Without a strategic talent management strategy we often get caught in the trap of needing help and immediately looking to the market for a candidate with specific skills. Obviously this is necessary and if it wasn’t I would not be gainfully employed, however considering our teams’ core competences should be the first step.
Look within your team and then within the company before you hire externally.

It may seem like strange advice coming from a recruiter, but my advice in many situations before hiring is consider training first.

Without a strategic talent management strategy we often get caught in the trap of needing help and immediately looking to the market for a candidate with specific skills. Obviously this is necessary and if it wasn’t I would not be gainfully employed, however considering our teams’ core competences should be the first step.
Look within your team and then within the company before you hire externally. Is there anyone who has the core competences but not the exact skills required? If someone fits the bill the old adage you can train skills but not attitude comes to mind.
To drive the point home I will use an example. My client installed a SharePoint system and the only team member with those skills was enormously overburdened and the outsourced IT company was becoming expensive. I was called to find a strong SharePoint candidate who also had Commercial Real Estate background. The budget for this position was 50k but due to a tight market, 70k was becoming the norm for that role.
One of the employees on the team I had place two years prior was an excellent employee, loved the culture and was a fantastic junior on the team. The cost of training him in SharePoint skills was $7500, 3 weeks away and some hand holding from the outsourced IT company and the other employee.
The client chose to train the employee and backfill his role. He enjoyed a small uptick in his salary to 46k for the added responsibility and received training. Within 8 months, my client considered this candidate to be as strong as the first employee in SharePoint and the IT Service Company had been phased out of the project. We back filled the entry-level position with a 35 k new grad that had adjusted well into the department.

I tell this good news story to make 3 points:
1. The client promoted from within which was great for morale
2. The client now had two SharePoint experts with Commercial Real Estate experience (great from a retention risk perspective)
3. The client saved money by not having to pay more in the marketplace for a hot skill

Obviously you cannot always be training for skills and many skills take years to hone, in these cases hiring talent externally is necessary. I believe that before we look outward as a reflex reaction in some cases training should be considered. It can result in saved money, a better trained team. Better morale and higher retention rate.
Perhaps we should look at these options for all of those open SAP and Java positions throughout the city????