CEOs cite talent recruitment as major concern

Central Virginia CEOs say recruiting and keeping talent is a big concern, according to a recently released survey.

The second quarter 2014 CEO Economic Outlook survey by the University of Richmond’s Robins School of Business and the Virginia Council of CEOs found that companies are particularly concerned about finding people for sales, marketing and information technology.

The survey interviewed the chief executives of 87 small and midsized companies.

Seventy percent of respondents said staffing is a significant issue. Finding, recruiting and retaining sales talent was identified as a significant challenge by 25.3 percent of CEOs.

The search for operational talent was cited as a challenge by 16.1 percent of respondents, while 14.9 percent cited marketing talent as an issue. The other categories of talent noted as challenges by more than 10 percent of respondents were engineering, information technology and general management.

If their talent concerns were resolved, more than half of the CEOs (51.7 percent) expected growth of 11 percent or more. In fact, 17.2 percent of CEOs expected revenue growth of more than 20 percent if they could solve their staffing issues.

The median annual revenue for CEOs responding was $3.1 million. The companies had a median workforce of 20 employees.