PrintCarol Ann Schneider knows the value of sales talent.
"There isn't a business in the world that doesn't run by sales," Schneider said. As founder, chairwoman and chief executive officer of Seek Inc., an employment agency with 16 offices in four states, Schneider has had to be her own sales representative. She knows that effective sales reps are rare enough that she doesn't offer to find salespeople for her clients.
"It is very hard to find good salespeople," Schneider said. From Seek's headquarters in Grafton, Schneider can see why sales representatives top Manpower Inc.'s latest lists of hardest-to-fill jobs.
The nation's leading staffing company, Glendale-based Manpower, reports today that sales reps top the wish lists of employers surveyed globally, nationally and in the Midwest.
Manpower tapped more than 2,400 U.S. employers and nearly 37,000 organizations worldwide for its second annual look at talent supply. And for the second year in a row, sales representatives ranked toughest to hire.
"The salespeople, they need those people on the front line because they bring in the money," said Laurie Purcell, president of Key Search Group Inc., a placement firm in Glendale. "The good people are always going to be busy working," Purcell said, which also makes them harder to find.
Teachers, managers/executives, truck drivers, delivery drivers and accountants also repeated from the 2006 U.S. list.
Manpower added a Midwest ranking of hardest-to-fill jobs, the top 10 of which were:
1. Sales representative
2. Teacher
3. Truck driver
4. Mechanic
5. Laborer
6. Technician
7. Engineer
8. Management/executive
9. Delivery driver
10. Skilled labor
Besides finding which positions are in shortest supply, Manpower also learned that 41% of the employers - both domestically and globally - report difficulty filling jobs because of lack of available talent.
That is up from 40% in the 2006 survey worldwide and down from 44% in the United States, though Manpower noted that its quarterly research on employment intentions has found that U.S. employers are in less of a hiring mode than one year ago.
A separate survey released Tuesday by Monster Worldwide Inc. and Development Dimensions International found 51% of 1,250 hiring managers globally reported finding fewer qualified candidates than two years ago.
Jonas Prising, president of Manpower North America, pointed out that what researchers are discovering is a disparity between what employers want and what job applicants are offering.
"The reality is that the talent crunch is more complex than a shortage of people," Prising says in a statement. "To bridge the talent gap, we must dig deeper and consider issues such as skill levels, geographic dispersion and demographics."
To keep their businesses going despite insufficient job candidates, employers are pursuing more alternative strategies through outsourcing, technology and contingency hiring, Prising said.
Employment specialists say they're seeing companies flexing their personnel policies to attract more of the workers they're seeking.
For instance, Jill Zoromski, Milwaukee managing director for Capital H Group consultants, said some employers are "silver mining," arranging part-time and flexible schedules for senior-level executives who are nearing or even past retirement.
"There are some positions that don't lend themselves to flexibility, and flexibility is a big currency these days," Zoromski said.
But even educators are trying to bend conventions to get the talent they need. The Milwaukee Renaissance Academy, a charter school set to open in August, is offering four hours of paid prep time each day for the teachers it's trying to hire. So far, the school has hired one of the nine sixth-grade teachers needed for the fall, said Annemarie Ketterhagen, academic dean for the school. Four others are close to being hired and about 20 others are being considered.
"We're coming along," Ketterhagen said. "I think it's always challenging to find teachers."
Zoromski said she also is seeing more employers expand their candidate searches through renewed interest in college recruiting and diversity outreach.
So far this spring, about 130 employers have scheduled visits to Marquette University, up from 78 a year ago, said Laura Kestner, director of Marquette's Career Services Center.
Recruiting engineers
"Our civil engineers all had jobs months ago," Kestner said. She said a recent job fair drew 30 companies interested in the current graduating class of 48 civil engineering students.
Milwaukee-area recruiters said they were surprised at some of the jobs that made - or didn't make - Manpower's hard-to-fill list for the Midwest.
But Schneider didn't second-guess the ranking for sales rep. She expressed frustration with attempts to fill sales openings for her company's Green Bay and Appleton offices.
"Oh yes, salespeople are hard to come by," Schneider said. "Good salespeople."
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