Captains of Industry

Most chief financial officers and the humor-column editor of this magazine realize all too painfully it has become impossible to find talent. This growing inability to find qualified help is one of the dark sides of a healthy economy, which is why Wall Street dances on when the unemployment figures go up.

To the stock market’s way of thinking, low unemployment contributes to inflation, which threatens the value of investments. To the unemployed person’s way of thinking, unemployment is a leading economic indicator of poverty, but that’s of no concern to the rest of us. No, the rest of us want to know how we can find the kind of talent we desperately need so that our organizations can become more productive and efficient so that we can then have a good, healthy round of layoffs. And business is getting pretty darn inventive about finding talent.

For starters, companies are paying more now. I was shocked to learn that a company that contracts with prisons to provide guards is no longer able to find level-headed, capable employees for its customary compensation of $6 an hour. Do you mean to tell me that intelligent people want MORE than $6 an hour to spend their days within reach of mad-dog killers, drug dealers, child beaters, arsonists and people who have exposed themselves to elected officials? What is going on here? Were all the $6-an-hour guards convicted of felony stupidity?

Businesses are also looking for talent in nontraditional places, such as the military. My local professional football team identified a young man from a military academy (where $250,000 or so in tuition had made him into a future leader), and concluded that he could really tackle. Because my football team had never possessed that particular skill set, it has been trying to persuade the government to release this young man from his military commitment, arguing that he would serve his nation better as playmaker than as a peacekeeper. It seems that the military gives its members valuable training that’s easily transferable to the business environment, including data processing, systems analysis and hand-to-hand combat.

General Electric (which traces its roots to Private First Class Electric) has hired more than 1,000 former officers over the last three-and-a-half years. With all due respect to Generals Electric and Schwarzkopf, I’m not that convinced that former military officers make good business executives. The military is based on a pyramidal hierarchy, characterized by clear and well-delineated levels of authority, and its members are used to giving and taking orders, which, if disobeyed, can land one in the company of a $6-an-hour guard. And it is well documented that military personnel routinely spend up to $2,000 for a single zipper.

Business, on the other hand, is characterized by team-based, fluid organizations that form and disperse quickly. Hardly anyone wears stripes on their shirts that tell you what rank they are. Instead of giving orders, businesspeople rely more on collaboration and suggestion, and if they are going to spend $2,000 on anything, it will not be on something stupid like a zipper, but on something really important, like a manual.

Some technology-savvy companies are trying to find talent through the Internet. They call this "e-cruitment." Companies can pair up with job seekers who also use the Internet to offer themselves to the highest bidder through sites such as Bid4Geeks, which is a real name, and NetNerds, which should be. The way that these sites work is that employers list open projects and ask faceless keyboard jockeys to bid on them. Not wanting to miss out on the opportunity of using technology to find somebody really gullible, I asked for bids to do my writing for me. If they’d do it for less than I do it, I could just "subcontract" with them, do nothing and pocket the difference. I typed in my requirements and had two responses within a matter of minutes. My first bid was for $6.05 an hour (from an upwardly mobile prison guard), but a Marine colonel shocked me with a bid of $7,000. If I can get Congress to pay for it, he’s got the job.

Dan Danbom’s services are available to the highest bidder.