Welcome to New Workforce

Analysts International and New Equities are pleased to welcome you to our blog, New Workforce. What is New Equities? We're a division of Analysts International, a global technology services company with over 35 years in the staffing industry. The mission of New Equities is to reinvent the way people go to work. We are doing this by standing the conventional wisdom on its head: instead of finding people to fill jobs, we find jobs for talented people.

Think of how a talent agent works. The agent develops a keen understanding of the special talents of each person he or she represents, and works to identify opportunities well suited to those talents. The agent acts as the advocate for the talent, and even as one project moves ahead, the agent is thinking ahead to the next one, as well as building a relationship with the people who hire the talent.

This is not the way the traditional staffing industry operates. Consultants are often treated as commodities, who are only contacted if they can fill the current set of client needs. A consultant who was key to a customer's mission-critical project last year is off the radar screen this year, and is not easily located by the recruiter when new requirements surface, even if that consultant is the best fit for the job.

New Equities believes this model is outmoded and needs to be rethought to meet the realities of the 21st century workforce. Our answer to this challenge is to approach workforce requirements more like a talent agent than a traditional recruiter. We even have our own consultant agents who are in tune with the skills and career objectives of IT consultants in our talent pool and actively seek out assignments that leverage those talents, with compensation that reflects their value to the customer. It's like providing each consultant who works with us with their own personal "Jerry McGuire". More information on New Equities and our innovative approach to the 21st century workforce can be found at www.newequities.com.

Why publish a blog? Because the changing nature of work is at the center of our business and it's a fascinating topic. Because this particular topic is very wide and very deep, and there are many smart people out there thinking about it. In addition to working consultants (who might have a thing or two to say about it, ya think?), there are forward-looking business managers, workforce analysts and industry pundits like Daniel Pink.

And of course, there's a whole IT industry in ferment. Which new technologies and trends on the horizon will impact your career? What new skills will be in demand in the coming years? Will IT return to the boom days of the roaring '90s or slide back into the doldrums of the post-bubble years? And what does it mean for those of us who work in that industry?

None of this happens in a vacuum. Our day to day work lives are affected by business trends and the policies of movers and shakers like IBM, FedEx and Cisco, companies who are redefining business fundamentals such as supply chain, logistics and manufacturing and human capital management. The change they create sends ripples throughout the entire workforce.

So, there's a lot going on and a great deal to talk about. We're hoping you'll get in on the discussion. We'll be posting on the topics above, pointing out interesting articles and opinion pieces, with some of our own observations (and hopefully yours).

The world around us is changing and the old models will no longer apply. We have some ideas about where this is going. And we expect you do as well. Each post has a comments thread, so let us know what you think, what you're reading, where you think the workforce is headed. Email us with ideas for topics, or suggestions of sites we should be linking to. Tell us what you're seeing out there, and what we should be paying more attention to.