The manager of a billion-dollar-plus investment fund for a major organization shook his head as he ordered a beer. He’d been attempting to fill a key staff position for months. And although he’d sifted through nearly 200 resumes, not a single one had the basic requirements called for.

“We threw them all away,” he said. “We’re starting over.”

His lament echoes the dilemma of many a hiring manager these days. As the global economy continues to perform well, the top talent available for hiring is disappearing. A recent study by the partner relationship management firm Impartner found that nine out of 10 respondents in the sales arena can’t fill available positions, and that the problem has intensified in the past year. Managers who have the good ones now realize they need to do what it takes to keep them, because finding a replacement on the open market is like looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack.

Many of these managers point to today’s educational system as the reason they can’t find well-rounded talent. Universities simply aren’t graduating highly trained professionals quickly enough—particularly in such fields as computer science, medicine and finance.

But not all companies are passively accepting the situation. Some, including Microsoft and Linux, are partnering with online learning experts to develop curriculum designed to produce the workers they need more quickly than universities are producing them. And, like other solutions that bubble up from the private sector, this kind of action is encouraging some in academia to partner with these for-profits, both for their short- and long-term gain.

There’s a huge disconnect between how well academia thinks its doing in producing the employees of the future, and the business view of that job. Gallup found that 96 percent of higher ed survey respondents say they’re effectively training the people business needs. But only 11 percent of business leaders interviewed agreed.

Microsoft’s partnership with Eastern Washington University is perhaps the model of an emerging solution to the talent shortage. As reported by Wired, Microsoft has developed its own curriculum for degrees in data analytics and computer science. The company convinced Eastern Washington to adopt the program, which it integrated into its course options in less than a year, unveiling the new tracks this fall.

Of course, the partners haven’t gone so far as to directly promise the new grads expected to emerge next summer straight into the Microsoft universe. But with the company’s financial support and recruiters on hand to meet the new grads, Microsoft has taken a major step forward in addressing its recruitment needs.

Other tech employers, facing a yawning potential gap between new jobs being created over the next decade and the pace of graduates produced, are taking similar steps. And just as these employers are taking measures into their own hands, entrepreneurs are launching new ventures designed to connect employers with academic programs willing to integrate off-the-shelf courses into their curricula.

As reported by Wired, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has stepped into the fray. He’s unveiled Woz U, which offers online tech courses, which will be offered through a for-profit online university, Southern Careers. Harvard and MIT have created an online educational pathway, dubbed edX, that facilitates collaboration between employers and educators to more quickly produce graduates with the full range of skills needed for specific occupations.

“The challenging thing for colleges is that the technology changes so quickly that by the time you get your program up and running, you have to make a lot of changes and updates to keep it relevant,” Lee Rubenstein, vice president of business development at edX, told Wired. With corporate help in developing the courses needed to meet today’s needs, that process can be highly accelerated, he said.

While such ventures and partnerships are in the early stages of development, the funds that can potentially be handed over from employers to academia to achieve the outcome desired is certain to lead to the expansion of such programs. With the talent shortage already at a crisis state in the tech sector, the Microsoft’s of the world are leading the charge and setting the tone for this evolving business/academic partnership.

Instant Insights /

Tech giants taking on talent shortage, developing own curricula

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