We have started seeing the columns and articles saying that ‘there is a shortage of talent in Retail Media’. Sure, Retail Media is fast growing. Sure, there are lots of different skills required. Sure, it’s a new game. But saying you cannot find talent is about you, not about the talent. Let’ dive in why – and what you can do about it.
The war for talent
Hands up those of you reading this who have applied for a job, one that you thought you had the perfect mix of skills, qualifications and experience. And, you really wanted the role – so you had the right mix of motivation and attitude. However, your CV was screened through some online AI recruitment sausage machine that can somehow discover smart and capable people by means of keyword-searching algorithms.
And then, nothing. Nothing other than the deafening silence of the recruiting machine.Nada. Zilch. Not a word about your application. Or, if you were lucky and managed to bypass the dreaded AI machines, you received the dreaded ‘Dear John’ email.
Then, the next day, you read an article about talent acquisition, and, even worse, some hollow article about the ‘war for talent’. Clearly you were not perceived to be part of that talent worth fighting for.
I believe McKinsey were responsible for that particular idiomatic crime – the ‘war for talent’.
Like many bad ideas, the ‘war for talent’ has heritage, devotees and currency. As the wonderfully articulate Lucy Kellaway in the Financial Times puts it: “As a metaphor, the war for talent takes the biscuit. The big thing about a war is that there is always an enemy, but in this case, there appears not to be.”
Then you read about Talent Acquisition Managers, talent pipelines, talent pools, looking for ‘world-class’ talent. And you think, ‘Oh well, I guess I’m not world class talent’.
The (non-existent) ‘War for Talent’
It is maddening that you read articles about talent shortages when anyone who has applied for a job knows that the standard corporate recruitment process is broken. Indeed, the perennial skills shortage stems as much from firms’ sky-high expectations as it does from a dearth of manpower.
Let’s look at a typical recruitment process. First, job advertisements are so tightly written that there is possibly only one person in the world that can do the job – often that person is Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg, but they are not available.
Or they are written with a 21-point list of impossible requirements: “must have 15 years of Digital Retail Media Experience, 10 years of ChatGPT expertise” – and ideally you should really be “a whizz at sales and know programmatic AdTech.”
Yes, I am being slightly facetious. But then the jobs specs are not far off this level of facetiousness.
I should know: I regularly get asked if I know if people that are available, as they want to find these “world class people” and they give me the job specs for said roles. In 100% of cases, I offer the advice that they might need to change their expectations.
It does not go down well.
The most pervasive idea is that the only way to hire great people is to poach them from competitors or specific companies. It’s as if the experience of working in certain companies conveys competence and capability. Looking for great brand people? Only hire from Coca-Cola, Diageo or Unilever. Even the Googles and Facebooks are not immune to this, despite their much-vaunted recruitment programmes with ‘secret sauces’ for sourcing, analysing and evaluating potential hires based on data and statistical analysis.
Try this exercise: check out how many people at Facebook, Google, LinkedIn and Apple have worked for one of the other brands in the list.
Finally, there is the reality that the ‘world class talent’ and the ‘smartest’ people don’t have the right credentials and are not even in the right country or did not go to the right university. They’re not available, they might already have a job.
Start with diagnosing the problem correctly
As Kiri Masters wrote recently “In an industry where no one follows a traditional career path and the landscape transforms monthly, how do you find the right talent? Here’s what we’re up against:
- Academic credentials count for little. No-one has a degree in retail media.
- None of us had a linear path starting with ‘Apprentice Retail Media Buyer,’ where we put in the hours and rose through the ranks to get to where we are today.
- The entire landscape transforms so rapidly that the job you’re hiring for today might look completely different in six months.”
The final point is the key. Nothing is the same in Retail Media as it was three years ago.
Before we talk about new approaches, the first thing is to admit that it isn’t talent shortages that keep employers and willing and capable job-seekers apart; it’s the recruitment process. If you struggling to hire people, you have one – or all – of the following problems:
- You are looking in the wrong place.
