Who's Winning the War for Talent?

Let's face it, globalization is not something you can hold back, despite what some policy makers might argue. Brexit non-withstanding, the beat goes on with the migration of talent.

#FutureRunDown

Until artificial intelligence makes some paradigm shift towards being able to self-learn and self-replicate (2040s), the best we got on the planet is old-fashioned talent, human capital, the leaders of the innovation of tomorrow. Let's just put it frankly:

The average software developer in Silicon valley is 28 years old. Or as

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg famously said back in 2007 at Stanford: "Young people are just smarter."

So the war for talent is real. Countries who want to be progressive destinations for Millennials and GenZ, need to think, plan and implement around it and learn how to:

1. Produce Talent
2. Attract Talent
3. Retain Talented young people.

While there's something special about countries like Singapore, Luxembourg and Switzerland for having high GTCIs (global talent competitiveness index scores), the global war for talent has just begun for the transhumanist age.

What's a Country to Do?

1. Openness: being open to trade, investment, immigration, new ideas, globalization while leveraging HR means is helpful to a country's GTCI.
2. Talent growth: developing and attracting talent are equally important. Talented young people can help your economy become more fiscally stable. Developing ties with a countries that will scale (like Canada is with China for instance), is an ideal strategy. For China, sending their elites abroad to study is also great for the ROI they bring when they return.
3. Employability Matching: Countries must match actual needs of the economy in real-time with immigration meanwhile considering if an immigrant is at high-risk for unemployment. On the flip side high skilled workers, talent, must also consider the right-fit with the environment. Meeting the needs of the actual national economy and planning for its future in target industries must be a key consideration.
4. Startup & Entrepreneurship education: As traditional kinds of education are less useful and viable in the gig and innovation economy, developing startup hubs and an entrepreneurship network is key for both developing and attracting talent. Vocational skills in the future must be agile, allowing youth to pivot and keep learning as we enter the next phase of the information economy. This is already the reality many millennials live in, as entrepreneurs, freelancers and life-hacking their way to seeking multiple streams of income. Alternatively career hopping for educational reasons, and ultimately seeking the right cultural fit, is the new trend.

Who is Winning the War for Talent

While all countries want to future proof their talent pipelines, not all countries are created equally yet. There's still a great divide.

The "desirable" destinations quite unsurprisingly, result in a high GTCI score for high-income countries that typically top the list of global economies. In 2016, this is still skewed to western nations.

In some ways the war for talent has never been stronger or more pressing, with millions of young people unemployed (e.g. see youth unemployment stats in Europe) or not even possessing the skills to flourish (e.g. see skills gap in the U.S.) in our rapidly shifting economies.

Innovation Fuels Migration

On any given day, millions of workers cross national borders in search of better conditions and new challenges, while the best talent are hand-picked by the top companies (and countries) with policies in place to attract and retain them.

With corporate entities increasingly having a multi-national presence, someone who grew up in California might as easily work in Singapore, while someone who grew up in Shanghai, might transfer to Toronto.

Race for Talent before Automation Economy Arrives

As technology development moves forward unabashedly, and the potential of many workers losing their jobs via automation, smarter machine-learning & software, driverless cars and advanced robots arrives, the talent debate will increase in importance.

Top Countries Winning the War for Talent

According to the Wall Street Journal, 4 countries dominate the war for talent currently in 2016.

1. The U.S.
2. U.K
3. Canada
4. Australia

Importantly:

New World Bank research shows women outnumber men for the first time in the global army of highly skilled migrant workers.

Welcome to the Era of Cyberhacking and Talent Theft

According to New World Bank research, there is a serious brain-drain of talent from developing countries to the developed world.

In an age where we openly acknowledge cyber hacking of corporate assets as normal and par for the course (though certainly not desirable), we don't talk about the war for talent enough.

The unfair global distribution of talent is not new, but it is important and increasingly skewed with resources that the best and brightest bring substantially. While it's hard to estimate the ROI of the top 1% of talent, it is considerable to the top companies in the world like Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple.

Equality Matters to Millennials

Migration of skilled workers scales economic inequality between countries even further, making the landscape of global talent mobility an issue of rising importance.

In western countries as well, the rising wealth-gap and lack of affordability in many urban centers is a major issue for Millennials. With a harsher world economy, economic inequality has become a major concern for young people.

The new data on global talent points to the challenges of the brain drain for non-English-speaking and developing countries.

Highly skilled immigrants boost innovation and productivity, since more bright minds are pursuing innovative work.

Millennial Global Citizens

The high-skilled members of the youth of this or the next generation, appear less tied to any particular country or national identity, but instead are pragmatic opportunists with connections that are global in nature.

The number of highly skilled female immigrants in the OECD rose 150% to 14.4 million between 1990 and 2010.

The future does not belong to any particular country that is a "super-power" in the archaic sense, but to those companies best able to innovate, pivot and attract and leverage talent.

Millennial Women as the Bridge to the Future

If I happen to be a skilled millennial woman in place where gender inequalities and labor market challenges are harsher, who would I be not to move to places where these factors are more favorable?

In this sense, the development of talent for the future, losing highly educated open-minded young women is possibly losing the greatest talent you possess. For its the mothers who have the most impact on the development of things like: children, level of civility in society, fertility rates, etc...

Talented High-Skilled Immigrants Fuel Innovation

• 75% of the total OECD highly skilled workforce in 2010 lived in the four main Anglo-Saxon countries.
• In the last third of the 20th century, for instance, immigrants won 31% of all Nobel prizes—of whom more than half of these were at U.S. institutions.

What do you think about the war for talent? Are Millennials more global citizens then patriots? Will the brain drain in Asia to the West continue indefinitely?