How to Develop and Mine Talent
One way to try to beat the potential employment shortage is to recruit and retain great professionals now. The October 10 BusinessWeek explores developing and mining talent within corporations. Much of what the articles discuss and highlight could be applied to libraries. Some ways companies emphasize and develop their workers is through exit interviews, professional development, flex time, and mentoring and outreach programs with students and universities. The July 2005 Information Outlook, the magazine of the Special Libraries Association, reports the importance of exit interviews and what they might tell about the library or information setting. Connecting to library and information science students can be easy and fun. (Not only is access to the SLA article restricted to SLA members, but it requires eBrary software. Access to the BusinessWeek story might be restricted to BusinessWeek subscribers.)
The BusinessWeek piece provides a lead on the worry about a shortage of librarians.
"As the 77 million U.S. baby boomers begin to retire, Generation X, now 24 to 40 years old, makes a paltry successor, with 46 million people."
I hadn’t thought to look at general population numbers to see about future employment shortages. I’ve heard concerns about not enough workers in other industries, too. The U.S. Census Bureau has a chart (.pdf) comparing the population by age and gender. It shows a population decline after the Baby Boom Generation, the group of people born between 1946 and 1964.
(I’m a librarian, right? Why didn’t I think to look this up earlier instead of just wondering about the future shortage of information professionals?)
Can nurturing and encouraging talented employees help institutions in a time of employment shortages? If we create environments with happy employees, will they be less likely to leave?
