How Higher Ed and Employers Can Partner to Power Talent Pipelines | BCG

Organizations continue to find ways to tap various sources of talent to supply their talent pipeline. And according to i4CP’s Talent Ecosystem Integrated Model, high-performance organizations consistently leverage talent from 11 alternative sources—from gig workers to colleges and universities. This BCG article provides ideas on how employers can partially meet their talent needs by enabling better partnerships with colleges and universities. It includes a section on how this partnership can be improved by first overcoming common challenges in the employer-college/university relationship. For example, one challenge mentioned is how colleges and universities get frustrated with employers since “many employers struggle to make workforce projections—specifically, the types of skills that they will need and the number of employees with those skills who they will seek to hire.” Many times, employers provide broad criteria, such as job categories (e.g., software developer)—which are less useful and result in best guesses about what skills will be in demand. One of the challenges that employers can face when it comes to partnering with colleges and universities is the longer timelines higher education programs usually require to produce the needed talent (e.g., 3 years is often required to build new talent programs—which is too long for many organizations). Other ideas are discussed.