Recruitment – Time to see the light and catch the gold rush

Human resources managers are under growing pressure to identify and recruit what are known as gold collar workers. Gold collar workers are those with the skills and talent to expand the business base of their organisations and to keep shareholders satisfied with financial return.

Much of the future value of corporations will be linked to securing these people, which could see the need for conventional human resources wisdom being abandoned outright. While it is certainly true to say that knowledge and experience have their place, the key to success is and will continue to be quality values and positive attitudes.

In today's working environment, those people in highly skilled positions - the gold collar workers - have special leverage. Currently an estimated 20 per cent of the workforce, gold collar workers are in high demand in booming industries such as information technology, telecommunications and the service sector. They are educated, creative and computer literate with the ability to work in teams with a high level of communication and portable skills.

Gold collar workers want to make money, move fast, have fun and they want to have all this immediately. Desirable roles are well paid and self-fulfilling, an obvious reaction from the early 1990s when even the brightest of people were expected to be grateful for any job.

Companies are already beginning to resolve crucial issues such as who will and won't be ready to make big decisions, endure the necessary changes and ultimately extract profit out of change itself. We all know of CEOs and senior mangers who were fired because of an inability to change their mind about the models of their businesses. This kind of reluctance isn't going to work for the top organisations of the future - the contracting of gold collar workers will, I believe wipe out such problems and reduce the risk of stagnating.

While Australia is still in the middle of a difficult transition, there continues to be a considerable amount of unease among management about the increasing influence of technology. As downsizing delivers diminishing returns, businesses are suffering from a lack of direction.

Despite signs from the United States indicating a revival of middle management, it is my firm belief that middle managers will continue to contract in Australia for the foreseeable future. Those with broad based training and constantly evolving, portable skills will have the edge.

Our future now lies within project-based careers. Specialists will be in less demand than those who have transportable skills in more than one area, unless that is the specialist manages to corner the market with skills that are difficult to obtain.

The challenges facing today's managers will be to re-invent themselves as gold collar workers - if they are not already - and to be able to hire the top talent.

<I>Greg Savage is executive director of Recruitment Solutions, a national board member of the RCSA and a chairman of its Ethics Committee (NSW)