The war for talent – Part 2 of 5: How to overcome the digital mismatch

One of the most critical issues in today’s labor market is the lack of alignment between supply and demand, calibrated on the new digital skills that companies require.

We discussed this topic with Vito Ribaudo, HR manager of RCS MediaGroup in Italy. According to Vito, in the media sector, the problem of finding resources with digital skills emerged in the mid-90s, with the need for graphic operators for new printing technology. Today the industry is undergoing a profound phase of transformation that sees a progressive shift from paper to digital.

With the gap between the number of graduates in science (STEM) subjects and constantly evolving corporate needs, RCS has focused on an in-house training school – the “RCS Academy” – to develop the digital skills that are increasingly critical to the company’s growth. Compounding the situation for the media sector is also the fact that the most in-demand profiles are developers, data scientists, data engineering, cybersecurity. and cloud experts. The talent with these digital skills often prefer to work in other industries with more attractive growth dynamics.

For the HR manager of RCS MediaGroup, the pandemic has been a watershed moment: “We have conducted many job interviews with people who live far from our headquarters because some activities can also be carried out remotely. Personally, however, I believe that living in a professional community allows for greater professional development, as the dynamics between colleagues and the group as a whole are fundamental. Therefore, we will have to strike a new balance. We are also reviewing the economic aspects and creating forms of variable remuneration linked to projects and results. But we believe that we must focus on developing skills and offering personalized training with anytime delivery methods to attract digital talent and retain them. The goal is to raise the quality of digital skills, not only benefiting technical resources specifically but also the entire organization”.

A very clear picture emerges from our analysis: the lack of digital profiles has reached an unprecedented level; the pandemic, thanks to the mass adoption of collaboration and smart working tools, has accelerated turnover in this sector, forcing companies to drastically review their work models.

In our next article, we’ll discuss the strategies to identify new talent and training.

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