“When land was the productive asset, nations battled over it. The same is happening for talented people”. Star Davis and Christopher Meyer, future wealth.

Yes, we are in the WAR FOR TALENT. It is only going to intensify across Geographies and across Categories. This is a global war. In India especially this war is heating up as in this high growth economy the demand for talent far outweighs its supply.

There is a phenomenal increase in job requirements especially for people who have domain specific expertise and for professionals in mid to upper level management. In the future not only will Indian companies have to compete with companies operating from India but from companies operating out of other geographies.

So let we first acknowledge that we are and will continue to, in the future, face a talent paucity across sectors including Media & Entertainment and Advertising but lets not stop here – let us use this platform to come to solutions – let us learn how to innovate how to win talent for this sector – winning in terms of both acquisition and engagement.

The point I would like to raise at this platform is that in our sector there are very few of us who are attempting to get innovative about the solution, so in a way this talent paucity becomes self inflicted.

So what we need to do is make a paradigm shift in our thinking. Let us stop harping on the talent paucity but let us look at talent creation instead.

1. And to do this we have to give the HR function a seat at the Head table. HR in Media, Entertainment and Advertising companies has to move from being a paper pushing administrative function and get its rightful place under the sun. It has to become a strategic business enabler. I would like to ask you how many Media &Entertainment companies, how many Advertising agencies invest in a cutting edge HR team, have robust HR budgets and seriously empower HR for talent acquisition and employee engagement?
2. More importantly investing and developing talent needs to be built into the DNA of the ` dustry and for that the ownership rests with the line and top management.
   And let each Business Head as also Functional Manager be accountable for talent creation.
   Eg. At Sun Microsystems every manager (and not just the HR manager) performance gets a 25% weight age on the following KRA’s
   
   • Attracting and selecting talent
   
   
   • Driving results
   
   
   • Motivating Employees
   
   
   • Developing talent

   In a 180o feedback – employees of each manages give feedback on these four parameters. If this is on RED managers cannot get a category 1 rating.

My question to you is what are we doing in our sector?

3. Employer Branding
   What are we doing to attract talent to our sectors? Are we investing our time and money on employer branding. As Media and Advertising companies we spend one entire lives building client brands, but what are we doing to build the Brand for our category?
4. Talent Acquisition and upgradation of skills
   And once we acquire talent what are we doing to upgrade their skills. There are no readymade training modules and hardly any academia apart from MICA to provide the industry with trained resources. What percentage of our talent pool do we recruit from campuses? How much time and money do we invested in training. How do we improve employee productivity and morale to sustain a competitive advantage?

We should take our cues from other sectors in IT. Wipro has tied up with Bits Pilani and in the Retail space, Tesco with IIM (B) for retail management

Let us enhance our employee’s employability (skills) and at the same time take measures to retain them. Let us over deliver on people’s dreams and then we will be able to attract and retain them.

What is Media & Entertainment and Advertising doing at an industry level to build and support educational infrastructure for specific skills required for this sector. And by support I mean not just setting up institutes but serious industry participation in curriculum building, faculty participation. Let us first stop fighting for talent amongst ourselves and in the long run each be diminished.
Let us first look at a collective vision for creating and nurturing a substantial talent pool.

5. The search proposition
   For mid to senior levels you have to make your search partner your ally. As we (Search Companies) come in with the understanding and knowledge that exists in the market space – and understand it in all its dimensions (skills, career aspirations, core competencies and what actually makes it tick). Clients need to see us as strategic partners and not just vendors to be able to exploit the true value propositions that we bring to the table. Our clients have to be transparent with us, trust us and invest time in helping us understand clearly their current and future needs, culture, philosophy and vision which will in turn enable us to find the most relevant talent from diverse categories.
6. Last but not the least
   Business Heads must be flexible and farsighted. Let us open our doors to acquire talent from other sectors – Let us recruit for diversity and hire for Philosophy. We all want that 100% candidate but let us acknowledge that 100% candidate is a mirage. Let us welcome that 70% candidate from another sector – hire for attitude and train him for skills and thereby come to the awareness that perfection can be built with flexibility of our thinking and upgradation of skills.
   
   The pursuit of talent creation must become an obsession. We have to become the rockstars of the age of talent. We have to become seriously cool people who recruit and develop seriously cool people!

Let us together build a new talent pool.