The capacity to attract skilled people from abroad, hold the skilled people already here and win the international contest for talent.
The Capability Development Index tracks the events that move a capability — operational use, technical breakthroughs, procurement decisions and the industrial base behind them — and places each on the record with the date it happened.
Recent developments cover the current period. Historical developments are the inflection points that produced Talent Attraction & Retention as it stands today.
Hankin's phrase named the increasingly competitive landscape for recruiting and retaining talented employees. It gave organisations and governments a shared vocabulary for treating talent as a contested, scarce resource rather than a routine personnel matter.
The book popularised the concept beyond consulting circles, arguing that competitive advantage rested not on superior human resources processes but on a mindset placing talent at the centre of organisational success. It became the standard reference for talent attraction and retention strategy.
A 2006 article referencing the Michaels book observed that firms could not define talent, let alone manage it. The critique highlighted the conceptual weakness underlying talent attraction and retention practice.
During the economic downturn, financially sound firms raided employers under hardship, as when JP Morgan was raided by a European firm in March 2009. This showed that the contest for talent intensifies rather than abates in a recession.
The 2016 study found that ministries' capacity to attract and retain talent was among the most serious and most overlooked digital threats governments faced. It framed public sector talent competition as a matter of state capability rather than mere administration.
Vacancies per unemployed worker stood at 1.2 in the fourth quarter of 2019 and reached 1.5 two years later. The shift documented how post-pandemic conditions sharpened an already tight competition for skilled workers.