carlos leon

Until recently, companies advertised their job openings in print. Their job offers provided information about every available position, explained the requirements and provided the address for sending in a resume. But things have changed. Although you can still find those kinds of advertisements, major corporations are publishing ads now in which they transmit an idea and their image without offering information about any specific jobs. These days, a lot of well-trained professionals choose where, how and with whom they want to work. Furthermore, in the current labor market of almost full employment, university credentials are a less important factor in choosing the right employee than they have been in the past. This development coincides with a shortage of university graduates.

In Spain, where experts forecast a shortage of 800,000 trained professionals by the year 2010, the job market -- and the process of looking for a job -- has clearly changed.

What should companies need to do in order to find, hire and retain the best, most talented employees? Experts agree that companies need to not only change their recruitment policies but also to present themselves to job candidates as their best alternative on the job market. They need to learn how to market their job offerings as the most attractive options for employees' professional development. That means that marketing is conquering the world of human resources. "In order to create a team of talented professionals, companies must design systems for identifying and analyzing the different types of people who are in their company," notes Cristina Sim�, professor of human resources at the Instituto de Empresa (IE) [business school in Spain]. That means "identifying talent and personalizing human resources in order to understand what motivates people as well as why they have chosen your particular company."

Adds Consuelo Le�, a researcher at IESE: "Your staff must be closely linked to your company. If your employees identify with the company's mission, you can be sure that the company will be successful." Carlos Torrecilla, a professor of marketing at ESADE, warns executives that "talent emerges individually and it is quite normal for people to become discouraged [about their careers]. I suggest that you create policies for preventing talent from becoming discouraged and for letting talent flourish."

The problem that many companies face is finding out which areas their employees are most talented in. As Torrecilla notes, "Good bosses are the ones who find out what each person is skilled at doing." Everyone has some sort of talents, he adds. "The job of the boss is to figure out what those talents are and to differentiate them and group them in ways that enable people to accomplish their tasks." In contrast, a bad boss "always thinks that his [or her] team is untalented." Le� notes that the easy part is to differentiate the technical skills of each employee. "The hard part is to find out if that person has the people skills that will make him or her more efficient on the job….The human resources director needs to have experience detecting this characteristic of each new employee -- figuring out why that employee has chosen this particular company, what his or her long-term professional plans are, and how far he or she wants to get in his professional career."

Identifying Talent

To retain the most talented people in your company, Sim� suggests that executives "identify that talent and learn what each good employee wants and then listen." Basically, that means carefully defining "what the talents that are already within our organization can mean for us." Companies typically start out by focusing on highly qualified talent in such exclusively technical areas as information technology and telecommunications engineering. Nowadays, however, "the talent of a particular person cannot be evaluated just by what he or she knows how to do, but about how much he or she can achieve in the company if you facilitate things [for him or her]," says Sim�, adding that technical knowledge must be complemented by such competencies as "passion, knowledge of the business, hard work, innovation and adaptability to change."

If we want to build loyalty among our most talented employees, that means "not having to give [jobs] to those people who say they want them but to those people who need them. If we give jobs to the people who want them, the only thing we achieve is to accelerate the flight of that kind of worker [in the future]," notes Torrecilla. For Sim�, the key is to personalize management. A company should have a philosophy "that directly involves middle management. The concept of personalization means understanding each worker, listening to his or her problems, resolving them, and making sure employees know they are being cared for." Le� agrees that employees should not be treated en masse. Instead, it's necessary to establish a first-rate system for internal communications and to "care a great deal about personal relationships between employees and their immediate bosses."

Most executives believe that when a company is well positioned in the market, it attracts new employees who are talented. But not everyone agrees. "The business culture does influence this process, not the company's positioning. What counts is the public image of your company and how that affects the business culture. A company's positioning merely attracts some people but it does not enable the company to retain those people," says Torrecilla. Sim� estimates that fewer than 10 percent of all professionals are guided by the power of a company's corporate brand. "Young people could be interested [as a result of the company brand], but the truly important thing is that your internal framework is oriented toward values that enable you to care for each employee." Le� adds that professionals who have about a decade of job experience often have the goal of setting up their own companies. "The small- and mid-size companies that have a high growth rate are the ones that are interesting to employees who want to develop themselves as professionals."

The war for talent has moved from the exclusive realm of human resources toward marketing campaigns designed to attract the right kinds of new employees. "It makes a lot of sense to meet each job candidate in person, but we cannot take advantage of this approach if we don't have facts that confirm it. You have to be very Commack, a Times-Union Super 11 pick, received two unsportsmanlike-conduct penalties, both for taunting, in the Leon game. The second resulted in an automatic ejection and subsequent suspension for seven days and the team's next athletic contest.

First Coast is appealing the ruling and has submitted videotapes of the second violation to the Florida High School Athletic Association, asking for a reversal of the second call.

"He was wrong on the first one when he spun the ball on the ground after his score," Buccaneers coach Marty Lee said. "But on the second call on Avis, he just flipped the ball to the official after he scored. For whatever reason, they called him for taunting. They never explained anything more to me, just that the call was taunting.

"We have video evidence that that's all he did, was flip the ball to the official, and a vice principal of the school, who was standing nearby, verified this to us."

Denarvise Thornton, FHSAA associate executive director for athletic administration who oversees compliance matters and appeals, confirmed that he had received the videotape. As of 5 p.m.