Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, China's talent work and innovation and development have made historic achievements. At present, China ranks first in the world in terms of the number of SCI published and the number of patents obtained. But on the other side of the achievement, some "shortcomings" can not be ignored: China's basic research world-class contribution is not much, the conversion rate of scientific and technological achievements is less than 10%, the manufacturing industry is at the middle and low end of the global value chain, there are a large number of "stuck neck" problems in industrial development, and the "0-1" problem has not been solved. In the past, the talent evaluation paradigm formed under the path of follow-up development, planned management, and imitation of scientific research has led a large number of scientific research achievements from "1 to 10" and "from 10 to 100", but it has failed to effectively stimulate original innovation from "0 to 1". In this regard, the traditional talent evaluation paradigm has lagged behind the development requirements of the current era of building the world's important talent center and innovation highland. In order to solve these problems, it is of great significance to reform the talent evaluation paradigm.
Talent work cannot only pursue the quantity of innovative results, but ignore the quality. **Patents, science and technology awards, the number of talent hats and titles, etc., are only intermediate indicators of talent development rather than the ultimate goal. In recent years, the number of quantitative indicators and patents of talents in China has increased significantly, but original innovation and disruptive innovation are still insufficient. To this end, under the promotion of the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Education and other eight ministries and commissions at the end of 2022, the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Ministry of Education jointly issued the "Work Plan on Carrying out the Pilot Reform of the Evaluation of Scientific and Technological Talents", focusing on the major needs of national scientific and technological innovation, and carrying out the pilot reform of the evaluation of scientific and technological talents involving 21 units and 6 localities. To deepen this work, it is necessary to further grasp the following aspects.
First of all, it is necessary to emphasize the dynamic, field, and contribution of talent evaluation. Over the past 45 years of reform and opening up, the education level of the Chinese people has generally improved, the baseline of talent evaluation has been gradually raised, and the scale of talent evaluation has become increasingly diversified. When it comes to scientific research talents, technical talents, and professional talents, they are inseparable from certain fields, industries and positions - they are talents in a specific field, and they are not necessarily talents in another field;At that time, it was a talent, but it was not necessarily a talent at this time. Internally, talent development has a life cycle;From an external point of view, the same kind of talent competes, and different individuals also have their own comparative advantages. What is "talent" and how to evaluate talents, we should focus on "use-oriented", fall into specific fields, stages, categories, time and space backgrounds to investigate, adhere to the dynamic development viewpoint, and take the level and contribution in professional practice as the evaluation basis. Corresponding to different units and institutions, it is necessary to promote the establishment of a differentiated talent evaluation system transmitted by their strategic positioning and development goals.
Secondly, it is necessary to grasp the purpose, background and professionalism of talent evaluation. For talent evaluation, there are many types and purposes, such as professional title and professional qualification evaluation, talent plan project evaluation, talent reward and title evaluation, etc.;It can also be divided into potential evaluation, incentive evaluation, conclusion evaluation, etc. Depending on the purpose of the evaluation, the criteria and modalities should be different. Among them, the grasp of the standard should be closely integrated with the evaluation subject, object and evaluation background, which highlights the importance of "evaluation ability". It can be said that evaluators who are detached from the front-line practice of profession, industry, production, and scientific research can no longer have the ability to evaluate talents, because they can no longer accurately grasp the specific evaluation criteria. On the other hand, talent evaluation criteria must also be tested by the market, society and the professional community. Talent evaluation should adhere to the "bottom-up" rather than the "top-down" technical route. For example, the functional advantage of ** is to improve the evaluation mechanism and clarify the policy orientation, rather than formulating specific evaluation standards and leading the talent evaluation process. Otherwise, if the selected person is not recognized by the society and the field, there will be an embarrassment of evaluating and using "two skins".
In addition, it is necessary to grasp the complexity, particularity, and implicit nature of talent evaluation. Some studies have shown that there is a "logarithmic law" in the evaluation of talents: first-class talents are evaluated and brought out of first-class talents, second-rate talents are evaluated and brought out of third-rate talents, and third-rate talents are evaluated and brought out of fourth-rate talents......Descending order. The "logarithmic law" of talent evaluation tells us that in order to select and cultivate world-class talents, the most important thing is to find out the world-class talents to evaluate, so that "masters" can select "masters", and second- and third-rate talents often select people who are worse than themselves. This suggests that we must identify world-class peers in order to truly evaluate high-quality talents. Here, the key is to find the "right people", not the "hard indicators". In this regard, Academician Shi Yigong once proposed: "The international method is not to look at the first, but to look at the experts" and "the international common method is to refer to the views of the top international experts".
The development path of high-level innovative talents is not standardized or customized, but emerges in a relatively suitable innovation environment. The talent evaluation criteria are stratified, classified, pluralistic and professional, and the specific evaluation criteria are also in the hands of stratified, classified, diversified and professional experts. Under the conditions of the socialist market economy, the first department should follow the rules of the market, promote open competition, expand the autonomy of employers, give full play to the role of professional, industry and professional communities in talent evaluation, strengthen the vision evaluation, put forward specific evaluation, and devote energy to building an open and diversified talent evaluation system, so that more talents can stand out and emerge freely in entrepreneurship and value creation.
National Social Science Major Project "Research on Key Issues in the Implementation of the Strategy of Strengthening the Country with Talents in the New Era" (No. 22ZDA037).
The author is the director and researcher of the Research Office of the Chinese Academy of Human Sciences, and the deputy secretary-general of the Chinese Talent Research Association).
Sun Rui **China Youth Daily.
*: China Youth Daily).