Organizations have always looked to employ the people who were thought to be the most suitable for the vacancy. They have recognised the important of the acquisition of talented individuals. In 1997, Mckinsey & Company coined the term of ‘war for talent’ as the name for their research on talent management practices and beliefs.

They reviewed the procedures companies in US were adopting on recruiting the best performing employees and they found that organizations were taking the aggressive competition for talented people. Employing the best talent had been realized to the competitive advantage of organizations. Managing the talent effectively was a challenge.

In some research, talent management is defined as the additional management process and opportunities that are used to made available to people in the organization who are considered to be talent. Ashton and Morton see that talent management is a strategic and holistic approach to both HR and business planning or a new route to organization effectiveness.

It can improve the people who own the performance and potential and are able to make a measurable change to the organization now and in future. Many organizations have put the talent management consist with business strategy. Thus, Ashton and Morton deem that the definition of talent management would be changed as the organization’s strategic priority changes.

And the meaning of talent can be different between organizations or when an organization in different periods. Most of organizations think the talent, which is close to the definition of Ashton and Morton above, is referred to the individual with high performance and high potential. For other organization talent is seen to as a critical skills set which is hard to obtain in the labour market.

Talent management does not only just mean to attract people with high potential, developing, managing and retaining these individuals as part of the organization’s strategy for talent is also significant. Therefore, the organization needs to pay attention to the four areas of talent management: attracting, developing, managing and evaluate talent.

The ability to attract external talent depends on how the individual’s view for the organization or the industry it operates in and whether he or she shares the value of that organization. Talent management should be linked to other learning and development initiatives.

The active step, plan and activity are necessary to retain and engage talent required for the future health of the organization. In the last area, the evaluation of talent management is difficult, but it is also important to ensure that the investment on talent is meeting organizational needs.