MACKINAC ISLAND – Michigan will put special focus on talent development and needs, with it the focus of his November message, Governor Rick Snyder said at the opening of the 2011 Detroit Regional Chamber meeting.

In his opening remarks to the conference, Snyder also urged attendees and the state as a whole to be positive about Michigan as part of the effort to improve and restore the state. A major problem officials have when they try to convince persons to locate here is that they are enthusiastic about the state until they talk to Michigan residents who tend to be negative about the state.

When someone hears another person talk down the state, “go up to them and say, ‘Let’s talk,'” Snyder said, “Let’s move from negative to positive.”

Wednesday’s announcement was the first time Snyder had said what his plans for the November special message would encompass. He had already announced that in September he would talk about health and wellness and in October he would talk about improving the state’s overall infrastructure.

But talent is a new avenue, and Snyder said, “We don’t talk enough about talent here nor does anyone else in the United States.”

Snyder has touched around the overall elements of talent attraction and retention in his talk about keeping young people in Michigan, restoring cities and improving education.

The Michigan Education Development Corporation has also undertaken several projects to attract young people back to the state (having held dinners and sessions in Boston and Chicago to attract people back through its MichAgain program and by hosting a program to show college students places to live and work and things to do in Detroit).

Snyder said most of the focus on talent has been labor availability and getting them into the state, but very little attention has been spent on labor demand.

Snyder said he wants to find ways to determine where job needs are now and what companies think will be their employment needs for the next five to 10 years.

With that, Snyder said the state can then work with families and students to help them plan their career studies to match with where future jobs will be.

Snyder’s comments, which served as a welcome to the conference, hit on many of the points he has made in his addresses since taking office – that the state is in a crisis but that should be looked at as a challenge – but he said one of the most important things the business executives at the meeting could do for Michigan was to build successful companies.

But he also said helping the state change its culture to improve requires people to have a better attitude about the state and talk about it positively.

“We got to get some attitude here,” Snyder said. “We’re not the cheap place, we’re the value place.”

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