Figure 2: Misalignment between corporate talent management and individual talents
From experiences articulated by high potentials, corporate talent is not viewed as a list of attributes (hard or soft), but instead depends on how an individual is perceived to perform on the job or in the workplace, which brings into play issues of how the performance is staged where senior staff are looking for clues or evidence of a certain personality, character, disposition, or mindset, that reveals more than functional performance. As one Singaporebased respondent from the pharmaceutical sector says of the oft-cited presentation skills: Presentation is a form of perception. A lot of time you don’t get to perform first. You get to form perception first. (Career Journey Respondent, Pharmaceutical, Singapore) A career journey respondent from the professional services industry expressed similar sentiments: A person might be good at their job but they are not good at reporting it. So maybe they are really good at doing it but they don't know how to showcase their work…If you don't know how to show to your bosses that you have done something to contribute to the organisation, then you are probably not so talented. (Career Journey Respondent, Professional Services, Singapore) The articulation of the importance of impression management by many career journey respondents is corroborated by the following candid reflection by a regional supply chain director in the pharmaceutical industry: Unfortunately, a lot of times, talents are identified because the senior management observed certain colleagues in the very short window of time through certain presentations that they are doing. And they decided that hey, this is a talent that we want to pursue. And that is maybe just 5 percent of the time that they saw of the person's entire time with a company. It can be extremely biased. (Regional Supply Chain Director, Pharmaceutical, Singapore) Given that the ‘War for Talent’ model is typically justified to give high potential candidates space to drive change, this also seems far removed from the experiences of those interviewed. Many career journey narratives indicate that working in TNCs is “more or less executing the
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