Engage virtually everyone

I like this piece from IDC because it talks about the PEOPLE who run the organizations. The Princess is a simple girl who can be developed with intent. Companies don't have to be hell bent on finding "great" candidates. They can, but they can also develop their employees into the Princess/Prince.

I hope you like where people like Cushing, companies like Silkroad, and how some organizations are committed to their employees' development.

The author is passionate and an expert: Cushing Anderson is program vice president for IDC's Project-Based Services research. In this role, Mr. Anderson is responsible for managing the research agenda, field research, and custom research projects for IDC's Business Consulting, Human Resources and Learning research programs.

Several opinions, same result: Increased value of high skilled tech workers
Cushing Anderson
December 06, 2012

Build or buy, it’s the same story. Should CIOs hire the best talent (and subject themselves to market rates), or train their high-potential employees on the new and emerging technologies the company needs to compete. I think the logic is clear: technology workers are becoming more valuable and demand for advanced technology skills makes them less available in the marketplace, so CIOs should build their own talent, as opposed to buy it from the marketplace. Here are several opinions which expose the many ways in which business thinkers think about skills:
McKinsey estimated in a recent report that there could be an 18 million person shortage in the supply of high skill, college-educated workers by 2020. And that's just advanced economies. If you add China, the shortfall could be as high as 35 million. 
The reason is quite simple: Technology replaces low skill workers.
In other research, McKinsey breaks down type of work into three categories: Transaction work, interaction work and production work. Jobs and industries that have been relatively untouched by outsourcing and automation are those that require extensive human contact, particularly "knowledge jobs" like medicine, engineering, finance, management and education, those considered "interaction workers". These are also the workers who are most highly trained and more valuable to both their employers, and to their own bank account.
That trend plus huge demographic pressures in Europe, China and Japan, and increasing demand in developing countries will likely lead to a shortage of those types of workers in the future.
Skilled workers are becoming more valuable.
Another point of view is that productivity is failing to improve (decline in the rate of increase) precisely because we are moving to a more service oriented society. Jeremy Grantham, co-founder and chief investment strategist of the investment management firm GMO (GMO is "global investment management firm committed to providing sophisticated clients with superior asset management solutions ") recently released his quarterly letter to GMO clients. Titled "On The Road To Zero Growth." In it, Grantham says, "Services, though, are another matter…The productivity [increases] of services has declined to a fairly dismal 1.2 percent in recent decades. Why does it do so poorly? ... Services are mostly about luxuries or, shall we say, non-essentials, the desirability or perceived quality of which often increases with the number of attendants and personal face-to-face time." While many may debate that characterization, reading Mr Grantham's note, he is complaining about the shift toward services workers, where the unit of work is difficult to compress. And as a result, what an enterprise or organization can charge for that unit of work also doesn't change very much for the same employee. However, as that employee becomes more capable, more skilled, the rate that can be charged for that employee (or the value she brings to the enterprise) increases, because the value she delivers increases, think of a doctor, lawyer or high tech worker. This again suggests that if productivity or profit margins are important to your business, increasing skills matter.
Highly skilled workers are becoming more valuable.
At the same time, the respected investor Peter Thiel of PayPal fame, is paying young "entrepreneurs" not to go to college. While his real reasons may be more complicated and be based on some future value calculation, his stated reasons are to allow those entrepreneurs an opportunity to get their ideas into the marketplace faster. They don't need college, he is arguing. Others, too, think it’s reasonable to debate the comparative value of a college education.
To me, the argument that college isn't worth the cost is a non-starter.
Regardless of the chances that one of Thiel's entrepreneur's will strike it rich, it's illustrative to compare college to alternative investments: On average, the benefits of a four-year college degree are equivalent to an investment that returns 15.2 percent per year. This is more than double the average return to stock market investments since 1950, and more than five times the returns to corporate bonds, gold, long-term government bonds, or home ownership. From any investment perspective, college is a great deal.
A Pew Research Center analysis, using Census Bureau data, estimates that the typical adult with a bachelor’s degree (but no further education) will earn $1.42 million over a 40-year career, compared with $770,000 for a typical high school graduate. That 84% improvement narrows somewhat after factoring in the expenses of going to college and the four years of lost potential earnings that college graduates give up while they are in school, but remains a whopping difference.
Additionally, lifetime earnings tend to be even higher for undergraduate majors requiring numerical competencies (computers and engineering) than other fields of study (education and liberal arts).
Thus highly technically skilled workers are becoming more valuable.
IBM recently released its 2012 Tech Trends study that found only one in ten organizations has all the IT skills it needs in mobile, analytics, cloud or social business. The research found that "within each area, roughly one-quarter [of enterprises] report major skill gaps, and 60 percent or more report moderate to major shortfalls." It concludes, "for mature market companies that can effectively tap into available skills in other parts of the world, it could be a way to bridge gaps."
The concept of a "skill gap" has benefit when thinking in long, broad terms. But it is less useful in describing both the cause and response of a specific organizational need – like an IT worker with specific cloud or analytics skills. When considering a specific case, it is more relevant to consider how an enterprise can remediate that particular shortage of candidates such as

• Cast a wider net, as IBM suggests,
• Arrange to train the selected under-skilled candidate or
• Be prepared to pay more to lure a qualified candidate from another opportunity.

For skills in new technologies, like cloud or analytics, there may be a near absence of skills in the marketplace, suggesting IBM's conclusion may be moot. Enterprises and CIOs in particular, shouldn't lament the fact that there aren't qualified technologists sitting in their parent's basement waiting to be called.
It is more economical to identify the specific mix of skills needed by a particular employee and seek the best training possible to provide those skills to that employee. In the long run, training an under-skilled employee with potential is far less expensive than hiring a fully-skilled/experienced worker. In addition to the recruiting costs, standard on-boarding and ramp-up time resulting in underutilization and lower capability, there is the salary premium for highly skilled technical workers caused by demographics and advancing technology.
Warren Buffet has long believed in the increased demand for skilled workers will result in great opportunities. As far back as 2009, Buffet told an audience of Columbia Business School students, "Right now, I would pay $100,000 for 10 percent of the future earnings of any of you." Maybe this is where Peter Thiel got his idea... Either way, I bet Buffet would pay more for the future earning of technology graduates. But since nearly all of us are neither Warren Buffet or Peter Thiel, it may be best to train (and certify) our best employees to take advantage of the technologies coming down the pike than to complain that the talent isn't available or to hope one of many will strike it rich on our behalf.