At the working session on the National Strategy on attracting, using and developing talents on the morning of August 24, General Secretary and President To Lam emphasized the requirement to boldly study and propose removing barriers in the appointment of management titles for talents.
For a long time, from the Central to local levels, the common form of attracting talent is still salary, housing, working environment or special preferential policies.
Those things are very necessary, but still not enough.
Talents are most valuable when their abilities are used in the right place and at the right time. Giving opportunities is not necessarily only understood as appointing management positions, but more importantly, assigning commensurate tasks, creating conditions for capable people to create the highest value.
So a talented person, attracted to locality A, unit B, but not assigned a commensurate job, does not have enough decision-making power, or has to spend many years going through the steps of seniority and position to have the opportunity to develop their abilities, cannot be called valuing talent.
A young scientist with the ability to lead research needs to be evaluated by capacity and professional results, instead of just depending on age or working time. If the mechanism still makes capable people wait too long due to formal conditions, then the goal of valuing talent will be difficult to achieve.
Similarly, a technology expert with the ability to manage a large project, but having to go through many positions in turn just to complete a procedural roadmap, is a waste of brainpower.
However, to use the right talents, first of all, it is necessary to change the way talents are identified.
As General Secretary and President To Lam said, talent must be identified and evaluated mainly by qualities, practical capacity, creative thinking, specific products, achievements, professional prestige and contribution value; do not unify talent with people with high degrees, academic titles, management positions or seniority.
This change in approach is very important, because qualifications can reflect the training process, seniority reflects working time, but ultimately competence must be proven by what a person actually does.
Of course, removing barriers does not mean removing standards or creating a path of uncontrolled special appointments.
Conversely, the more opportunities are opened for talented people, the clearer and more public the criteria for identification, selection and evaluation must be.
Factors such as training level and work experience are still necessary bases, but should not be the highest criteria for assessing capacity and level of contribution.
Who is a talent, based on what to determine, who is responsible for selecting and how the work results are measured must have a specific answer.
Empowering talents also needs to be linked to a mechanism of evaluating with specific results. Opportunities are only meaningful when accompanied by responsibility.
We are aiming to compete with the world through science, technology, innovation and new economic sectors, so there is even less reason for capable people to spend too much time waiting for formal conditions to be assigned big tasks.
Valuing talent is when you have found a talented person, you must dare to give them opportunities to do things worthy of their talent.
