Growing Talent Divide between Small and Large Size Companies

Good news for recent college graduates, more employers are hiring from this group in 2011 than in 2010. According to a Society of Human Resource Management poll, companies with 500 or more employees are responsible for this uptick in demand.

The smaller size companies are leery of hiring recent college grads due to the lack of available resources to train these potential employees in a still stagnant economy. These smaller organizations are being forced to heavily rely on their long-term employees to be highly productive in order to survive.

Managers of larger companies are usually blessed with the ability to use projected talent requirements instead of the current demand to base some of their hiring decisions. However, if these trends continue a talent development gap could emerge between the small/mid size companies and the larger corporations.

Smaller organizations are not out of the game though. They are better able to offer different benefits that the bigger companies cannot. For example, smaller organizations can provide more informal and/or flexible environment with hours and telecommuting. Also, employees in small companies are able to use a varied of different skills and abilities to have a more direct impact on the overall company.