Rethinking the Talent Search

In a recent article in CIO Magazine (May 1, 2011), Kristen Lamoreaux, president and CEO of Lamoreaux Search, echoes the sentiments of the inimitable French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau by suggesting that hiring and retention are too important to be left to HR.  She calls CIOs to action, recommending that they take the lead and get creative by cross-training existing employees, revitalizing employee referral programs, and sponsoring innovation contests, all with an eye toward keeping employees engaged and excited, and having a great recruiting story.

Ms. Lamoreaux does not suggest that the CIOs take matters into their own hands, but rather that they work in concert with HR toward a common goal. Yet among her many valuable points, she may have omitted an important and worthy consideration:

Outsourcing does not have to mean outside the country, or outside the company. It may simply mean outside of IT. And ‘existing employees’ doesn’t have to mean existing IT employees, particularly when it comes to application development. After all, some of the sharpest development resources in the organization do not work in IT.

Tactical developers bring valuable resources and motivation to the table. Their domain expertise, business knowledge and coding and problem-solving skills make them ideal candidates, not for recruiting so much as for inclusion. How? By lending some support to their efforts, by making technical training available, by granting a bit of access, by offering a seat at the applications discussion table, and by allowing them a little room to maneuver, the enlightened CIO can integrate tactical developers into the development cycle.

An enormous amount of added value stands to be gained, not just to the efficacy and useful lives of the applications themselves, but to the business ownership of an essential factor of production as well as to the IT-business partnership.

A business side manager who has realized the benefits of tactical development might echo both Lamoreaux and Clemenceau and say that application development, particularly tactical development, is much too important to be left to IT.