The War for Talent in Romania
 |
Septembrie 2008 |
 |
RADU FURNICĂ - President
LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT SOLUTIONS Ltd. |
Adresa
Strada Alexandru Constantinescu, Nr. 47
Bucureşti, Sector 1
Telefon
+40-21-224.71.24
Website
www.kfi.ro
RADU FURNICĂ
President
LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT SOLUTIONS S.R.L.
Introduction - freedom has arrived; therefore, war has arrived
Freedom has finally arrived in what we can call the new Romanian economy, where competition transcends thenational borders and capital is abundant, due to a considerable increase in foreign direct investment. Capital dances, indeed, as Kjell Nordstrom says, and this is nowhere more visible than in countries like Romania, where it seeks fresh ideas and projects, juicy bits of business which are developed quickly, while life of technological innovation grows shorter all the time and people are willing to change jobs much more often. For Romanian professionals as well, freedom has arrived, and freedom brings an abundance of choices. Loyalty has not the same meaning anymore, or at least it does not appear to imply long term commitment, as it did not so long ago. Even if the employee does not feel unsatisfied he/she will not hesitate to ‘reward’ the employerby ‘voting’ with his/her feet and will move to the highest bidder.
On the other hand, corporations are opportunistic creatures, by definition, which is not necessarily a bad thing. But, nowadays, corporations understand in an increasingly painful way, that opportunism in as far as its most precious component is concerned – the talent they need – can be extremely damaging for its business objectives. Companies must fight for the talent they need, because talent is becoming much more difficult to find then it was the case not very long ago. No matter what the definition of the word civilization was for the last one hundred years, the word war was included in it. It does not come as a surprise then that thei ncrease in economic activity in Romania has also broughtwith it a new kind of war, a struggle to attract, grow, and retain the most talented people in this economy – a real War for Talent.
This article tries to give corporations an improved clarity over this imperative issue on their daily agenda: how to go about finding the most precious ingredient of their success inRomania – the talent they need.
What is talent, after all, and how different it is in Romania?
There are three different perspectives that one might consider relevant for the Romanian environment: the way talent is perceived by
- future employers and their advisors (people like us),
- how young professionals could be benchmarked against each other and
- how real talentsees itself.
How talent is seen by employers and executive search professionals
The most wanted type of professional has to have a complete education, including – ideally – abusiness post graduate program, as well as various trainings and development programs. No need to say, proficiency in English and one or two additional international languages is an absolute must.Then, we need consistency in professional development (function wise: i.e.constancy in finance, for example), while a broader exposure to several industries would also be very valuable (especially for the executive level). We then look at the track record of successful assignments. Next phase is the assessment of the individuals’ personal abilities in dealing with problem solving, management of people, coping with difficulties of day to day executive life, how much initiative the individual proved in the previous roles, etc. We do ask alot from a person before we accept this person in this most wanted professional elite, the talent pool.
Because we ask a lot from talented professionals, the more we ask, the more we condemn ourselves to this ever increasing scarcity in supply of such high quality professionals. Such individuals are the result of a tremendous amount of exposure to various business contexts, on top of having been put through multiple educational churning machines. Talent does not have now the meaning of ability that one is born with, but the meaning of brainpower - the ability to solve complex problems or invent new solutions. Is our modern society able to ‘deliver’ tous more such individuals? What do we need to do in order to achieve this? These are questions that will not find their answers in articles such of these, but asking them here will help the readers understand at least intuitively, where the root of the problem is, and, ultimately and more importantly, will help them realize how serious the problem is and how difficult to solve will it be for us, who have at our disposal only our limited means, in the business world.
Corporations are not supposed to develop such people, because the aim of corporation is to make profit by serving its customers, isn’t it? Or is it? Well, we are not so sure anymore… What we can say is that we have witnessed how some corporations, confronted with the absence of consistentand timely contributions from the political world, the educational system and the civic society, decided that they cannot wait to receive such support anymore because if they will do so, their businesses will be affected substantially, at their very core: the bottom line. And, the first thing they did was to devise a plan on how to deal with this new, major threat to their future by tackling it head on. From here on, the smartest corporations understand that planning ahead the corporation’s needs for talent is an activity that not only no one can avoid but that any corporation must embrace as an important, constituting part of their mainstream business strategy.
How young professionals could be benchmarked against each other
There are basically two categories of young professionals, which we can differentiate after the way each category has succeeded to use the recently obtained freedom in order to develop themselves, through education and hard work.
