And you would be wrong.

"The top thing on my mind is how we continually look for the best talent," said Carol Price, senior vice president for organization and leadership development at Aramark Corp. "We have to get that right."

Price, of course, was talking about Aramark. But interviews with a dozen HR executives at the region's largest employers brought the same concerns. Each cited recruitment and retainment as their most important priorities.

"Hiring the very best people, training them, elevating them and retaining them - it's a big issue," said Charisse Lillie, vice president of human resources at Comcast Corp., of Philadelphia. "We know we're in the middle of a talent crunch."

The challenges to finding top talent are many, human resources executives said.

The local labor market is competitive: Fewer students choose science majors, the work is increasingly complex, and to compound the issue, the executives worry that the pending retirement of baby boomers may lead to a major talent shortage, especially a paucity of younger workers with enough experience to fill leadership roles.

The talent issue crosses business sector lines.

Recruitment and retainment were the top concerns for executives at large retailing companies such as Acme Markets Inc., Wal-Mart Stores Inc., and Wawa Inc., who need clerks, managers, hoagie-makers and butchers, and for Comcast, which must hire a wide range of employees from on-air talent for its television shows to technicians who can install Internet and cable television.

And it was equally a concern for the human resources executives at the Vanguard Group Inc., one of the region's largest financial institutions, and at area science and manufacturing companies, such as Lockheed Martin Corp., Boeing Co. and AstraZeneca P.L.C.

Talent shortages are already a headache for hospital employers such as Catholic Health East, which employs 13,200 at nine hospitals in the region, and Jefferson Health System Inc., in Radnor, which has nearly 28,000 at more than 20 hospitals and health-care facilities in the area.

Even at Temple University in North Philadelphia, which graduates more than 8,000 students and potential employees a year, Deborah Hartnett, human resources vice president, worries about finding the right people - and then keeping them flexible enough to change as times change.

All types of talent are important.

"It's not just the engineering talent, it's the business minds, it's the manufacturing talent, it's the skilled craftspeople," said Richard S. Hendin, director of human resources at Boeing's Philadelphia-area facility.

First, "it's a competitive area for labor," said Harry Johnson, vice president of human resources for the Eastern Division of Supervalu Inc., Acme's corporate parent.

"This is not an area where there is a tremendous amount of growth," he said in his Malvern office. "So we're all competing for a not-expanding labor pool."

Among his competitors is Wawa, based in Wawa, near Chadds Ford. "We have as much competition on the people side as we do on the retail side," said Ed Iames, Wawa's director of people development.

"Real top of my mind is, it's about finding enough great leaders to support our expansion. Our business model has gotten more complex over the years," Iames said.

In the early 1980s, a Wawa could open with five associates and a manager, he said.

"Now we can't run a shift with five associates. We have stores with upward of 60 or 65 people, and the competencies that it takes to lead this team have ramped way up," he said.

Philip T. Morris, regional human resources director for a Wal-Mart region that encompasses 140 stores in five states, agrees that finding the management talent is critical - especially now that Wal-Mart stores are expanding to include groceries.

"How to handle produce and deli, skills in the bakery departments, cake decorating. Some of these supercenters have tire and lube centers," said Morris, who formerly handled human resources for Genuardi's Family Markets Inc. and now works out of Wal-Mart's divisional headquarters in Ewing, N.J. "Those are skill sets we don't have in this area" among current employees.

With so many retailers, Morris said, it was an ongoing battle for all of them to keep their best workers.

Or maybe it's war.

"The word 'war on talent' is way overused," said Kimberly Wipf, executive director of human resource shared services at AstraZeneca in Wilmington. "But there is a war on talent."

Particularly troubling for the pharmaceutical and other science-based industries, she said, is that "the research shows there are less and less students going into the biological sciences, less going into chemistry and other sciences."

There are some shortages in key medical fields, even as the nursing shortage has eased.

"There are already fewer physical therapists than we have needs for," said Eileen Bove, vice president of human resources at Jefferson Health System, which employs nearly 30,000 at more than a dozen hospitals in the region. "Occupational therapists are hard to find."

With the competition so intense, pay becomes an issue, and that is what worries Hartnett at Temple, which must rely on appropriations from the state and tuition to fund its payroll.

"There's only so much money, and it can only go around so many ways," she said. That is where, she said, concerns about health insurance come in. "It's not just an HR issue, it's a financial issue."

But, nearly all the human resources executives said, being in the college-rich Philadelphia area gives them a leg up in recruiting.

"I think Philadelphia is a remarkable place for college talent," said Kathy Gubanich, managing director of human resources, in her office at Vanguard's campus in Malvern. "We have some of the finest colleges here, and there are so many."

Local companies are not confining their efforts to four-year college campuses and universities. Some are plumbing trade schools, community colleges and high schools. (See related story.)

And AstraZeneca milks another source of local talent: hiring experienced manufacturing workers from among the ranks of employees laid off from the nearby Chrysler plant.

What area companies cannot find in the local labor market, they grow in-house.

Jefferson, for example, is pursuing a grant to help some of its least-skilled employees move into more skilled jobs.

"We're going to take a certain number of employees and train them with in-house schooling," Bove said. "To go into the lab, or to go into technician jobs, they are going to need some help with basic skills."

Eighteen months ago, Acme reinstituted a long-defunct union-management two-year apprentice program to train store associates to become butchers and meat managers. The idea was to give younger associates an opportunity, while beefing up skills and building bench strength behind the meat counter as the baby boomers retired.

While the rising cost of health insurance was never the top concern of the human resources executives interviewed last month, it often did crop up in the top three.

"Health care is an enormous issue. It's huge. But it is a cost of doing business," said Gubanich at Vanguard, and, she said, good benefits are key to attracting and retaining talent.

Jefferson Health Systems and Catholic Health East experience the issue both as employers and providers of health care.

So how changes in the health-care system play out during and after the election does concern Clayton Fitzhugh, vice president of human resources for Catholic Health East, based in Newtown Square.

"We just know there are going to be changes in the air. We need to wait and see how that may impact us in terms of reimbursement and regulations," he said. "We're watching it."