Fueling the Talent Engine

In their humble entrepreneurial beginnings Yahoo! founders had employees who performed various job functions. As Yahoo! grew, jobs became more specialized and the company transitioned to employees with more vertical expertise. Today Yahoo! employs many people who are highly specialized and highly regarded people. Sue Decker who is the Chief Financial Officer for Yahoo! stated that, "there people are getting to work with stars in their areas of expertise", Decker also stated that, "Yahoo! has some of the nation's best leaders in all functional areas on their staff".

I experienced this firsthand last year when I was completing my masters in Public Administration. May team and I were given the task of starting our own non-profit organization. We started with three board members and a few volunteers on staff. We quickly realized while during this project that we would be responsible for performing a lot of the various job functions. Even though we were the board members and volunteers, we understood also that we also doubled as the office manager, HR Director Accountant, accounts receivable, administrative assistant, grant writer, and the PR Administrator. We had to do this in the beginning so that we would be able to recruit a staff of people who were experts in their fields. As our project began to grow many of the people we hired transitioned into their specific job functions. The original three founders were also able to transition into their roles as Executive Director, HR Director, and PR Director. We were also able to hire more talented people to be on the board of directors.

If a company has the desire to be the best in their field, they must seek out the best talent out there. They must seek in universities, colleges, military, competitors, and globally for the best talent in their area of expertise. Talent has to be a company's number one priority, by attracting it, retaining it and developing it. Many companies fail because they refuse to attract the best in their field of study, so they find themselves looking for that talent at different stage, but Yahoo! recognized this in the beginning. This was done through recognizing, nurturing and supporting the talent they recruit on early in the beginning. Organizations know that they must have the best talent in order to succeed in the highly competitive and increasingly complex global economy. Organizations need to also be aware ware that they must manage talent as a critical resource to achieving the best possible results by hiring, developing, and retained talented people. For organizations that do not do this in the beginning, they will lose their most talented employees to their competitors. But with the current economic downturn many companies are experiencing problems in having the money available in their budget to recruit the best talent out there that will help them in taking their