The competition for talent in product management and how to respond to it.

Product managers are usually appointed individually to a team. If they are missing, their know-how can hardly be compensated by other team members. This initially leads to a dysbalance and a disproportionately high loss of productivity and, in the long run, to frustration for the entire team.

In recent years, the applicant situation for digital talent has become more challenging. When experienced employees resign, take parental leave or move to other departments, it is a challenge to quickly find a replacement. Highly qualified applicants in particular have become scarce.

What are the options for anticipating this trend and competing for talent?

Adapting the position instead of compromising candidates

If there are not enough suitable applicants, the position shouldn’t be offered. If it is foreseeable that the position will be too demanding, no satisfactory result will be achieved and the overall team performance will suffer.

In the absence of experienced applicants and specialists in particular, the requirements for the new position can be lowered if the existing product team has sufficient level of maturity. Responsibilities can be redistributed and a junior position can be created, which is easier to fill. At the same time, existing employees get an opportunity for further growth and development.

Direct targeting of potential candidates

With a direct targeting, candidates can be found who are not actively seeking, but are open to offers. Such candidates can be identified and managed using specially developed recruiting products, like those offered by LinkedIn. Especially if the HR department professionally supports this active approach, the pool of suitable applicants can grow significantly. An additional advantage with these candidates is that they rarely receive other offers at the same time.

Make locations more flexible

If not done, a more flexible approach to the local constraints like working in one office can provide for a significantly larger field of applicants. There are two basic alternatives: work with distributed teams in different locations in home offices or existing offices, or build an entire team at a new location. If you opt in for foreign countries, time zones and culture must be taken into account. In all cases, infrastructure and processes for distributed work should be mature enough. A pilot project is recommended.

Depending on the team and the mission, distributed work may not achieve the same quality as collaborative work at a shared office. However, there are few bigger quality killers than mediocre or missing employees in teams. The question of whether distributed work is appropriate should therefore not be conducted too theoretically, but on the basis of concrete alternatives.

Train the potential pool yourself

Planned for the long term, new talent can be built up through trainee programs, student internships and other forms of practical training. You create a constant pool of potential junior candidates and relieve the pressure of hiring. In addition, they can provide support through their work and, in part, are already incorporated by the time they are employed.

Reorganization of existing teams

If there are enough employees in the pool of various teams, a reorganization of existing teams is another option. The orientation is based on the bottleneck role. Starting from there, teams are reorganized where necessary and roles and topics are partially redistributed as needed. Further possibilities arise when a reorganization is combined with the flexible use of locations. Such complex plans are particularly useful if the pressure to change is high due to the current situation or if a reorganization of the team structure would be necessary in general.

Specific employer branding

Employer branding is marketing for potential employees and as such a holistic corporate task. However, the product unit can make its own contribution through speakers at conferences, participation within university programs, publications in various media, and networking activities in general. Such activities can increase the chance of making potential candidates aware of open positions and attracting their interest.

Guerrilla marketing

Creative teams or HR departments can try to attract a lot of attention and ideally also a lot of potential applicants with a bright idea. Examples can be found on the web under keywords like Ambient Recruiting, Trojan Recruiting, Viral Recruiting or Conspiracy Recruiting. If enough budget is available, a qualified agency can support. Before implementation, the HR department and management should be involved first.

First published by Traian Kaiser at Medium.