The ongoingeconomic recovery has employers staffing up. But they're having trouble landing the top guns,and future top guns, to spearhead their battle for the gold.

Worse, even as they struggle to bring on new talent, many are losing their best performers, often tocompetitors.

That's one of the major takeaways from a Towers Watson survey of32,000 employees and managers at 1,637 companies, in two separatestudies. About a fifth of those surveyed were U.S.-based. TW askedboth parties about hiring trends and found that employers tend tobe behind the curve in understanding what talented jobseekersand current staffers are looking for in a job these days.

Such findings offer yet more evidence that many companies haveyet to come to grips with what it takes to build a talent-heavyorganization. An MRINetwork survey stronglyindicated that, in today's talent hunt, talentedjobseekers are in the driver's seat and have high expectations ofprospective employers.

“With talent mobility on the rise, employers need to understandwhat employees value if they are to succeed in attracting andretaining employees. Unfortunately, our surveys reveal asignificant disconnect between employers and employees,” said LauraSejen, managing director at Towers Watson, who led both surveys.“While employers recognize the importance of pay and careeradvancement as key reasons employees choose to join and stay with acompany, they don't place the same importance on another topattraction and retention driver – job security, or a key retentiondriver – trust and confidence in senior leadership.”

About half of responding companies said they were hiring at afaster pace than last year, with 15% saying the pace was muchfaster. Meantime, 35% said turnover was on the rise.

Against that backdrop, more than two-thirds of respondents saidthey were having trouble hiring proven top performers and thosedeemed potential corporate stars. Meantime, more than half saidthey were losing talented personnel, with many saying they weren'tsure why they couldn't hang on to these current outperformers.

Maybe they should have asked better questions in the exitinterviews.

Employees told Towers Watson that they were blocked in theircurrent jobs and decided the only way up was out.

More than four in 10 employees designated as top performers saidthey knew they'd have to find a new employer in order to advancetheir careers. Less than half said they worked for a company witheffective senior leadership.

Meantime, nearly half of employers agreed that their companiesaren't very good at providing advancement opportunities.

“Organizations continue to miss the mark when it comes to careerdevelopment,” Sejen said. “Given how important career advancementopportunities are to employees, the fact that so many employees,and especially high potentials, feel stuck should serve as awake-up call to employers to review their career developmentprograms. Employees will have more opportunities to seek employmentelsewhere as hiring activity continues to increase, and employerswill be on the lookout for high-potential and top-performingemployees.”