Starting Out

I've committed myself to a research agenda around the concept of "talent management." Even though my PhD was in economics, coming to UNH's Department of Health Management and Policy, I realized the area of economics I had studied - economic philosophy, history of political economy - was so far removed from the kind of research that the Department valued that I would fundamentally be starting over - even if I tried to do "health economics". Since I don't particularly care for standard health economics research, I took the last year to land on the subject matter I do care about. And that area is talent management. 

I'm defining talent management broadly as the strategies organizations use to recruit, integrate, deploy, and develop its human resources. 

This interest comes from the rather haphazard and awkward process I went through during the first eight years or so of my Army career as I struggled to find the area of work in the organization that I was best fit for. I eventually landed in finance where I was well suited and was able to perform at the level I desired. Had the system had some better mechanism for managing talent, I think it would have been relatively easy to get me there earlier. As it was, I almost left the Army in my early years because I wasn't well suited for operations work. 

So I find this idea of talent management both important and interesting. I'll be posting articles and thoughts here as I develop my agenda. I'd love for people to share their ideas with me.