The Global Drive for Talent - Clip 1: Transcript

VALERIE GERMAIN

This study came about because as a global talent management firm we have seen, increasingly, organizations become virtual. And what do I mean by that? Even local organizations, whether they're U.S.-based or based in single local countries, regional organizations and global organizations with new technology, new generations of talent, new business lines, emerging markets have become increasingly virtual. And the concept of having a headquarters is largely going away, which is having a very, very interesting impact on talent.

There was a very well-known study that was done by McKinsey ten years ago about the war for talent, and we actually had recently, in Asia, a CEO mention to our CEO - the war for talent is over and talent won.
[LAUGHTER]
And the reason why talent won is because there is, as the world becomes more virtual, organizations - and many of you in this room are looking for a different kind of talent. You're looking for different skill sets in that talent. You're looking for more sophistication around technology. You're looking for people who are culturally fluent, who have been in multiple cultures already, even at the time that they graduate from college. And you're looking for a level of mobility of thinking and a level of mobility of individual that, quite honestly, wasn't in demand even five years ago.

The change in the demand for talent and what the demographics look like is phenomenally strong. It is moving so fast.

And so, we partnered with The Economist to look at a subset, 30 countries globally, and representative countries from each region across a variety of indices to be able to measure the inflow and outflow of talent and where, which countries - and in the U.S., obviously, dominated by which cities - but which countries were today the leading providers of talent and the importers and exporters of talent, and what did that look like in five years time. Just five years.

So the good news is that the U.S. ranks number one today and still ranks number one in five years' time. But the interesting component about the study is there were some pretty big surprises, and then some, if you really start to think about it, that you might expect.

Some of the surprises have to do with some of the demands that companies are placing on countries today and on talent today means that they're going to be looking in different countries than they have been in the past, and that you start to look at the mobility of talent, so certain countries who have historically not been huge exporters of talent or certain countries who've not been huge importers of talent and how that will change over the next five years. And you start to draw some conclusions about where that talent will come from.

And so, there are some very interesting outcomes as you start to think about the U.S., and particularly as you start to think about New York and the fact that New York has been a very, very well-recognized global hub of talent for years and was very, very strong at importing talent from other countries.

Today, the talent that we're importing into New York isn't necessarily staying here. There is a huge demand from emerging markets to find people who have the new skill set and take them back to their home countries. There is the huge demand for other major financial centers to find people that are trained, born and educated in the States and in to New York market to go elsewhere.

And so, one of the challenges that we have as a country, despite the fact that the talent index shows that we will remain dominant and strong, one of the challenges we have as a country is how to think about how we protect the talent that we have and how we continue to recruit talent from elsewhere and keep it.