How can cities and regions co-operate on attracting and retaining talent instead of competing with each other? Together with Nordic capitals, Montreal, Cork, Eindhoven, The Hague, Gothenburg, Malmö, Lund and many more, we explored future talent collaboration with over 30 practitioners.

This took part at the of November 2018 at our annual Talent Attraction Management for Cities and Regions training session. Download the programme.

What’s at stake. The global competition for talent is rapidly intensifying. Not only do employers need to step up efforts to attract and retain international talent, but cities, regions and countries are now entering this competition as well.

More and more European locations are now taking active steps to enhance their attractiveness to skilled workforce, creative talent and entrepreneurs – but what are the best strategies and tools for attracting talent, now and in the future?

Participants benefitted from this management training programme by learning from a combination of hands-on, inspirational case and strategy presentations, interactive discussions and experience sharing with peers and experts.

This year, we had Kajal Sanghrajka, Churchill Fellow Researcher and entrepreneur as a guest speaker. Kajal does research and writes regularly at The Transatlantic Post on all things talent (see her last post on Finland). More about Kajal.

Focus of training programme

Based on best practices from the Nordics, Europe and selected global regions, the programme covered some of the following topical issues:

• Marketing and attraction strategies
• Brand building and how to run effective attraction campaigns
• Creating talent ambassador networks at home and abroad
• Ensuring soft landing, reception and integration of talents
• Organisation, financing and governance in a ‘multi-helix’ context

Three years in a row

Talent Attraction Management Training for Cities and Regions is annual event that has been held from 2016 in Amsterdam and Copenhagen, 2017 in Berlin and 2018 in Malmö and Lund. We have had up to four people delegations from among others Singapore, Dubai, Montreal, Cork, Birmingham, Italy, Copenhagen, Berlin, Brandenburg Region, Aarhus, Hannover, Work in Estonia, Oulu, Turku, Skövde, Oslo, Helsinki, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Brno, Gdansk, Gothenburg and The New York Times.

Want to know more?

The discussions clearly showed that more talent sharing is in order. Cities want that, despite it perhaps sounding counter-intuitive. Talents move – the question is where. Based on the discussions with over 30 professionals working with the issue, we now what the demand now looks like. We are developing a larger hands-on project on how cities can co-operate on sharing talents. Let us know if you want to learn more.

More information

A snapshot article on what is Talent Attraction Management? 

Handbook – download  Talent Beyond Capitals to learn what non-capital cities with universities can do with and for talent.

Key takeaways from Greater Copenhagen – learn from one of the leading places in innovating talent management.

Download the Talent Boost Cookbook Finland to explore examples from Finnish cities.

Check out the book “Innovation Talent Attraction: A practitioner’s guide for Cities, Regions and Countries”.

Training session – join international talent managers and learn from the best with the best at our annual Talent Attraction Management for Cities and Regions.

Women in tech – what are the innovative examples that help to get more #WomeInTech?  Download the white paper.

News on the talent work we’ve done