“We need to understand what makes them mad, sad, and glad”
Challenges of Talent Acquisition and Retention in an era of Brain Drain
BY MIKE NXELE
Human Capacity Building Officer, ITU
ABSTRACT
This paper looks at the issues and challenges facing organizations and countries with regard to talent and its management, a topic which is particularly relevant at time when the world is facing a `talent crunch’. The document pays particular attention to the acquisition and retention of talent, and whilst it maintains a telecommunications bias, the paper adopts a global sector perspective, given the cross-cutting nature of the talent shortage, and the common behavior and response patterns of organizations and nations to this crisis. This paper recognizes the particular vulnerability of developing countries in the global competition for talent and the attendant dangers of brain drain on the economies of these countries. Brain drain is here defined as the permanent loss of skilled manpower to other countries. However, the paper draws on evidence from the rapidly growing economies of China and India on how there can be a reversal of the brain drain, or even a brain gain. Based on this evidence, the paper seeks to provide some comfort to any sense of fatalism among the developing countries towards the perceived inevitability of the brain drain. It is within the reach of organizations and nations to address the brain drain, by adopting a mix of deliberate policy interventions at national level and new talent management practices at organizational level in order to attract and retain talent at a time it is