According to the Economist Magazine, Winston Churchill said, "the empires of the future will be empire’s of the mind." And so begins the new Economist Survey of Talent, an international poll of senior human resources managers. Here’s a snippet of what they had to say:
- 75 percent said that attracting and retaining talent was their number one priority.
- 62 percent worried about company-wide talent shortages.
The Corporate Executive Board also surveyed some 4,000 hiring managers in more than 30 companies:
- Average quality of candidates had declined by 10% since 2004
- Average time to fill a vacancy had increased from 37 days to 51 days.
- More than one-third of the managers said that they had hired below-average candidates just to fill a position quickly.
To make matters worse, one in three employees had recently been approached by another firm hoping to lure them away.