Finding new employees is one of the major challenges for companies in the “war for talent”. This is especially true with regard to the lack of IT talent on the job market and thus for IT talent management in particular. With our research we contribute to a successful recruitment of talents. A key finding is that a single “one fits all” strategy is usually not effective, but rather that a comprehensive portfolio of target group-oriented strategies and measures (e.g. boomerang hires) is necessary to meet the challenges.
In the course of the research, the FISH framework was developed, which comprises a process model for the definition of a comprehensive portfolio of target group-oriented strategies and measures for the recruitment of (IT) professionals. The strategies and measures are differentiated in terms of short-term and long-term effectiveness, and the availability of talent on the labor market is taken into account. The search for talent can be interpreted as the activity of a fisherman who either casts a net and can choose from a variety of fish (short-term measures for more readily available target groups) or who fishes with a rod, the right bait and in the right place (short-term measures for scarce target groups). For long-term success, a fisherman would feed fish (long-term measure for more available target groups) or start thinking like a fish (long-term measures for scarce target groups). With this metaphor, which is the basis for the FISH framework, it has been possible in many projects to develop appropriate talent management strategies and define measures to successfully attract and retain talent for a company.
A major focus of our work is the study series “Recruiting Trends” and “Bewerbungspraxis (application practice)” in which we investigate current trends and developments in recruiting in Germany as part of the Centre of Human Resources Information Systems (CHRIS) in cooperation with the Chair of Information Systems, especially Information Systems in Service Areas at the University of Bamberg.
The FISH framework, the results of the “Recruiting Trends” and the “Bewerbungspraxis” as well as the basic procedures and theories of IT talent management are the subject of the lecture “Electronic Human Resources Management“.