Getting the right people into your company is only part of the challenge in today's labor market, according to Charley Hale, president of flow control products distributor FCX Performance. "Certainly it's getting tighter and more challenging," Hale says in this month's 7 Minutes With podcast. "And that certainly causes us to think very prominently about the retention, as well as the attraction of good employees."

The key is balancing the two: getting good people who have an interest in being part of the distribution industry and providing them with the opportunities that make them want to stay.

To help meet that challenge, FCX launched the Sales and Leadership Training, or SALT, program to develop management candidates recruited from university industrial distribution programs, such as those at Texas A&M University or the University of Nebraska at Kearney.

"They've got a bent and an understanding of what we do, and they've chosen that as their career," Hale says. "The combination of our recruiting resources as well as the training program allows us to bring these people on board and get them up to speed much more quickly than we ever could have done that in the past."

Currently the SALT program has eight management candidates, but the distributor expects to add another six during the spring recruiting season.

Click on the video below to hear more from Hale on the industry's outlook and where he sees opportunity in 2013.