In 1997, a groundbreaking McKinsey Study exposed the "war for talent" as a strategic business challenge and a critical driver of corporate performance. Then, when the dotcom bubble burst and the economy cooled, many assumed the war for talent was over. It's not.

How strong is your Talent Pool?

The Answer will determine your Company's long-term success

A McKinsey Study, 1997.

In 1997, McKinsey & Company coined the term the war for talent and soon realised that they had named a phenomenon that many people had been experiencing but had not fully articulated. The forces shaping this war had been brewing for sometime, then came to a head quite suddenly. Overnight, it seemed, everyone was talking about the war for talent.

The economy was burning white hot in the late 1990's and companies were scrambling to hire and retain the people they needed. Companies were offering large signing bonuses, employees were asking for raises three months after they joined, and headhunters were cornering hot recruits before they had even settled behind their desks. Many companies had hundreds of vacancies they couldn't fill, and some of the venerable bastions of talent (such as investment banks and consulting firms) were losing talent to dotcom upstarts. It was easy to see the war for talent raging in the recruiting and retention frenzy of the late 1990's.

Then the dotcom bubble burst, the NASDAQ crumbled, and fears of a recession spread. As the economy cooled off it was easy to think that the war for talent was over. But the war for talent is far from over. In fact, McKinsey asserts that it will persist for at least another two decades.

War for Talent is a Strategic Inflection Point:

Andy Grove, in his thought-provoking book, Only the Paranoid Survive, wrote that it's easy to miss the potential of new technologies, the impact of new competition, and the shifting power of customers and suppliers ~ critical points in time that Grove called strategic inflection points. We believe the war for talent is a similar strategic inflection point. It rose quietly from the ashes of the Industrial Age in the 1980s, jumped into the headlines in the 1990s, and will continue to reshape the workplace in the decades ahead. It is an inflection point that says that talent is now a critical driver of corporate performance and that a company's ability to attract, develop, and retain talent will be a major competitive advantage far into the future. In fact, it has been that way for the last decade. Some people just didn't notice it. It seems like an easy message to understand, but many companies haven't fully grasped it.

Although the war for talent rages on many fronts, this particular book "The War for Talent" an outcome of the McKinsey study, is about the war for managerial talent. People who can lead a company, division, or function; guide a new product team; supervise a shift in an industrial plant; or manage a store with 15 or 150 associates. Managerial talent is not the only type of talent that companies need to be successful, but it is a critical one and it is at the epicenter of the war of talent.

Many companies had hundreds of vacancies they couldn't fill, and some of the venerable bastions of talent were losing talent to dotcom upstarts. It was easy to see the war for talent raging in the recruiting and retention frenzy.

>> next page

TATA INFOTECH - TOTAL SOLUTIONS TOTAL COMMITMENT