Recruitment: a matter for the boss!

In management, knows Martin Blaschek, managing director of Avantum, decisions are still made on a narrow data basis: "This is also why many planning methods fail."For Blaschek, this is reason enough to expand Avantum's range of services to include new consulting fields: the company, which specializes in analytics, will also expand its Microsoft business in addition to Business Intelligence (BI) from SAP and IBM.

Specifically, Avantum needed not only technically savvy, BI-savvy salespeople with a resilient network, but also executives with a proven track record of successfully developing new areas of business. He did not delegate recruitment for strategically important positions to recruiting. It was important to him to dedicate himself personally to the strategically relevant task of finding the right team members in terms of expertise and, in particular, to the culture of Avantum. The fact that many IT service providers still ignore the causal relationship between business success and the human resources that make it possible in the first place remains a mystery to many observers.

Particularly in the highly strained labor market for information technology, companies are hardly succeeding in recruiting staff by conventional means. According to the industry association Bitkom, a good 80,000 positions are vacant. It takes an estimated 182 days to fill a vacancy - only registered geriatric nurses are looked for longer. This means that important tasks remain unfinished for half a year, and projects do not move forward. In the worst-case scenario, customers drop out because they don't want to be put off any longer.

For the Munich-based strategy and HR consultant Frank Rechsteiner, this situation is by no means the result of the rampant shortage of skilled workers, which supposedly robs companies of any chance to effectively dovetail HR planning with business goals. For Rechsteiner, the fact that management, aware of the dramatically worsening situation on the labor market, is unthinkingly relying on its recruiting is "a serious mistake".

Obviously, there is not a problem with knowledge, but with implementation. If management does not take the initiative, the spark will not be transferred to HR. As a result, many employers think they are back in the days when they still gave out jobs and had to politely ask applicants for employment. However, the tide has long since turned, emphasizes Rechsteiner: "If you can pick and choose jobs as a qualified IT professional, you won't be treated like a supplicant."

Martin Blaschek and Frank Rechsteiner, who have been working together for many years, therefore pulled together. The Avantum managing director did not hesitate to involve his business partner in the strategic considerations. It was quickly agreed that the joint plan could hardly be realized in the traditional structures. "Even with intensive internal training we can't get it right in time", Blaschek recalls the intensive discussions. He therefore asked the HR consultant to approach suitable candidates in his network and present him with a shortlist as soon as possible.

The most important finding from the joint project with Frank Rechsteiner
means for Martin Blaschek: "Personnel is a bottleneck factor."He criticizes other IT service providers, saying that personnel advertising and recruiting are still hardly a focus for many company managements. That's why the Avantum CEO wants to continue to drive the recruitment of new employees himself. He encourages his employees to get personally involved in recruiting and, for example, to contact experts on LinkedIn. In addition, he also personally participates in recruitment interviews, which HR moderates and designs with elementary information about the company's culture. "If an interesting candidate can't help it, I'll even meet with him late at night for an interview. Everything else has to take a back seat."