The article highlights the main tasks of targeted training of the personnel reserve. The necessity of developing a methodology for identifying talented managers from the total number of those wishing to obtain management specialties has been proved. The application of the methodology will make it possible to foresee the probabilistic values ​​of the manifestation of management abilities, and also allow us to determine the proportion of talented managers in different groups. With the help of calculations, it is justified to obtain a socio-economic effect from the application of the developed methodology in the Nizhny Novgorod region.