A tough search for talent

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A tough search for talent难觅英才Oct 29th 2009 | OTTAW A, PARIS AND SYDNEYFrom The Economist print editionIn many rich countries, grooming young bureaucrats for a changing world is a struggle for their would-be bosses在许多发达国家的政府,官僚们正头疼于怎样招徕青年才俊来应对日益多变的世界AGED 25 and armed with a master’s degree in water management, Andrew Reeves has the very mix of youth and green-mindedness that many governments claim to need. Yet when he attended a Canadian government job fair in Toronto this autumn, he left after 20 minutes without handing out a single résumé.安德鲁.里夫斯,25岁,用水管理硕士,年轻,没城府,正是许多政府所需要的。

但今年秋天他在多伦多参加加拿大政府的招聘会时,只呆了20分钟,一封简历也没交就撤了。

He queued in front of a booth for the Canadian natural-resources ministry, only to be told that information on openings was best found on the ministry’s website. “I’d have pre ferred to do the whole thing by e-mail,” he grumbles. Such was his frustration that he settled instead for a small non-profit group specialised in recycling.他好不容易排到了加拿大自然资源部的展位前,却被告知空余职位的信息最好去部门的网站上查。

“早知道我就拿e-mail搞定了”他抱怨道。

这样的囧事让他最终选择了一家小型专注于回收再利用的非营利组织。

At a time when many administrations in the rich world face a looming talent shortage, because a huge cohort of civil servants is about to retire, anyone would think that governments would be trying harder, and in cleverer ways, to scoop up bright students now leaving college.当前,许多发达国家政府机构都因为大批公务员即将退休而面临着人才短缺的威胁,大家自然都认为政府们会更尽力、更聪明地去招徕应届的高材生们。

It is not simply a matter of replacing one set of mandarins with another: in an age when most policy issues (from climate change to migration) cut across ministries and state boundaries, the civil servants of tomorrow will have to be lateral thinkers, not pen-pushers. And for better or worse, the outcome of the global recession will be closer regulation of the world’s economic and financial systems, for years to come.但这并不是一代新人换旧人那么简单:在这样一个绝大多数政策决定(从气候变暖到移民政策)都需要顾及到多个部门及国家的时代,未来的公务员必须能跨界思考,而不是再只是文书人员。

况且虽然还前途未卜,但这次全球经济衰退必将在今后几年带来对全球经济和金融体系更严格的监管。

Especially in the English-speaking world, governments say they are trying hard to bring some private-sector pizzazz to all aspects of public administration, including recruitment. Among the legacies of Tony Blair’s term as prime minister of Britain is the idea that the “services delivered” by government can be monitored almost as precisely as a firm’s profits.特别是在英语国家,政府们表示他们正试图把私人部门的做法引进到行政部门的各个方面,包括招人。

在布莱尔任英国首相期间的一大政策理念便是政府“提供的服务”可以像公司盈利一样被严格地监视。

And Britain’s civil serve got a jolt three years ago when Gill Rider—a partner in Accenture, a management consultancy—was given a wide-ranging brief to shake up the way personnel were used and rewarded. The results have been watched carefully in places like Canada, Australia and Ireland. Civil-service reforms can work best in smallish territories—Denmark, Finland, Scotland, Wales, the Canadian provinces—says Tony Dean, a British-born Canadian who has switched from being a bureaucrat to studying bureaucracy. (Outside the English-speaking, Nordic and Teutonic worlds, one of the few countries often cited as a model for administrative reform is Singapore, which pays its bureaucrats well so as to stem corruption.)英国的公务员系统三年前还闪了一下腰,当Gill Rider——Accenture管理咨询公司的合伙人(一个搞咨询的人听了简报有什么好大惊小怪的?google后发现她现在是英国政府主观人力的官员之一,难道TE在这犯傻了?译注)——获得了一份足以动摇整个人事和奖励机制的简报,其结果来自于对加拿大,澳大利亚和爱尔兰等地的资料的仔细分析。

公务员改革在较小的片区收效最好——像丹麦,芬兰,苏格兰,威尔士,还有加拿大各省——Tony Dean 如是说,他是英裔加拿大人,当过小官僚,现在研究官僚体系。

(在英语国家,北欧、日耳曼国家以外,少有的被誉为公务员改革典范的新加坡靠的则是高薪养廉)However well-planned, internal reforms may not be enough to solve the basic problem—common to most of the leading industrial democracies—of competing for talent with commerce and voluntary groups, and then retaining th e loyalty of a fickle, sceptical generation. “If we have any energy left after the trials of a competitive American college, we turn to private corporations if we have debt to repay, and to the non-profit sector if we want to make the world better,” says R obert Ochshorn, who has just graduated in computer sciences from Cornell University.不管设计得多么巧夺天工,政府内部的改革都难以完全解决那个最基本的问题——普遍存在于大多数发达工业国家——如何与企业和非营利组织抢人才,并且让多变多疑的这一代人保持忠诚。

“如果我们在熬过美国大学的残酷竞争后还有精力,如果有助学贷款要还,我们进私企,如果要让世界更美好,我们去非营利机构。

”刚从康奈尔大学计算机科学专业毕业的Robert Ochshorn说。

In simple numerical terms, the personnel gap opening up is vast. A report by the OECD, a rich-countries’ club, found that in 13 of the member countries surveyed, at least 30% of central-government workers were 50 years of age or older. Generous early-retirement provisions mean that many will leave their posts fairly soon.仅从数据上来看,员工待遇的差距就很显著。