Coming into 2009, we’ve all fastened our seat belts for an economic roller coaster ride (going mostly downwards). Some are predicting unemployment figures to kiss double digits. Inevitably, this is going to lead to a whole lot of talented people looking for jobs over the coming years.
So my question (perhaps very prematurely) is: are government agencies doing all that they can to (re)capture this coming tide of talented prospects?
Earlier this month, Gartner published CIO New Year’s Resolutions, 2009 which included the recommendation start building an alumni network.
“The baby boomer generation (born 1946 through 1964) has begun to enter retirement, and the current recession will accelerate this, as voluntary layoff programs target those with only a few years to go. This will reduce the legacy skills and complex experience pools of labor in some local markets. The cost of such labor might rise in some particularly scarce categories even before the recession ends. Meanwhile, your planned legacy replacements could be starved of funds. Unless you are lucky enough to have a modern enterprise platform in place, this speeded-up demographic time bomb could hit you at an already difficult time.”
My immediate thought was that (especially in the current economic climate) we might want to replace “start building an” with “identify existing”. Often, it is much easier to leverage existing resources (think YouTube) rather than trying to reinvent, rebuild and remarket the wheel yourself.
Note: I am running on an assumption that at least some potential employees use the following resources to inform their decision to join an organisation, and that this percentage will grow in the future.
Existing alumni networks
- Old Friends has over 1.2 million registered Kiwi users. A search for “ministry” on oldfriends.co.nz turned up over 300 organisations. The Ministry of Education entry had 353 self-identifying current or past employees, many of these individuals describing their memories of working at the Ministry for others to view.
- LinkedIn is the quintessential business social networking site. A search for individuals in New Zealand who work or had worked, at any organisation with “ministry” in its title turned up more than 1600 results.
- Facebook houses the “MFATers” group which I’ve linked to before, but recently also found ones for the the Ministry of Transport, the New Zealand Fire Service, the Navy, the RNZAF’s band, and the Lotteries Commission.
- On GovLoop there are currently 50 members in the New Zealand public servants group
Are you aware of other alumni networks out there? Are your HR teams aware of them and their value? Do they monitor them to compliment the exit interview process?
