Has America run out of talent?

“America has run out of talent”, stated Annmarie Neal, VP of Talent at Cisco at the 2007 CEO Workforce Summit in Phoenix on April 10, 2007. Speaking on a panel of leaders from the high tech, healthcare, employment and retail industries, she lamented that Cisco has to once again outsource to India to find talented engineers, software developers and other IT professionals.

While her comments were made in the context of a discussion on workforce development issues that included demographic trends that foresee continued talent shortages in Phoenix and the country as a whole, I took strong exception to her exaggerated statement of doom and gloom. My hand shot up when the Q & A session started, and I took the opportunity to not ask a question but to express my concern that we have mismanaged the great resources of talent that we already have in the USA. This conference was all about how private enterprise, government, labor and educational institutions can work together to solve workforce problems. I made the point that we need to take the creativity that the USA is known for and turn it toward the training and development of our current workforce to meet the skills and knowledge needs of all industries.

Sure we’ll need to reach out globally to fill some of the gap, but let’s not give up on the multitude of Americans ready and willing to be retrained and revitalized to provide the productivity necessary for U.S. industries to compete. Americans young and old can learn cutting edge skills and develop the knowledge bases necessary to contribute to companies’ success. All that is needed are incentives to bring about the appropriate training and development programs, and this is where the partnership among companies, government, labor and educational institutions comes in to drive the process.

So let’s stop the doom and gloom talk and develop the strategic initiatives necessary to take on the talent challenge. We’re the country known for its innovation; it’s time to put our considerable energy and resourcefulness to work to solve our workforce challenges. Let’s partner effectively and invest in America’s future!