- You are using ancient interview processes. Or worse, you are using AI systems to screen.
- You outsource the problem to people who don’t even know what the job entails (HR).
- You ignore anyone over the age of 45.
- Your hire based on the recognition heuristic: you have heard of the brand the applicant has worked for before and are using this as a mental shortcut for expertise.
- You have champagne tastes on a beer income. You don’t want to pay the right amount for people.
Five steps to creating a new approach to finding the right talent
- Change your Definition of Talent
Identifying underrated, brilliant individuals is one of the simplest ways to give yourself an organisational edge. So, start with a new definition of talent.
Here are two of the best.
The first is from the book, Talent by Tyler Cowen and Daniel Gross.
“People with an energetic spark, who have new and creative ideas that will change how things are done.“
The second definition is from Dan Sullivan, Founder of Strategic Coach.
Sullivan recommends you find a “batteries included” person. He says there are two kinds of people in the world:
• Those that have their own energy source (those with batteries)
• Those that are dependent on others for their energy (those without batteries)
Sullivan expand on this beautifully: “I can tell you that I love working with people who come with batteries included. They come equipped with their own energy, excitement, ideas, and capability; they don’t have to plug into anyone else in order to be successful. This is more than enthusiasm. They’re also self-managing.”
- Go Moneyball: look in unusual places
If you’ve seen the baseball movie Moneyball, with Brad Pitt, you know that that the ‘moneyball’ strategy for winning relies on analytics, statistics and numbers, rather than opinions, intuitions, or appearances.
Moneyball player recruitment challenged conventional wisdom as to what top talent looks like and where it comes from. They uncovered hidden gems that made the team winners.
Moneyball means getting involved early and often. Remember, you are going to spend years of your life working, coaching and guiding these people. You have to read all the applications, not just the shortlist of HR or an algorithm. “You don’t put a team together with a computer” is a salient quote from Moneyball.
Look for potential. Ask the question: do I really have to hire fully formed employees from day one, rather than train them up on the job?
Think about the traits, accomplishments and information overlooked by traditional recruiting methods. With all the time you spend finding people with the perfect level of experience, you could have already trained someone who is eager and willing to learn. As they say in Moneyball, “the goal shouldn’t be to buy players, the goal should be to buy wins”.
- Stop looking for a Messiah
What is a Messiah? “the anointed one” “the chosen one” “a leader or saviour of a particular group or cause.”
Over the centuries, people have longed for a messiah, whether a religious figure a political leader, or even in popular culture.
Matt Wells of Congregation Partners points out that too many companies are looking for someone to save them. “If only we can find the right person, then everything will be great”. Looking for a saviour or “chosen one” is neither rational nor useful.
In the book, “Talent”, Cowen and Gross guide the reader through the major scientific research areas relevant for talent search, including how to conduct an interview, how much to weight intelligence, how to judge personality and match personality traits to jobs, how to evaluate talent in online interactions such as Zoom calls, why talented women are still undervalued and how to spot them.
They also suggest some fascinating interview questions. Here are just three of the many they suggest:
- How did you prepare for this interview? This gives an insight into how someone researches a company and role, whether they have gone superficial or in-depth.
- What blogs do you read? Cowen and Gross believe that ‘revealed preferences’ are often truer than ‘stated preferences’. In this case, what you do in your spare time says a lot about what you’re really interested in and what you really like to do.
- What are the open tabs on your browser right now? Cowan points out that “the question measures what a person does with his or her spare time as well as work time. If you leave a browser tab open, it probably has some importance to you and you expect to return to the page. It is one metric of what you are interested in and what your work flow looks like.
The question also tests for enthusiasm. If the person doesn’t seem excited about any of those open browser tabs, that may be a sign that they are blasé about other things as well. “
Your next steps
Next time your read or hear about the “lack of talent” or the “war for talent”, remember that the problem is not the problem. The problem is how they think about the problem. In other words, there is no problem, no shortage of talent and no lack, there is just a lack of creativity in how to address the challenge.
