Know-how, innovation and experience constitute the main advantages that organizations can have over their competitors. The most talented employees drive these advantages.

Therefore talent management should focus on the organization’s talent: the most skilled and experienced individuals. Attracting, developing and retaining talent is fundamental to a company remaining ahead of its competition.

Caroline Mancioppi, Author

Many studies* are forecasting a shortage of talents for the near future. One of the main reasons is the demographical trend happening in the developed countries. The World Economic Forum has researched this in depth: „To sustain economical growth, by 2030 the United States will need to add more than 25 million workers and Europe will need to add more than 24 million employees… almost all industries and countries will require sizeable increases in the percentages of highly educated people in their workforces“**.

As a consequence talent management is becoming a growing concern for HR professionals. A holistic approach to talent management should target on finding and attracting the best talent in the market with a superior talent acquisition tool kit: talent sourcing, employer branding, headhunting, talent pools, referrals etc (a talent acquisition strategy can be seen as an answer to the „War for Talents“), on the other side, it needs a talent strategy around training and development to train, coach and mentor existing talent (referred to as „Make talents, not War“).

In reality both strategies have to go hand in hand. You cannot have one without the other. If you are able to attract good talent, but cannot retain it your recruitment will be like a hamster on a treadmill. And if you spend a lot of money on training and development but are not able to attract the right talent your talent management strategy will not blossom and will suffer.

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*Some of the studies on Talent Gap are:

• „Global Talent Risk“ World Economic Forum survey 2011,
• „Creating People Value 2011“ The Boston Consulting Group
• „Employing the next generation“ Future Work Forum

** Global Talent Risk

• Seven Responses, by the WEF in collaboration with the Boston Consulting Group