B2B Data Integration and Transformation Blog

Through my 5 years at Remedi, I have been constantly searching for the best EDI talent in North America. There always seem to be plenty of EDI Administrators available but I can’t say the same for EDI Mappers, Developers, and Architects. These individuals tend to have full schedules throughout the year. Many EDI Managers wonder when is the best time of the year to find the best talent in EDI. Most new EDI projects usually kick off in January for the 1^st quarter of the following year where the budget is available. In my experience, if you wait until January to start hiring you have missed an incredible window. Most EDI projects wrap up with companies in November before the Thanksgiving holiday where people usually take vacations, which means most EDI talent is looking for a new project in December.

A recent article on Yahoo! Finance discussed the top 54 companies to work for based on employee feedback. Eight of the top ten were in the technology sector, while 7 of the 54 use consultants. As the article states, “The best companies to work for were concentrated in particular industries. For example, technology companies are well represented among the highest-rated employers, as are consulting firms.” So what is it about technology companies and consulting firms that create high morale and satisfaction for employees?

As we look into the future, we look at the past.  The use of a contract or contingent workforce was extremely light in the early 1980s and decades before that. Business and workforce needs were more predictable, you know...employment for life, along with low levels of automation and computerization requiring a physical workforce.

As business cycles became more varied along with increased use of computers and robotics, resource needs became more varied.  In the late 1980s and particularly the 1990s a contingent workforce became more appealing. Reasons why contingent resources became popular, and remain so today, include supplementing current staff, acquiring expertise not available on staff, to get a fresh approach or different perspective on a problem, to acquire experience from different companies in your industry or cross industry experience, to do the repetitive/complex task that no one else wants to do, to off load work (outsourcing or managed services) which enable staff to concentrate on core competencies, vacation/expertise/cross trained backups, try before you buy contract to hire, and so on.

So with a look at the past and present, what does the future hold?

Past articles from Remedi, Valuable Relationships in Tough Times and RDBMS Versus Real Relationships detail the candidate supply and demand pendulum that confronts EDI hiring managers and integration managers when staffing contract and full-time hire needs in varying economic conditions. These articles outline in each economic circumstance how hiring managers can best engage the sourcing pros of professional services firms to derive value in the search for resources.

We have received positive feedback from hiring managers on these articles, and somewhat surprisingly, from Integration candidates as well. The article Interviewing your Recruiter takes a reciprocal approach, providing guidance for integration professionals in terms of how to best select and engage with a recruiter. Hopefully hiring managers will find this view of the recruiting process valuable as well.

With a look at both sides of the integration talent equation let’s move on to the CareerBuilder 2015 job forecast.  The first 1/3 of the year seems to be unfolding along the lines of this report at least from our observations.