No silver bullet to tackle scarce digital skills

I've written extensively about scarce skills within the Pharmaceutical and Life Sciences sector and digital skills are amongst the most scarce and in demand.  For employers within the sector they are not just competing with their traditional competitors but with every other sector including the technology sector itself.  If you have niche digital skills would you be more attracted to a job with Apple, Meta or Amazon or within the Pharmaceutical sector?  All sectors can compete effectively for scarce digital skills but it is far from easy and there is no silver bullet.

My recent white paper Securing scarce talent in the pharma and biotech sector highlighted three key strategies for success:

• Candidate Centricity - the need to tailor hiring processes and recruitment brand (think candidate value proposition) for specific candidate segments
• Market Insight - no longer an advantage but a necessity, institutionalized market insight will empower recruiters and sourcers to understand where talent resides and how best to engage and convert that talent in to new hires
• Specialist Sourcing Capabilities - recruiters today may be highly skilled at searching for passive talent, they may be brilliant advisers to your hiring managers, and they may be excellent interviewers, but they are unlikely to be all three. Specialist sourcers empowered with the latest SaaS tools will deliver huge value and a competitive advantage

The article below from McKinsey details ten realities companies need to face and what they can do to address them in order to compete for scarce digital skills.  More recognition that there is no silver bullet and progressive companies will need to completely rethink their HR strategies to be successful.