Today’s guest blogger is Laura LaBine from LaBine and Associates in the San Francisco Bay Area (USA). Laura is a member of the NPAworldwide Board of Directors, with responsibility for the network’s practice groups. LaBine and Associates is a boutique recruitment firm specializing in placing highly skilled individuals with clients in the cybersecurity, clean energy, high tech, fin-tech and other industries. Read her thoughts about the global community and collaboration among recruiters.
What an exciting time to be part of a global community of recruiters!
As we are busier than ever helping our clients identify talent, companies all over the world are hiring for positions that didn’t even exist before this pandemic.
Faced with the task of finding the right talent, our conversations have shifted from “what can you do” to “what do you want to be doing?” This time is a window of opportunity for anyone that wants to pivot into more meaningful work, as there are more jobs than people.
The Mayans predicted not an end of the world, but a changing of consciousness. From where I sit, that change is palpable. During 2020, many of us were faced with no jobs to fill and no place to go. The consequences of quarantine and isolation caused many people to have a crisis of identity. As I talk to about 20 people a day, I was struck with the common response from candidates: “Work is fine, but I have changed. I am a different person than I was before.” What I’ve learned is that the financial compensation is not as important as the personal reward for the work done. There seems to be an increase of value in finding joy in your work.
And while the talent pool is shifting their consciousness, I’m seeing some paradigm shifts in the ways companies approach hiring. Companies are more open to be flexible with how they define roles, in order to meet the market. Many companies have embraced a distributed workforce, especially in information technology. Software engineers all over the world are being considered for work with companies here in the United States. Hiring a global workforce provides 24-hour work efforts, and a more inclusive culture. Silicon Valley has long invested in hiring teams of engineers in India, China, South America, and Eastern Europe.
Silicon Valley has long been connected to Ukraine, including tech giants like Google and Oracle, and other startups like Snap, Grammarly and Ring. In the last month, we’ve all been watching the crisis in Ukraine as it’s been unfolding. Even in our NPAworldwide community, our partners at Skillers and Technical Paradigm have a presence in Ukraine. All of us are affected by this and the safety and freedom of our Ukrainian friends is important to all of us. Our global community is all connected by this tragedy of war.
Compassion and empathy are characteristics that have been injected into many job descriptions, as the personal qualities of being human have been defined into what are important to employers. The truth is, compassion and empathy are more important values for our survival. Collaboration is going to save us as a species because competition hasn’t served us well.
It’s very clear that all our lives are forever changed, whether it be from the covid virus or war. How we define ourselves moving forward is through our actions. Be gentle with each other. Remember that we’re all connected, and how you would want to be treated. Be patient. Be kind.
Mitakuye Oyasin is the Lakota word for “we are all related.” This principal guides me in all that I do, and I ask you to remember this too.