Winning the talent that everyone is fighting over requires courage to step off the beaten path and take innovative action.
In 2026, I would like to see a braver approach to look for critical skills somewhere your competitors haven’t necessarily gone yet.
Take the defence industry, for example. During the last couple of years, as Sweden and Finland have joined NATO and geopolitical uncertainty has been building up across the globe, a wide variety of new tasks has emerged rapidly.
Companies in the defence industry have a hard time filling all new vacancies with anything close to what they could call “experienced talent”. And in my opinion, solely focusing on experienced talent would be an expensive and short-sighted approach anyway.
No one was born to be an AI-based drone builder, and we all know modern specialists are difficult to come by.
A much more reliable and cost-efficient way is to focus on identifying junior talent with the right capabilities – and train them to master the critical skills that are needed even for the most versatile and specific tasks.
For this approach to work, four concrete steps are required.
- Define the precise skills and knowledge that the training must entail.
- Recruit candidates based on high learning capabilities and motivation.
- Carry out a high quality accelerated training program.
- Start hands-on work immediately after training.
One of the most powerful examples of our reskilling training is the Integrated lifecycle support, ILS Academy. Not one university in Finland educates this field that is critical for the defence industry. So we created a 12-week training program from scratch together with our clients.
The results speak for themselves. Today, we have completed three ILS training programs, educating future employees across Europe for the defence sector.
This same reskilling logic can be applied to various industries and technologies from public sector procurement specialists to test automation and cyber security.
If you are in a leading position, I recommend to ask yourself:
- What is the most critical talent for us in the upcoming years?
- How do we beat our competitors in attracting that talent?
- Do we have a smart mix of junior and senior talent in that field?
Make the smartest move of resourcing and start growing the talent you need. Your employee engagement and in-house capabilities will reach all new levels sooner than you think.
– Catrin Laudon, Head of Academy Business
Academic Work
Academic Work helps companies discover their current talent needs. Then, we train candidates with learning capabilities, motivation, and the right kind of competences to become masters in fulfilling those needs.