Plus Relocation

What are you most passionate about in the relocation industry?

Worldwide ERC President and CEO Peggy Smith tells us why she’s passionate about the challenge of sourcing talent.

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Complete transcript: “Good afternoon, I’m Peggy Smith with Worldwide ERC and delighted to be here at Plus Relocation as a guest of Susan Benevides’. Earlier today she asked me to think about what am I passionate about in our industry. So, that’s what I want to share with you.

I am most passionate about the challenge that we are facing with talent and how organizations are coming up with creative ways to determine how best to source talent in this ever-competitive global landscape. One company that immediately comes to mind is our friends at Google. There was an individual who had googled a word, put in a technical word into the search engine, and up popped the results. Shortly after the results, up came another question, and it was simply, “Hey, you’re talking our language. Would you like to accept a challenge?” This exchange of the challenge went back and forth for about six different iterations. At the end, this young man got a job offer from Google. I thought, wow, that’s ingenious, using their own product in a creative way to source talent.

Another great example that I think about in looking at talent challenges is the demands of flexibility that companies are wanting. Many of you know, we are just right on the cusp of seeing our Olympics in Rio. Search for the commercial that Uber is running right now of the Olympic athlete who has chosen to take a job at Uber because of the ability that it gives him and the flexible lifestyle that he wants. Another creative way to get into talent sources.

A couple other examples that come to mind about ways that companies have done this. First off, many companies are beginning to explore with incubation units, sourcing talent or bringing in talent and telling them you can go off and work on a project completely independent of what our core project is. This is speaking directly to the hearts and souls of the young millennials that are graduating and the upcoming Generation Z that are about to enter college.

And the final example that comes to mind is the company Zappos, headquartered in Las Vegas, Nevada. Many of you will know them as a shoe retailer or e-retailer. But one of the most creative things that they do is they allow any employee in the entire company to come and create and present a business plan to the executive leadership team. They choose one individual’s business plan. At the end of that presentation they take them off payroll and they launch a company for them.

Those are just some of the many ways that in this ever difficult, challenging talent shortage, companies are sourcing, attracting, and trying to retain the talent that they acquire.”