High Tech and High Touch: Headhunting, Technology, and Economic Transformation

[Excerpt] In High Tech and High Touch, James E. Coverdill and William Finlay invite readers into the dynamic world of headhunters, personnel professionals who acquire talent for businesses and other organizations on a contingent-fee basis. In a high-tech world where social media platforms have simplified direct contact between employers and job seekers, Coverdill and Finlay acknowledge, it is relatively easy to find large numbers of apparently qualified candidates. However, the authors demonstrate that headhunters serve a valuable purpose in bringing high-touch search into the labor market: they help parties on both sides of the transaction to define their needs and articulate what they have to offer. As well as providing valuable information for sociologists and economists, High Tech and High Touch demonstrates how headhunters approach practical issues such as identifying and attracting candidates; how they solicit, secure, and evaluate search assignments from client companies; and how they strive to broker interactions between candidates and clients to maximize the likelihood that the right people land in the right jobs

A Future of Failure? The Flow of Technology Talent into Government and Civil Society

This report is an evaluation of the technology talent landscape shows a severe paucity of individuals with technical skills in computer science, data science, and the Internet or other information technology expertise in civil society and government. It investigates broadly the health of the talent pipeline that connects individuals studying or working in information technology-related disciplines to careers in public sector and civil society institutions. Barriers to recruitment and retention of individuals with the requisite skills include compensation, a perceived inability to pursue groundbreaking work, and cultural aversion to innovation

Mobility, Career Pathways, and the Landscape of Employer and Youth Engagement in the South

It's tough for a southern kid born at the bottom of the income ladder to get ahead. Overcoming regional economic hardship, long-tolerated racial inequity and subpar education infrastructure is almost impossible. But there is progress. This issue brief examines two key elements connecting southern young adults with rewarding employment opportunities: employer and youth engagement. The brief offers a framework to assess the preconditions for effectively engaging employers and young adults and identifies examples of promising efforts. It also considers what philanthropy can do to reinforce the importance of employer and youth engagement and expand the use of both in the South

Disrupting Poverty: Coming Together to Build Financial Security for Individuals and Communities

Despite the efforts of many groups and partners working to alleviate poverty, national trends concerning wealth are disconcerting because they appear to be moving in the wrong direction. For example, according to The Urban Institute, approximately 30 percent of American households live from paycheck to paycheck, without an adequate financial safety net. The Pew Research Center has found that disparities in wealth between Native populations and white populations are pronounced, while wealth gaps between white households and households of other races and ethnicities are widening.This report highlights organizations that are reversing these trends. We examine six projects that are taking bold approaches to solve one of the biggest challenges in our country today: disrupting poverty by building financial security. The report highlights lessons and best practices gleaned from our examination of a variety of projects that we and other foundations support. We expect that this information can help practitioners and funders as they look for opportunities to stregthn financial security and foster wealth-building initiatives across the countr

Talent Management in European SMEs: case analysis between Slovenia and Poland

Organisations are investing significant efforts and resources into recruiting, developing and retaining key talent with the potential to contribute significantly to performance. However, the talent management (TM) process is difficult and despite all the efforts, many organisations struggle to effectively manage these valuable people. The main objective of this research is to examine the implementation of TM in SMEs in Europe. Our research responds to calls for more evidence of how TM is implemented across different contexts and which approaches are more prevalent. Europe is a dynamic collective of countries with distinctive political, social and economic histories that frame the present context in which SME’s operate. We present the findings from two case organisations in post socialist economies, one in Slovenia and the other in Poland. This research shows that in these post socialist contexts there is a strong need to approach TM from the perspective of SMEs, where their size and contextualised knowledge of their internal and external environment elicits local solutions to TM challenges. Furthermore, this demonstrates the value of foregrounding the individual needs and aspirations of talent when designing and implementing TM practices in SME’s, in order to create a sustainable future for all stakeholders

Higher education stimulating creative enterprise

This report summarises the research undertaken by the Business & Community School at the University for the Creative Arts (UCA), analysing ways that higher ediucation (HEIs) can support, and indeed stimulate, the creative economy. The research, in collaboration with the Arts University College Bournemouth (AUCB) and the University of Winchester, serves as a mere snapshot of the numerous ways that Universities engage with the diverse industries under the 'creative' nomenclature and of the very real and poistive ways that the higher education sector contributes to the growth of the creative economy in thhe UK

Cultural capital of IT developers in Ukraine: exploratory case study

Article focuses on the analysis of approaches to studying cultural capital of IT developers. Exploratory case study refers to the IT developers’ activity and focuses the cultural capital (CC) of the Ukrainian IT sector. Theoretical foundation of the study is based on the cultural capital theory referring to the value of social relations and networks. Research results demonstrate that Ukrainian IT developers accumulate CC through education: individual, in family, at school and with peers. Cultural capital could be transformed into other forms of capital: economic and social ones

A Primer on Talent Management

{Excerpt} Critical talent is scarce (and about to become scarcer) because of three trends: the ongoing retirement of the Baby Boom Generation , a widening skills gap, and large-scale social integration (driving rapidly changing lifestyles). Talent management has become one of the most pressing topics in organizations (even if very few have strategies and operational programs in place with which to identify, recruit, develop, deploy, and retain the best). The competition for talent will define organizational milieus for a couple of decades to come. Springing from the three trends, several drivers fuel the emphasis: • Workforce demographics are evolving. • The context in which organizations conduct their operations is increasingly complex and dynamic. • More efficient capital markets have enabled the rise of small and medium-sized organizations that offer opportunities few large organizations can match, exerting a pull across the talent spectrum. • In knowledge economies, talent is a rapidly increasing source of value creation. • A demonstrated correlation between talent and organizational performance exists: talented individuals drive a disproportionate share of organizational effectiveness. (Value creation extends beyond individual performance differentials.) • Financial markets and boards of directors demand more. • The mobility of personnel is quickening on a par with changing expectations. If talent is hard to find, it is becoming harder to keep