“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” Chinese Proverb

A McDonald's franchise at an undisclosed location made headlines when it recently posted a sign apologizing for its understaffing 

“We are short-staffed. Please be patient with the staff who did show up. Nobody wants to work anymore,” read the controversial sign.

A customer saw the sign and posted it on TikTok. Over a million people viewed the video, with hundreds of viewers commiserating with McDonald's, agreeing that no one seems to want to work anymore.

This staffing problem isn’t just confined to the hospitality industry either.

The three industries that we work the most in – technology, manufacturing, and healthcare are all suffering from severe talent shortages – including at the executive level.

We recently helped one of our private clients, a global transportation company, recruit for a Chief Marketing Officer. The position offered a salary of $250K plus generous stock options. With an attractive package like this, you'd think that our client would have been overwhelmed with quality candidates. Unfortunately not.

Instead they were overwhelmed with extremely under-qualified candidates with large egos and rigid views about the number of hours they were prepared to work.

When you’re faced with a talent dilemma such as this, what can you do?  There are three options:

1. Push On

You can keep up your search for the right talent.  Advertise in new markets and on different platforms. For example, if you've only listed your ad with an executive recruiter, then consider running your ads on the platforms you most frequently advertise on. Often the best candidates have some experience of your company and may even be customers or vendors.

2. Pivot & Market Your Company Better

A disappointing response may mean that your position description is not attracting the right kind of candidate. Advertising for new staff is the same as advertising for new clients. To attract the best talent, your company has to show up in the world as a leader in your field, which equates to having a robust digital presence in today's world. By that, I mean your branding, and your website especially has to reflect the world-class organization you are.

If your marketing isn't top-notch, don't expect the best people to come running. If you needed one more reason to invest in a rebrand now for your business, this would be it.

3. Outsource

Does it even make sense to have this position as an in-house one?

Four years ago, I consulted with the CEO of a $5 million technology company with two employees.  Every other function was outsourced, beginning with his executive team – including product development, product delivery, marketing, sales, customer service, accounting, legal and HR.

He believed that using what he termed a "fractional" leadership model – hiring the best “executives” he could find on a monthly retainer to run their respective individual departments, was the key to his company's agility and ability to innovate. His view was that employees were highly resistant to change by their self-preservation nature. On the other hand, contracted teams thrived on change and continually brought new ideas to the table to reinforce their value.

As you might have guessed, he hired our agency to become his outsourced marketing department. We replaced a burned-out outbound sales/marketing team who relied predominantly on old-school marketing methods like cold calling and asking for referrals which weren't working anymore. Less than two years later, our client was bought by his number one competitor, who in awe of his margins and success, was unable to replicate his success any other way.

In Summary

While it might appear in the media that no one wants to work anymore, I would qualify this by saying that good people always want to work, especially at the higher levels. It's what drives them and their sense of self-worth. The challenge is simply that good people are more challenging than usual to find, so the question becomes, does this role need to be in-house or can it be effectively outsourced? There’s no right answer and there are pros and cons to both, but the question should be asked and the alternatives explored.

And our private client looking for their Chief Marketing Officer? We’re happy to report that after we fired the recruiter and rebooted the search campaign, we found them the ideal candidate. He’s doing a great job of running the marketing engine we built for them and the global sales team is very happy.