Targeting Talent: The War for Talent Rages On—and HR Consulting Needs Skilled Soldiers

Twenty years ago, McKinsey fired a disruptive piece of thought leadership across the bow of traditional human resources (HR) consulting firms. The white paper’s first subhead —“There is a war for talent, and it will intensify”—was prophetic in more ways than the McKinsey co-authors probably imagined as they examined the talent management processes of 77 large U.S companies in the late 1990s.