. Human Capital Risk is all about giving companies the metrics to ensure that they have the right talent doing the right work to stay on track with the company’s goals,” said Mark Birch, author of the whitepaper.

One rapidly growing area of interest from companies is in leveraging Human Capital Risk for the management of contingent workforces.

“A knowledge-driven global economy contributes to the growth of contingent labor solutions as organizations focus on core businesses and shift non-core processes to highly skilled, lower-cost suppliers. Executive leadership, in partnership with HR, is embracing Human Capital Risk as part of a long-term strategic workforce planning program to become more agile and responsive to business change,” says Doug Lubin of Crescendo Consulting Solutions, a strategic Outsourcing and Human Capital professional services firm.

“We see Human Capital Risk as the next logical progression from Talent Management and Workforce Planning technologies, providing the bedrock of analytics to offer better insight into executive decision making and achieve greater workforce productivity,” added Michael Yinger, President and Chief Operating Officer, WingSpread.

To download your free copy of the Human Capital Risk whitepaper, please go to http://wingspreadco.com/files/wingspread-paper-human-capital-risk.pdf.  For information on WingSpread’s Human Capital Optimization solutions, please visit our website http://wingspreadco.com.

Topic: Informed Succession Planning – The Skills Paradigm Needed When Disaster Strikes!
Hosted By: Ross Melbourne of Aquire and Michael Yinger of WingSpread
Date and Time: March 5, 2010 from 11 AM ET to 12 PM ET

Please join us for a presentation that will be of keen interest to human resource professionals involved in succession planning, workforce analytics and talent management. Ross and Michael take us through how tragic events can be mitigated through effective workforce planning. Aquire and WingSpread together give HR professionals the tools to quickly assess the needed skills of the workforce to fill the critical gaps in the organization, thereby averting greater negative impact.

To register for our webinar, please click on the following link http://bit.ly/cdQJjy

Topic: How the Resume Killed Innovation
Hosted By: Ignite Princeton
Presenter: Mark Birch, Chief Marketing Officer, WingSpread
Date and Time: March 2, 2010 from 7 PM ET to 12 AM ET
Location: Nassau Inn, 10 Palmer Square West, Princeton, NJ 08542 map

WingSpread’s CMO, Mark Birch, will be presenting at IgnitePrinceton this Tuesday, March 2, 2010 on the topic “How the Resume Killed Innovation”.

For more information on this event and to sign-up, please go to http://bit.ly/czj8tb.

To learn more about Ignite, you can visit http://ignite.oreilly.com.

Job title inflation is symptomatic of two significant shifts in the workforce. One is a generational shift in attitudes towards a greater sense of self-worth, referred to as the “me” generation. This is reflected in the belief that work must mean something and they need to understand their impact and role in that work. Identity becomes as valued as substance, thus the title means more value, regardless of the actual content of the role.

The second major shift is the increasing pressure on companies to perform given reduced resources. The competitive and market pressures are compounded further by globalization and increasingly knowledgeable workforces in developing countries. Companies have done as much as can be expected from more efficient use of capital, technology and process improvements, and outsourcing. Beyond faster innovation cycles, companies now must contend with how to gain greater productivity in their workforce.

Job title inflation has obscured this pressure on filling the human capital need. What we are actually seeing is the dissolution of the traditional corporate hierarchy based on formalistic 19^th century military structures. Companies need more talent requiring more specialization to effectively compete; job title inflation is merely the symptom of a trend in companies acquiring the skills to meet their objectives. In this context, the future organization is in reality a highly networked and efficient entity of skills that are used, traded or evolved as needed between workers.

This evolution of skills will continue in faster cycles with the increasing speed of change in markets. However, job titles are not equivalent to a set of requisite skills for a position, especially with job title inflation. To prepare, companies must begin to catalogue and manage skills across the workforce and measure against the need of the organization in real-time. Therefore, true competitive advantage becomes human capital and the effectiveness of organizations to manage and leverage skills.

Businesses are evolving at a furious pace to adapt to an ever increasingly competitive marketplace. The demands have been amplified as more and louder constituencies vie to impose their will on companies. Whether it is governments, social activist groups, international organizations, or bloggers, the scrutiny has become overwhelming.

Corporate leaders have tried every flavor of the month strategy fad to keep up. The result is that companies that should be focused on executing to their vision are finding their focus diffused into multiple areas. It is no longer enough to just make money; you must be invested in Diversity, mitigating Risk, facilitating Learning, cataloguing Knowledge, focusing on People, and actively monitoring Social Media.

As companies define more things as important, all of these things require someone to lead the cause. What might have had some usefulness takes on a life of its own, and before long a new fiefdom has been created. And at the top, the Chief Bigwig Officer reigns supreme. With everyone a chief, it is only a matter of time before we see the Chief Receptionist Officer.

