Where Did All The PSO Resources Go?

If you are a private company in the professional service space with under 500 employees, then you are likely feeling the pains of a resource drought.  In today's environment, the resource constraint on professional service organizations (PSOs) is prevalent across several industry sectors and job categories.   It is putting a wrench into the recruitment process due to a lack of people with: (1) the right work experience, (2) lack of the right soft skills and (3) competition from other employers.  So how do you supplement your workforce and meet the demands of your clients? 

The Right Work Experience

Acquiring experience has become more difficult as students stay in school further into their twenties and even thirties.  As competition grows, the need to acquire multiple degrees and accreditations is pushing out the opportunity to acquire the right work skills earlier in life.  Instead of having 10 years of experience under their belts, prospective employees have no experience.  So how do you get new graduates real work experience?

Creating internship programs and partnering with higher education can create a great pool of new candidates to pick from.  It provides a chance to mold a person to your corporate culture.  As well, it also provides a test-period prior to onboarding them.  This approach takes a lot of investment of time, money and resources to manage the recruitment process effectively.  But done right, year over year you will always have a new resource pool to go back to. 

Another alternative is to supplement your mature workforce with channel partners.   The benefit of this type of program is that it enables a services organization to grow its revenues without having to incur additional costs like payroll, ...