Gusti Coetzer, of Leaders Unlimited, said there was a world-wide shortage of talented people and South African recruiters were "fishing in the same pool" as their competitors elsewhere in the world.
Speaking at the Labour Market conference in Midrand last week, Coetzer said the workforce had become globally integrated.
"There is a world-wide shortage of top people and executives can now pick and choose jobs.
"While job satisfaction and the quality of the company play a major role in attracting talent, ultimately the remuneration package and how it is structured remains the deciding factor.
"Mobility has created a world without boundaries where top executives can select who they want to work for. To think that South African executives who are working for multinationals are going to come back out of a sense of patriotism is completely unfounded," Coetzer said.
A more realistic approach to the skills shortage would be to nurture local talent by improving the country’s educational institutions.
She told the conference that in a recent Global Talent Index Survey, South African business schools were ranked 27th out of 30 (ahead only of business schools in Iran, Nigeria and Indonesia). More disturbing was the finding that South Africa’s proclivity to attract talent was ranked last.
She said among the things senior executives looked at when being head-hunted in South Africa was the company’s record in attracting and retaining staff.
Coetzer said it was not true that South African executives were overpaid.
"Salaries and benefits like performance bonuses and share options are set internationally and top men and women in the boardroom earn much the same across the world because of the global fluidity of the workforce," she said.
Among the prime jobs on which recruitment efforts were focused, were chartered accountants to be employed as chief financial officers. There was also a huge shortage of qualified engineers.
Project managers, supply chain and logistic managers, and research and development staff were also difficult to recruit.
She said it was imperative that South African universities reversed the appalling pass rates notched up in the engineering disciplines.
"Recent figures show that between 1998 and 2004, of the 50 570 students who were enrolled at tertiary institutions, only 8 900 graduated, which represents a pass rate of only 17,7 percent."
She also revealed that only about 700 engineers entered the economy yearly, while the demand for new engineers would be about 11 000 by 2010.
While black economic empowerment had generally been embraced, the sector that needed to be commended was financial services, where 52 percent of analysts were black.