The biggest supply chain problem we have right now is talent

CEO & co-founder of Censia | Striving for a fairer and more efficient global economy through data and technology.

Did you know that about $900 billion in technological developments they fail every year because people are not trained or qualified to handle them? AI often fails because even as we upgrade our technology, we fail to upgrade our people.

While the need for digital skills has been growing for years, Covid-19 has accelerated the need for more training for both technical and non-technical workers in digital capabilities.

We have reached a tipping point. We can’t use AI to automate our workforce because workers don’t yet have the skills to handle it, and we have all this talent, but we don’t know how to find it.

The problem is the best candidates they are not applying for a job. 70% of the workforce is passive and not actively looking for work, and 87% are open to new opportunities that may present themselves.

The biggest supply chain problem we have in the world right now is talent. The greatest opportunity talent has is to be part of the solution.

The way we built technology before meant we inadvertently discriminated against millions of people for jobs they were qualified for because the technology didn’t allow us to find them.

For decades, we could look at data and predict insights about consumers, but not about talent. It’s like having a library full of books without the Dewey Decimal System. If you walked into a library expecting to find the latest New York Times Best Seller, you’d have to sort through thousands of titles to uncover it, if you could find it at all.

As technology has evolved, we now have the ability to apply cutting-edge data science and machine learning to the talent landscape.

Redesigning work is all about talent.

We have now entered the fourth industrial revolution. As said Mary Meeker, “almost every conceivable human activity was in the process of transformation.” And recruitment is no exception.

By 2025, 44% of skills that employees will have to perform their roles will change. Hiring for experience is no longer going to cut it in our rapidly changing world. In a talent shortage, employers must not only win the battle for in-demand talent, but also reskill, upskill and re-skill their workforce to remain competitive.

As humans, we are constantly evolving. Our capabilities far exceed past performance. When you think about it, some of the most successful people in the world failed before they succeeded. Michael Jordan failed to make the varsity team during his sophomore year of high school. Oprah Winfrey was fired from her first TV gig and JK Rowling was rejected by 12 major publishers before her “Harry Potter” manuscript was published.

As talent identification evolves into meritocracy, we are now able to instantly uncover highly qualified candidates and unlock potential in a company’s existing workforce.

At Censia, we are very excited about the change in approach. Now we allow people to see how they are meant to be seen. Instead of traditional job titles, candidate strengths can be based on startup experience, faith, or diversity.

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