Interesting perspective from a BBC podcast
This is a fascinating podcast from the BBC’s Analysis programme. We all look for talent when recruiting and we look to develop talent in our people. But does talent exist? This programme explores the concept of talent and includes some excellent references and sources.
Wikipedia definition:
A talent is a group of aptitudes useful for some activities; talents may refer to aptitudes themselves.
It is the skill that someone naturally has to do something that is hard. It is an ability that someone is born with. People say they are “born with a talent”. It is a high degree of ability or of aptitude. Someone who has talent is able to do something without trying as hard as someone who does not have a talent. Someone who has talent is called talented.
Excerpt from BBC website:
When hiring people, is the concept of talent so ill-defined as to be useless? Entrepreneur and author Margaret Heffernan thinks so and explores what characteristics recruiters might want to look for instead.She argues that we need something new, as good grades and top degrees have proved no guarantee of high performance in the workplace. She talks to the recent head of HR (or “people operations”) at Google, the pioneer of the concept of a “growth mindset”, and the academic who found people’s intelligence increased over the course of the 20th century. She also hears about other measures like “grit”, “cultural fit” and how to interview people to find the candidate who is best for the job and the company, rather than the one you like.
Producer: Arlene Gregorius.
Click on the link below to go to the bbc website Analysis programme page.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08dnkh8
or go to the bbc download page