LANSING – Michigan has an opportunity to lead other states in development and deployment of talent, Governor Rick Snyder said Tuesday, and he hoped Michigan would be a “first mover” on talent needs and the ability to find a job that will provide an individual a career.

Speaking to the Inforum Center for Leadership, a women’s executive organization, Snyder said talent was the number one thing Michigan could do to create a strategic economic advantage.

By doing a better job of helping prepare and guide individuals into career paths, the state could not only fill jobs that are open for skilled workers now, he said, it could help meet projected future needs for jobs.

It would also become a “first mover” among the other states and have as much as a 20 year advantage over them in terms of identifying and allocating talent, he said.

In that position, other states will try to catch up with Michigan and Michigan will be able to lead in making more advances in promoting and developing talent, he said.

Snyder did not say that would attract companies to the state, or convince firms already here to expand further. Clearly, however, having an advantage in terms of developing talent would hopefully lead to more job opportunities.

Snyder has made talent development one of the signal issues of his administration, and many of the comments he made at the Tuesday event he had made before.

The entire U.S. does a poor job in terms of developing talent, and Snyder aimed some of his criticisms at the current higher education structure. He called, as he has in the past, for more dual enrollment programs, where a student can earn college credit while still attending high school. That would allow a student the ability to graduate earlier and get into the job market sooner.

Snyder also called for a better effort to help students target their learning and training towards specific careers. Too often the focus has been to lead students to traditional professions, but careers in in professions such as marketing and technology management can also be satisfying and economically fulfilling, he said.

Snyder said he hoped the www.mitalent.org website would soon be able to allow students to review where the best future opportunities for jobs lay, so they could better focus their training.

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