It is necessary to establish the necessity and the basis to promulgate a strategy on attracting and honoring talents based on the following five main reasons:

First: The reality of human history and national history proves that talent is the basic and root factor to change the face of the country and the nation. The Asian countries in the NICs (newly industrialized countries) group at the end of the last century all began to build the foundation for national development based on the policy of employing talent.

Second: Appreciating talent is a traditional element of our nation. Even the legend of the Hung Kings mentioned the story of Saint Giong, in which the king sent messengers to travel around the country to invite talented people to fight the enemy to save the country. The later dynasties, from Ly, Tran, and Le to the Nguyen Dynasty, often issued royal proclamations to call for talents to help the king or organized examinations to discover, improve and use talents.

Third: Talent is a special resource, the essence of the nation's spirit. Thanks to the use of talents, emperors in history built prosperous and sustainable nations. That is the practice of the rule of law. The talent of talented people is a material force that the ruling class must hold to create and develop society.

Fourth: In the Ho Chi Minh era, shortly after reading the declaration of independence that gave birth to the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, President Ho published a letter on the Cuu Quoc newspaper, assigned to the administrative committees at all levels to look for talents to help the country. President Ho's fundamental view of talent is: The talents are "those are the people who really love their country and their people" and those who devote all their talents and energies to the country. The first government that was elected by the People's Parliament at Ho Chi Minh’s proposal consisted of talents regardless of their political party and origin, as long as they devoted their talent and their hearts to the people and the country.

Fifth: The consistent views of the Party and State of Vietnam on attracting and appreciating talents have existed for a long time, but have not been formulated into a complete national strategy, have not been institutionalized in a written document that has enough convincing power and coercive force to enforce the implementation over the national scale.

Currently, this issue is only regulated sporadically and scattered in a number of legal documents, lacking a systematic and non-specialized nature. Therefore, the policy of attracting and honoring talents is different in different places, is perfunctory, not substantial, even just tricks to polish the name of individuals.

For the above reasons, the promulgation of a National Strategy on Talent Attraction and Appreciation, as a basis for the promulgation of relevant legal documents, is extremely urgent, especially in the current context of the country, when it needs a high-quality workforce in all areas of life to adapt to the rapid and comprehensive changes of the 4th industrial revolution that has been taking place globally.

The goal of attracting talents

The overall goal should be affirmed that this Strategy establishes the orientation of the legal and policy framework as a foundation for the promulgation of legal documents on the discovery, fostering, behavior to, appreciation of talents and responsibility of organizations and individuals, and especially the reward and discipline policy.

Regarding specific objectives: I propose to clearly define five long-term goals that the Strategy should aim for in terms of mechanisms and policies in legal documents in the period of 2021-2025 as follows:

First: Attracting and appreciating talents in the fields of politics and state management and administration;

Second: Attracting and using talents in the fields of high science - technology, especially digital technology, database, automation, cybernetics ...

Third: Attracting and using talents to get rich economically in all aspects

Fourth: To attract and use talents in the field of education to make a quick breakthroughs in quality, firmly develop the national education on a regional and international level

Fifth: Attracting and using talents in the field of culture - art to create a healthy social-cultural environment, improve the quality of enjoyment of spiritual life of the people

The role of talent in the country's formation and development is a historical practice. Photo: Le Anh Dung

Perspectives on attracting talent

In my opinion, the guiding views in the Strategy is a system of guiding thoughts throughout the Strategy, so it must lay the foundation of awareness, a motto, as the foundation to set the future policy and legal framework.

For that reason, the main and pillar point of view on attracting and using talents in this Strategy is as follows:

Talent is a special resource that needs to be attracted and used as the most important material force in building and defending the country. We need to refer to South Korea's "first talent" policy, when Pak Chung Hi initiated the construction of a new countryside, making the 1st Han River miracle.

The State promulgates policies and laws with basic characteristics to assist in the identification of talents, the mechanism of discovering, attracting, fostering and using talents; based on the requirements and tasks of each stage, to have specific policies to attract talent to each field that needs to be encouraged to create a breakthrough, with "explosive" feature in socio-economic management of the country.

Discovering and recommending talents to the State are the rights, responsibilities and obligations of all citizens, agencies and organizations.

Talents enjoy a special selection and remuneration mechanism, with no age restrictions and scope of human resource selection, and have an environment for talent development in order to make their best dedication to the country.

The State adopts a policy of rewarding individuals and organizations that recommend, discover, foster, train and employ the right talents; and strictly punish acts of abusing power in order to obstruct and suppress talents, to conceal and persecute talents.

Identify talent

In this content, I would like to raise some issues that are only for reference to add some points about the content:

On talent identification: Man is a small universe, fully reflecting the composition of the universe. The universe is diverse and constantly changing, people are also diverse and changing constantly. Therefore, human talents are diverse and constantly changing, so it is impossible to come up with a consistent definition of talent.

The role of talent in the country's formation and development is a historical practice: In national governance, in the war for national protection, in economic development, in scientific and public inventions, in researching the laws of the universe, in inventions, cultures, and arts ... all must rely on talents. The important role of talent in national progress is undisputed. That is why the ancients said ‘Talent is the national treasure’.

The method of selecting and using talents in different fields is very different: Talent is not omnipotent in all fields, just being talented in one field does not mean being automatically talented in other fields, but each field needs a form of talent.

The fundamental mistake of selecting and using personnel today is to use personnel as omnipotent talent and discover talented personnel in a single way, based on nominations of a few individuals who have power, which easily leads to power corruption and abuse.

Specifically, the personnel at the central level, whoever is a member of the Central Party Committee is assigned to assume all positions, from Provincial Vice Chair or Party Secretary to Deputy Minister, Minister in any ministry, department, branch or locality.

This mistake leads to unpredictable consequences, especially when changing the leadership and management mode from centralized bureaucracy (which is purely leadership and management by using unilateral orders) to a marketing mechanism (which requires dynamic, adaptive, professional, creative expertise in politics or technocracy).

It can be said: The current way of identifying talents and using talents, in mathematical terms, is "violating the axioms", that is contrary to the development principle, contrary to the rules of using talent.

Mechanism of talent recruitment: For example, someone who is good at archery is forced to use a sword or vice versa, or someone who is good at horseback riding is asked to use a boat and vice versa. In such cases, these talents cannot show or use their talent. Therefore, for talented people to show their talents, it is necessary to have a compatible operating mechanism. Working mechanism is the key to determine the effectiveness of the job. A suitable working mechanism is a prerequisite to employing the right talent.

Working environment of talents: In order for talents to develop their talents, there must be an appropriate working environment. For example, to make heavy weapons, we need not only scientists who know how to improve weapons and create new weapons, but also a compatible industry.

At the level of the national economy, it is necessary to build a domestic industry that basically meets the production needs in order to have high quality products invented by talented Vietnamese. Thanks to that, Vietnam will step by step become a powerful nation.

Remuneration as a driving force: The right remuneration policy is a necessary condition to use talents, to show respect for talents.

If the behavior mechanism is not good, it is not possible to encourage talented people to work. And that is the reason why talented people leave elsewhere, where they are able to show all of their talents, their talent is not hindered, and they can receive corresponding results.

In addition, the role of talent users as well as the colleagues of talents is also a very important factor. Selfishness and narrow-mindedness can cause the underdogs to hinder and persecute talents. Talents always have high self-esteem, so when their personal honor is violated, they will immediately refuse or leave their current positions.

Noted by Lan Anh

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