As I meet senior Management teams across the globe to understand their leadership hire requirements, Succession planning strategies, Organizational growth & expansion plans, the most common axiom referred to during my conversation is, “Talent Shortage” !!!

What exactly are they referring to? Does it mean they are unable to find qualified candidates for a position regardless of the wages being offered or, as HR normally likes to put it, “Cannot find a skilled employee at a lower wage?”

‘Talent’, as we refer back to the dictionary, is a ‘special ability that allows someone to do something well enough to achieve success, in that task’.

Now, when you juxtapose the meaning to the corporate woes of ‘Talent Shortage’, it only means ‘not being able to find a candidate with a special ability to complete an organization task, successfully’.

Now, simple English that it may sound, to actually conclude that all candidates that were interviewed for the job, were ‘short on talent’, requires a high degree of Talent amongst all the members of the Interview Board!!!. Does that really exist in your organization???

• Is every job/task to be done in your organization clearly defined in terms of the end result to be achieved
• Is the success parameter of achieving the end result clearly laid down
• Are the special abilities for achieving the end result in a more cost-beneficial manner transparently identified?
• Is the interview board adequately qualified enough to understand the ‘special ability’ for each task, and have a fool-proof manner to test candidates on those ‘special abilities’?

I believe ‘talent identification’ is directly proportional to the ‘talent identifier’. An organization that invests in a robust Recruitment team and Interview boards, should in all probability, should never have to suffer a ‘Talent shortage’ syndrome!!!

 It certainly takes Talent to find Talent.!

Are organizations being able to nurture talent, once found, perhaps should be a larger debate!!!