As things stand on the talent front, skill-gaps are at an all time high and will continue to be so in the near future. In fact, 87% of employers say they are struggling to fill positions as a result of the skills-gap, despite a high degree of unemployment. This paucity of skilled workers has directly negated the business outcomes and profitability as per a survey conducted on CEOs in 2019 by PwC, which reflects that 52% of the respondents (industry) have reported talent-cost escalation, 55% have experienced inability to innovate, 44% were unable to pursue market opportunities, 47% were facing challenges in terms of quality and customer-expectation and lastly, 22% of the respondents had to abort or delay their strategic initiatives. Such is the enormity of the skill gap. It is indeed worrisome that the world, despite having a surplus of workforce, is terribly short of churning out the present-day skills.

The task at hand for talent acquisition will, therefore, assume more importance than what it used to be.Making talent available on a real-time basis is emerging as one of the most critical deliverables for talent acquisition professionals. The most important challenge for this vertical will be to create a facilitating ecosystem, which will support the present-day talent-feed delivery mechanism. Search firms and staffing outfits will have to bid good-bye to the existing talent-feed culture and reinvent to stay relevant.

The traditional process of hiring strategic and critical roles is also seeing another transformation in the leadership and critical assignments space and this emerging product (albeit more pronounced in the west) is interim leadership. These countries have embraced interim leadership without a wink and are reaping the benefits of this intake. Interim leadership which, in essence, provides talents in very critical and/or leadership roles for precise tasks and a specified tenure, has been gaining global popularity. Such roles usually come with a tenure of six months to two years, as against the engagement of full-time resources, though the need could be for a limited period. It is heartening that India, amongst a few other countries, have made a modest, but a promising kickoff in the intake of interim resources. There are a few success stories already, and these enterprises are coming out with repeat requests for such resources. The start is encouraging and with repeated success stories, it is only a matter of time for this product to establish itself as a cost-efficient talent intake.

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