Finding Talent Increasingly Difficult

March 5 2008 - Two-thirds of HR professionals in North America (USA - 66%, Canada - 65%) believe that tougher national immigration policies force their organizations to devote more resources to recruiting and retaining local talent.

This finding comes from 2008 Global Talent Sourcing in the U.S. and Canada, a report released by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) and the Canadian Council of Human Resources Associations (CCHRA). The report also looks at how and why foreign staff are recruited.

Susan Meisinger, president and CEO of SHRM said:

"Human resource professionals value the local labor pool but know that sometimes the most highly qualified talent is found in the foreign workforce.

37% of Canadian organizations are likely to hire foreign nationals over the next year, compared to 17% of U.S. firms. When asked the converse question - if their organizations 'most likely will not hire' foreign workers in the next 12 months, almost twice as many U.S. HR professionals (47%) agreed as Canadian HR professionals (25%).

35% of Canadian HR professionals surveyed and 25% of their colleagues in the U.S. said that the main reason for recruiting foreign nationals is the difficulty in attracting local employees with the required skills. This is particularly difficult in sectors such as health care needing highly scientific or technical skills.

Lynn Palmer, CCHRA CEO said:

"A tightening labor market is forcing organizations to increasingly rely on immigration as a source for new talent. Governments and corporations alike must ready themselves to take on this challenge."

Seven key actions were reported by respondents to the survey:

• Increasing efforts to recruit and retain citizen and legal-resident workers (U.S. 66%, Canada 65%).
• Recruiting foreign students pursuing education in the employer country (U.S. 19%, Canada 24%).
• Deciding not to outsource internationally (U.S. 18%, Canada 14%).
• Hiring foreign nationals under different types of visas due to unavailability of preferred visa types and/or delays in document processing (U.S. 16%, Canada 22%).
• Deciding to outsource internationally (U.S. 11%, Canada 16%).
• Hiring local nationals into foreign subsidiaries first then transferring when possible (U.S. 11%, Canada 12%).
• Setting up international virtual teams (U.S. 6%, Canada 5%).

Respondents also reported that hiring foreign nationals was now more time consuming than two years ago with the time to process papaerwork being highlighted.