How should you fill positions vacated by baby boomer retirements? Manufacturing Business Technology hits it on the nose as to “why the urgency?” in the answer of Bill Martin, President of Fortune Personnel Consultants of Greensboro:

” “It’s there because people of retirement age typically are in management or technically complex positions. This is particularly the case in technical manufacturing positions, where the learning curves are steep,” says Martin.

But then Ron Herzog, President of FPC, begins to explain the process used to fill the positions:

“Companies need new employees in those jobs now to develop the skills needed by the time the boomers retire. The urgency is real,” Herzog maintains. “Many of our clients are manufacturing companies, which are expected to be among those hard hit due to the high instance of employees older than 45 years in management.” “

Note the “need for new employees…to develop the skills needed by the time the boomers retire”. Seems to say that the only way to fill these positions is to hire younger workers.

Bill Martin’s response to the “how to” question is similar:

“”Our clients haven’t been able to find enough qualified grads to fill this pipeline, so they’ve partnered with us to find people to back-fill the pipeline with two to three years of experience. Just about 20 percent of our recent placements have been baby-boomer replacements, and we expect that number to increase.”"

Wow- what about all the people who will be retiring in 10-20 years? Is this group left out because they cost too much? Or because they typically don’t have the technology skills required? Or, is it because they tend to be less flexible in the way they do things? Why is there a miss in relation to older workers replacing retiring workers? Is it driven by the myth that young workers will work for the same company for many years? What do you think?

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Manufacturing Business Technology (MBT) magazine deals with a topic I’ve followed with great interest: baby boomer retirements. My interest is based on my age, 54, and the difficulty I’ve experienced gaining employment of the type I’m used to after year 2000. The need for mature, experienced workers never seemed to impact my situation even though I heard and read plenty about it. My difficulties probably had more to do with the huge downturn in my industry in 2000-2001: consulting related to technology enablement of business processes. My recent hiring by a major software company is a personal indication that mature workers are being hired into high impact, high compensation positions.

According to MBT, the next five years will be interesting:

“New York-based FPC (F-O-R-T-U-N-E Personnel Consultants) says its recruiters already are seeing early nationwide effects of the massive baby boomer retirement wave expected in the next five years. In total, 76 million are expected to leave the workforce, according to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS).”

How should companies fill these losses due to retirement? Should they hire recent grads and mentor them before older workers leave? Or should they go on a campaign to find mature workers with similar experience? What would you do and why?

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