I read an interesting article this morning about the Notebook and Tablet PC markets. The writer used the term bifurcation, which I’m sure was a thrill for him. I had to look it up. It means to divide or split into two branches, and the article made a solid clear point about the PC Market. That market is splitting into PCs for Creation of content on one end (laptops and desktops) and PCs for Consumption (tablets are great for this).

In recruiting we have seen this happening over the years and I’ve touched on the subject in recent posts. Many in our industry used to think of third party recruiting in competition with corporate HR or as a replacement for part of what corporate HR does. The smarter people that I’ve run into in our business have seen us as a service to corporate HR for quite some time. With the proliferation of job boards and use of e-mail around 10 years ago, many jobs became easier to fill. This was a big step in changing our market and defining our role. Major change is always gradual and we were still in the bubble so this was not a clear crisp change overnight. Since then, corporate HR has evolved. Companies have grown these departments, defined roles within them, and scaled down those departments keeping what is efficient in house and getting rid of what is not.

Now we have RPOs which are a true HR outsourcing service, and corporate HR departments that are very well defined and much more efficient. The role of third party recruiting was split off in this process to be what it should be, the outside resource to help fill the really difficult positions. The third party recruiting market is smaller, but very well defined and absolutely necessary. The market for laptops is going to shrink, or at least it’s growth will be held back, because of the tablets and their fit for a PC that is used primarily for consumption. I’ll be buying a new laptop pretty soon, with no consideration of buying a tablet instead. I might also look at a tablet soon for use around the house.

Todd Kmiec

Todd Kmiec & Associates

todd@toddkmiec.com