There are two immediate implications as it applies to talent management. One is that job title inflation is not simply happening at the top. How many people with “manager” in their titles actually manage anything? The second point is that if it is happening at one company, it is happening everywhere else, so job titles provide little useful information when evaluating the career paths of candidates.

Looking beyond the obvious however is a more startling observation: the dawning of a new type of organization. In the next post, I will explain the reality of what job title inflation is showing us about the future of the corporate structure and the relationship with work.

I look at this from two angles. First is the value of the information provided in a resume as it relates to the information needed. Second is how to collect that information.

When I seek candidates for a job, I want to know two things: what skills they have to do the job and what motivates them to want to do that job well. That is it. Why? Because job performance is based on what the person can do (their skills) and how they apply those skills (their motivation).

A resume is simply the documentation of biographical data points of a candidate’s professional life. It is not without some value, but as they say in the investment world, past performance is not indicative of future returns. The resume provides a sense of what a person could be capable of, but it is far from a certainty.

When I want biographical information, social media and search engines help fill the need. Tools such as LinkedIn make it easy get the typical resume fodder as well as recommendations and interactive data that provide a deeper view of the candidate. New tools are being released regularly to help give candidates more options to differentiate themselves and for hiring managers to get a more precise view of the skills of these same candidates.

This is when my HR friend interjected that not everyone is on social media and that it is exclusionary. However, it is only exclusionary for those people that are change-challenged. Social media is a phenomena that has become part of our cultural fabric and will only become more pervasive. It is to the benefit of job seekers to move beyond their comfort zone and learn the tools available to them.

So to job seekers, instead of sending your resumes, send a link to your online profile or add it to your email signature. Leverage Facebook, Twitter, social media sections of job boards, and other social media tools to post your profile, network, build your personal brand, and find jobs.

To HR professionals, start getting on board with social media. Your marketing and sales departments get it, and so should you. Just like the Internet, computers and business casual dress, social media is happening with or without you.

There is much talk about measuring talent, but the tools that purportedly do so are simply measuring the wrong thing. Performance reviews measure achievement of goals, but are qualitative in nature and rarely oriented towards growth in a worker’s skills. Competency models are simply too high level and arbitrary to be a useful basis of ongoing measurement.

These tools are “quantitative” in name only. However they have contributed to corporate laziness on part of decision makers who have come to rely on these numbers instead of looking deeper to analyze meaning. These tools are only capturing the surface of human performance, not the essence of talent.

Talent encompasses both skills and motivation. While motivation is very difficult, if not impossible, to assess, skills are very much tangible, definable and measurable. Skills cover not just the technical and functional components of work, but also management and leadership skills to guide work smoothly toward the corporate vision. And these skills are specific and detailed, many times uncovering the hidden truths about what is truly important in a role and what talents a person possesses.

Rather than contributing to the culture of corporate laziness, the richness of skills opens up new possibilities for leadership. It allows companies to become vastly more effective with its human capital and realign itself to best utilize this pool of talent. For employees, it is inherently fairer because the process is transparent and enables employees to have more control over their career path and professional development. This is the future of human capital management, the foundation of which is the ability to have a meaningful measurement of talent.

Being a founder of a start-up firm and having participated in these pitch events, I can tell you that these are not the best venues for many entrepreneurs. To put this practice into perspective, it is important to understand perception versus need.

Every entrepreneur should ask themselves why they need to seek outside capital. Many start-ups overestimate their initial capital needs and believe they need to go for big money early on. Most VC’s are not enthusiastic about investing in early stage companies, and most Angels turn out to be difficult partners. This makes the search for funds extremely challenging for entrepreneurs if they have neither the network nor credibility to be heard.

Paid pitching events provide a tempting alternative route for many entrepreneurs. The issue is that these events leave the impression in the minds of entrepreneurs that access to funds is guaranteed. While these events can foster introductions and build important relationships in the industry, few actually come away with solid funding prospects. Given the cost of attending these events (some of which are truly predatory), to not come away with anything more than a “nice pitch” comment is difficult to swallow.

So here is my advice to entrepreneurs: focus on creating your product, building up a customer base, growing revenues, and generating a sustainable business.  If you need cash, whittle down expenses, bootstrap what’s required, and gather funds from friends & family to supplement near-term cash needs. If more cash is required, take time to network with relevant VC’s directly before considering a pay-to-pitch event, and realize that raising capital is a full-time job.

My advice to VC’s and angel networks: be more transparent in your charges and be vigilant against making any implicit guarantees. Make the charges reasonable to cover the costs of hosting the event, and consider subsidizing the bulk of those costs. Entrepreneurs are coming to you because they need cash, not because they are made of cash.

And lastly, while there are a few charlatan investor groups, there are many more reputable organizations that are providing a valuable service in connecting entrepreneurs to funding sources. These pitch events are only one means of reaching investors however; the key is for entrepreneurs to know whether it makes sense for their startup.