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Talent acquisition in Russian industrial and knowledge intensive companies
The past decade has seen rapid advances in the field of talent management in emerging markets. Despite talent management being a new term in the vocabulary business in this region, the vast majority of leading local-owned firms and MNCs implement talent management programs. However, much uncertainty still exists about how talents are attracted and selected in various industries in emerging markets. This paper compares talent acquisition practices of different talent categories in two large groups of companies in Russia: industrial and knowledge-intensive ones. A qualitative approach was chosen to conduct this exploratory study. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews with 20 HR-experts from 13 industries from both MNCs and Russian-owned companies. Findings from the study show that knowledge-intensive companies use successfully both internal and external talent pools, while the vast majority of industrial firms put the highest priority on internal talent pools. We also introduce three types of selection systems: systems focusing on a single set of practices; systems with differentiated selection practices and systems with individual set of practices for each position. Interestingly, industrial companies tend to apply single set of selection practices to all talent categories, while knowledge-intensive firms select talents using differentiated practices or individual set of practices. Overall, this study sheds new light on talent acquisition practices applied in industrial and knowledge-intensive companies.