Product Description

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 dot-com bubble burst and the economy cooled, many assumed the war for talent was over. It's not.

Now the authors of the original study reveal that, because of enduring economic and social forces, the war for talent will persist for the next two decades.

McKinsey & Company consultants Ed Michaels, Helen Handfield-Jones, and Beth Axelrod argue that winning the war for leadership talent is about much more than frenzied recruiting tactics. It's about the timeless principles of attracting, developing, and retaining highly talented managers-applied in bold new ways. And it's about recognizing the strategic importance of human capital because of the enormous value that better talent creates.

Fortified by five years of in-depth research on how companies manage leadership talent-including surveys of 13,000 executives at more than 120 companies and case studies of 27 leading companies-the authors propose a fundamentally new approach to talent management.

They describe how to:

* Create a winning EVP (employee value proposition) that will make your company uniquely attractive to talent

* Move beyond recruiting hype to build a long-term recruiting strategy

* Use job experiences, coaching, and mentoring to cultivate the potential in managers

* Strengthen your talent pool by investing in A players, developing B players, and acting decisively on C players

Central to this approach is a pervasive talent mindset-a deep conviction shared by leaders throughout the company that competitive advantage comes from having better talent at all levels.

Using practical examples from companies such as GE, The Home Depot, PerkinElmer, Amgen, and Enron, the authors outline five imperatives that every leader-from CEO to unit manager-must act on to build a stronger talent pool.

Written by recognized authorities on the topic, this is the definitive strategic guide on how to win the war for talent.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #184525 in Books
• Published on: 2001-09-17
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 200 pages

From Amazon.com
Talent, as defined by Ed Michaels, Helen Handfield-Jones, and Beth Axelrod, is shorthand for a key employee who possesses "a sharp strategic mind, leadership ability, communications skills, the ability to attract and inspire people, entrepreneurial instincts, functional skills, and the ability to deliver results." It's also, they contend in The War for Talent, an overarching personnel characteristic that companies of all kinds will require throughout their organizations in order to survive the competitive recruiting era that we appear to be entering. Michaels, Handfield-Jones, and Axelrod, authors of a 1997 McKinsey Quarterly article that uncovered a definitive connection between top performers and superior corporate achievement, spent the intervening years studying 13,000 executives in 27 companies to identify the programs and behaviors that help today's foremost firms attract and retain the best kinds of employees. The authors outline five common "imperatives" that they found these companies employed to strengthen their talent pools ("Embrace a Talent Mindset," "Craft a Winning Employee Value Proposition," "Rebuild Your Recruiting Strategy," "Weave Development into Your Organization," and "Differentiate and Affirm Your People") and construct a practical framework for making it happen in your company. --Howard Rothman

From Publishers Weekly
The consulting firm McKinsey & Co. coined the phrase "War for Talent" several years ago when its surveys revealed a diminishing talent pool. The basic McKinsey principle asserts that employers must adopt innovative recruitment techniques, and the authors offer many examples from companies like the Limited, Enron and Amgen. Among their suggestions: offer mentoring programs; encourage employees to switch departments; and with senior hires, look for "leadership style and values" consistent with "the company's culture." Employers will find this book useful if somewhat dry. McKinsey's name along with extensive publicity will help initial sales, but the boilerplate content may not maintain them.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
In 1997 and 2000, Michaels, Helen Handfield-Jones, and Beth Axelrod, from McKinsey & Company consulting firm, surveyed CEOs, executives, and managers at large and midsize companies headquartered in the U.S. Winning the war for talent is the theme of their book, and the authors discovered that talent mindset was the key to winning the war. As Kevin Sharer, a participant in the survey and currently CEO of Amgen, said, "I told my leaders that if they believed that people are the responsibility of HR, they've totally missed the point." Jobs are being cut at corporations around the U.S., but the authors predict a shortage of talented, qualified managers as more people reach retirement age or choose to retire early. They suggest management needs to play more of a role in the process of attracting talented managers and structuring the organizational policies and practices to create a winning employee-value environment, encourage development, facilitate mentoring and coaching, and attract talent. This book provides worthwhile information for many levels of managers to review and implement. Eileen Hardy
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

The War For Talent Is About to Begin In Earnest
The War for Talent is a great book for the leaders of an organization to read. Why? They are the ones who can affect the culture of the organization. Most workers, even A Players, do not have the power to drive cultural change.

As a contract recruiter (www.recruiterguy.com), when I go into a company for the first time, I interview the managers and ask them, in their view, "Why would a top performer want to work for this company, in this position, for you?" As the competition for talent begins to gain steam over the next few months, companies who do a better job of addressing the needs of the Gen X'ers will find themselves in the enviable position of attracting the replacements to the Baby Boomers who are retiring or otherwise leaving the workplace. Sure there is still a surplus of workers as a result of the recession. However, companies who do not have a recruitment strategy will soon find themselves spending much more money to attract the best talent.

In The War For Talent, the authors used specific examples of companies who had either a recruiting or attrition problem and then solved it by improving their Employee Value Proposition (EVP). For instance, SunTrust had a problem where they were losing 46% of their branch employees in their Publix supermarket branches in Georgia and 55% of their high performers. The book discusses the steps they took to dramatically lower their attrition rate in a relatively short time.

Unfortunately for the book, it came out just as Enron was spinning into the ground. Therefore, some people have focused more on the Enron EVP and other qualities and possibly not enough on the other companies' qualities. Enron, while it was growing, appealed to a specific group of people who were not afraid to take what now appears to be excessive risks. There are many examples of other companies with other EVP's who have survived and possibly thrived during this recession. They were able to attract and retain the high performers, who generally tend to be more strategic and less tactical than their counterparts.

Just as Brad Smart in his book "Topgrading" focuses on recruiting, developing and mentoring the A Players, the authors of The War For Talent stress the importance of the A players in a company. It is surprising that "The Peter Principle" came out in 1969 and we are still discussing the concept but in different terms.

The War For Talent concepts should be discussed from the boardroom to your hiring managers. Your leaders need to embrace a talent mindset (title of a chapter in the book), develop a winning differentiation for your company, and develop recruiters who have the ability to attract A Players.

Read this book if you want to win "The War For Talent." .........

A worthwhile read
Easy reading, entertaining, interesting and informative. Light on details but a very good general overview of the topic.

Conceptually excellent. The value is in how you implement the recommendations - which is where you will find this book wanting.

If you get nothing else out of this book, the quote from Dee Hock (founder of Visa) will make it worth buying:

"Hire and promote first on the basis of integrity; second motivation; third capacity; fourth understanding; fifth knowledge; and last and least, experience.

Without integrity, motivation is dangerous; without motivation, capacity is impotent; without capacity, understanding is limited; without understanding, knowledge is meaningless; without knowledge, experience is blind."

Good theory but doesn't work in the real world.
This book is a good theory and in an ideal world it would all work out that way: the highly talented and highly skilled would get the promotions, good jobs, and plum assisgnments. But unfortunately, more often than not, the pie isn't divided so nicely. There are often other reasons, not work/talent related, that a person gets a promotion or a job. The classic example is the boss' son getting handed a top job in a company, which still happens today. Also how do you fit Affirmative Action into the equation? AA is not based upon talents, only gender & race. Personally I wish more management would read this book and use the basic idea but it probably won't happen. Companies keep talking about "needing good talent" but they don't walk the walk.