Dr John Sullivan Talent Management Thought Leadership
Quantum Computing (QC) is revolutionary because it can solve “unsolvable problems” and accurately forecast the future.
Few corporate recruiting leaders realize that the demand for Quantum Computing (QC) talent already far exceeds the available supply. As a result, Quantum Computing will eventually become corporate recruiting’s #1 priority. I previously alerted you about “The War for AI Talent” in 2018. Today, I am alerting you that “The battle for Quantum Computing Talent” has already begun. And you are already behind every one of the top five most valuable corporations.
It’s the next revolution, “quantum computers will change everything” – Michio Kaku
What Is Quantum Computing (QC) And Why Do I Need To Know About It?
If you’re not familiar with Quantum Computing (or QC). It’s a physical computer that, along with specialized software, uses parallel processing. That will eventually allow it to achieve several times the computing power of today’s supercomputers. With that power, corporations will be able to solve numerous previously unsolvable problems in business, finance, science, medicine, and forecasting. Quantum computing will also be important to all major corporations that rely on encryption. Because it now appears that Quantum Computing will be able to circumvent all existing encryption practices. Finally, you should be aware that in the corporate world, Google and IBM are the leaders in developing a viable Quantum Computer.
The Top 5 Reasons Why You Will Need A Focused QC Recruiting Approach
Yes, Quantum Computing is currently under your radar of technology and will eventually become the top priority of all industry-leading corporations and their recruiting functions. In my view, all recruiting leaders want to avoid the same mistakes made when recruiting for AI talent. You need to begin preparing your recruiting function for this battle starting today. And as a first step in building your business case. Below, you will find a list of the top 5 reasons why recruiting leaders should begin developing a process for prioritizing and focusing on recruiting QC talent.
Because of its tremendous capabilities, executives will have high expectations
The primary reason QC will become an essential driver of strategic performance at all major corporations is its ability to solve previously unsolvable complex problems with almost unlimited variables. That enhanced capability will eventually allow Quantum Computing to dramatically improve your marketing, financial, supply chain, weather forecasting, and workforce optimization results. As an added feature, QC will also eventually be able to accurately map trends and forecast upcoming problems and opportunities.
And because of its exceptionally high impact across every strategic area of the corporation, your executives will expect you to give priority to QC jobs. Of course, they will continually watch everything you do, from your recruiting process design to your actual hiring results. The exceptionally high expectations of executives and shareholders will force recruiting leaders to develop and maintain a nearly flawless QC recruiting process.
The supply of QC talent will be extremely limited, so a focused approach will be required
First, understand that the supply/demand imbalance for QC talent may reach a record-breaking low. The talent supply will be painfully low because so few will have any experience with a quantum computer. To date, only a handful of operational quantum computers exist.
And if you expect to recruit your talent from universities. Students in the near future will have limited opportunities to major in Quantum Computing. Unfortunately, the schools that do focus on it are prestigious schools like MIT, Caltech, Stanford, Harvard, UC Berkeley, and the University of Science and Technology of China, where you will have almost no chance of landing even one of their graduates if you don’t already have an established strong relationship with the target school. Given that demand will far exceed supply immediately and in the distant future, corporate talent leaders who expect to excel at QC recruiting must develop a sourcing sub-channel designed specifically to counter this shortage.
Because of the intense competition, your recruiting process must provide a competitive advantage
Even if your corporation is among the first to design a dedicated QC recruiting sub-process, you will need to realize that you will be competing against the top data-driven recruiting powerhouses in the world. Not surprisingly, major tech giants (Amazon, Google, Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple, and IBM) have established QC recruiting processes. So, if you expect to have any chance of success in your head-to-head recruiting battles, realize that it is essential for your own QC recruiting process to be superior in every aspect to theirs.
To maintain your competitive recruiting edge, you will have to periodically conduct a competitive analysis on each talent competitor to determine what you need to do better to maintain your competitive edge. The six most critical competitive advantage areas include sourcing, referrals, candidate experience, skills assessment, employment branding, and candidate closing. Additionally, since many recruiting targets will be employed at these tech giants, your recruitment strategy must be compelling enough to successfully attract talent away from these established companies.
Because your targets will have multiple job choices, your targeted QC recruiting process will have to excel at selling
Because most of the recruits that you are targeting will be completely aware that they have multiple job choices (including staying where they are), your recruiting processes must excel at selling your job and company to each recruiting target. Begin by establishing a strong employer brand presence within the quantum computing community.
Design the recruitment process following executive search practices, where the recruiter takes the necessary time to identify the “job acceptance factors” of each candidate while maintaining constant back-and-forth communication to ensure they are satisfied. Next, to avoid an exceptionally high recruiting process dropout rate, you will need a “candidate-centric” recruiting process that will provide each QC candidate with “white glove treatment” during every element of the candidate experience. Also, if you want your selected candidate to say yes, you will need to meet most of their new job acceptance criteria. Meeting their acceptance criteria might end this case, meaning you may have to alter your job and offer. So that they more closely meet your finalist’s “dream job” criteria. Last but not least, each of the recruiters assigned to Quantum Computing must be exceptionally well trained in candidate convincing and selling.
Ensuring great recruiting results will require that your QC hiring process be data-driven
Executives and talent leaders expect consistently exceptional results for each of its top priority jobs, necessitating the hiring process for all top-priority jobs to be data-driven. For example, to get the attention of your QC recruiting targets, you will need a data-driven process to identify the most powerful “attraction factors” for your QC recruiting targets.
Having a data-driven process also means that each element of your QC recruiting/hiring process must periodically demonstrate with data that it is, in fact, the most effective approach. Data must also be used to make candidate decisions. Including which recruiting targets/candidates will move forward and which will be rejected. Finally, being data-driven also means that TA will develop, collect, and report performance metrics for every recruiting step as well as overall process performance. So that your leaders can redesign or drop every process element that doesn’t excel in performance.
Recommended Action Steps
The starting step for smart corporate talent leaders is to begin educating themselves on the potential business impacts of Quantum Computing. So that you can make a compelling business case to your executives for the full funding of your QC recruiting effort. Next, you should benchmark and analyze the current recruiting marketplace for QC talent. So you know what’s working, what isn’t, and what the emerging “next practices” are. Finally, you should create a plan to develop a dedicated sub-process for recruiting Quantum Computing (and other top-priority jobs). Only by having a focused and data-driven recruiting process can you guarantee that your corporation will dominate your industry in recruiting QC talent.
Note for the reader
This is the latest post from Dr. John Sullivan, who was labeled “the Michael Jordan of Hiring” by Fast Company Magazine.
Please help spread these ideas by sharing this with your team/network and by posting it on your favorite social media channel.
