Current Recession

A case study of our current recession and its impact on recent college graduates revealed both challenges and benefits for Human Resource Managers. As companies everywhere have shed jobs in an effort to make them run more efficiently, the traditional way college graduates are retained or newly hired in the workforce has and is still changing.

Human Resource Managers response to a weak economy was to downsize by consolidating positions as well as letting go high salary, longtime workers. Those vacant positions were then filled by talented recent college graduates that were willing to work for less but be responsible for more in an effort to gain valuable work experience. They also were self-motivated and innovative, honing in on the fact that existing solutions no longer worked. The recent hires were given the opportunity to become multi-skilled but also to sharpen the skills they already had. Human Resource Managers and their companies benefited because now their overall quality of talent had increased.

However, the long-term implication is that the company's workers were highly qualified but now the number of skilled workers had depleted. Many company executives are preparing or have retired and the text says "a talent vacuum at the top will create opportunities in middle management for the most qualified young workers". The results will be a younger, less experienced workforce.

Managers can effectively respond to these long-term implications by training their talented employees and giving them the resources and information they need to solve business problems. Those employees will in turn demand more lucrative benefits, compensation and work environment. Human Resource Managers and their companies will need to meet this need in order to maintain retention of those workers as well as attract new ones. The text explains that 18% of Deloitte's entry-level hires this year will earn north of $65,000 per year and is the number one accounting firm in the nation; I believe that is partly due to employee satisfaction with compensation.

The case study reveals Human Resource Managers have had to be creative in the current recession in particular college graduates. There have been both challenges and benefits for the hard decisions they make in an effort to make their companies run more efficiently.