Mapping Global Talent: Essays and Insights - Heidrick & Struggles

employee turnover, which it attributes in part to its on-
site day care center. The company also has around five
employees who focus full-time on helping employees
deal with the needs of their ageing parents.
The Global Talent Index reveals that the tech sector
will continue to recruit primarily from the US over the
next several years as it retains its dominance in terms
of the quality of universities and business schools –
the key factor in developing new talent in these fields.
The US will be followed by the UK and Sweden in
Europe. Saudi Arabia will hold a similar position in
the Middle East.
The countries to watch in terms of an improving
overall quality for nurturing talent are Australia and
South Korea, as well as China, which will leap eight
places to rank 14th by 2012. A declining country in this
category is Russia, which is predicted to sink from 6th
place to 11th over the next five years primarily due to
the gradual erosion of its education system since the
collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. This trend will not
be countered significantly by the rising investment the
Russian government is putting into higher education as
it will take more than five years for these improvements
to have a significant effect on the Russian ability to
nurture talent.
The ten countries with the greatest proclivity for
attracting talent (assessing the technical skills of the
work force, personal disposable income, employment
growth and GDP data) will remain largely unchanged
over the next five years, with North America and
Europe retaining their overall dominance. France
will take over the number two spot currently held by
Sweden, which will slip to 7th place. This leap can be
attributed in part to Nicolas Sarkozy’s new government
and his modernising of France’s traditional working
practice restrictions.
On demographics, China and India rank first and
second place respectively. We can predict that these
two countries will yield an increasing number of
talented graduates in the hi-tech sector given their
strong tradition of engineering and science at the
university level. This, plus the increased presence of
foreign multinationals in China, has helped boost the
country up the overall ranking from 8th place in 2007
to 6th place in 2012. India holds firm at 10th overall,
aided by its gradual improvement in the quality of its
environment to nurture talent, the mobility of its labor
and relative openness of its labor market.
“Even the most
traditional nontechnical
companies
will need to upgrade
to Web 2.0 online
environments
and the latest hitech
equipment in
order to maintain
productivity and
competitiveness.”
Global Talent Index, developed in co-operation with the Economist Intelligence Unit 11