Struggling to attract Talent

This morning I read an article on mail and guardian newspaper that says South Africa is struggling to attract talent despite our flexible labour markets and decent foreign direct investments inflows, I question where our South African youth is and what they are doing with their lives.

All of you are well-off than the average youngster on the streets because you are at tertiary institutions busy being educated – but it’s said that talent is lacking. I look at their explanation of talent ‘people with skills, education and competency’, then it strikes me that actually if that’s talent then yes it is lacking especially skills and competence, let me tell you why;

Skills - communication, presentation through PowerPoint and verbally, business etiquette, selling, etc. . .
Competence – the ability to perform the above mentioned skills with minimal training and/or lack of supervision in an excellent manner in order to secure a ‘deal’.

. . . are what companies are looking for in an individual who are about to entered a job market and you will agree with me that there is no subject called ‘skills acquiring’ or ‘competency developing’ in your curricular but you still have to acquire them – and its not a choice if want to be employed.

I joined AIESEC because I wanted to see the world, it retained me because I realized that there is a lot I still needed to learn from thinking of an idea – putting it on paper – turning it into a project and seeing it through, and I got an opportunity of meeting spectacular people across the world.

The reason I write this email is that there has always been a continuous non-seriousness of members in running their operations, being unable to identify and exploit opportunities in an efficient, effective, productive way.
In my roles I have come across a member being invited to come to a conference to come and speak with the CSI manager of Cadbury Schweppes in South Africa about their projects – and a response I got was ‘no thanks’, another was invited for a strategic meeting impacting the national operations and the response received was ‘I’m afraid of joburg’.

In fortune magazine’s (Oct 8,2007/no 17) top companies for leaders:

Proctor and Gamble needs to have people in touch or have social intelligence.
Nokia (The number 1 ranking of the 20 best companies for leadership in Europe) wants people who will connect plans for their personal development.
Hindustan Unilever helps attract and nurture leaders.
BBVA (spain’s 2nd largest bank) identifies managers who’s style is participatory and not coercive.
Infosys Technologies expects members to debate discuss and critique.

If our current leaders still struggle to display qualities of skills, competency, intelligence that we say we’re developing – it means there is a problem!!!

That is why I think the terms Talent Management and Talent Development should be closely looked, in my opinion chapters need to seriously do talent development from recruitment stage especially now that chapters have been engaged in pocket recruitment. People who come in to the organisation should display emotional intelligence, willingness to learn through integration, preparation to solve problems – in that way the People development responsible can place the right people in the right jobs, coach the individuals, mentor, coach and empower.
Chapters don’t have talent to manage as yet.