Great article at abcnews.com from my friend Bob Rosner titled Working Wounded: Recruiting Top Talent for Your Organization. Recruiting top talent takes an incredible amount of work to be successful. Bob’s article hits on 3 important topics to any hiring process.
DO identify top talent.
DO ask: Why would top talent work for us?
DO showcase your talent.
DON’T abuse top talent.
All are good tips and you can read his description under each topic. I wanted to point out his section under his second point:
Does your company pay a higher salary than the average for your industry and community? Do you let workers control as much of their job as possible? Do you offer great benefits? Do you offer opportunities for personal growth? Do you have a group of managers who know how to reward a great performance? If you could only answer yes to two of the questions above, you have some work to do before you’ll realistically be able to recruit top talent to your organization.
This subtle topic is extremely important in regards to retaining top talent. Just like candidates can masquerade through the interview process, companies can present a less-than-authentic appearance of the culture.
An important point – hiring a superstar will push a company in new ways. We are constantly explaining this fact to our clients. If you have never hired a superstar or if you don’t have any on your present sales team, you are in for a surprise. Superstars, through their successes, strain companies in a good way.
Superstars tend to look for efficiencies in all processes. They desire to sell and move to the next prospect. Any underperforming areas in your internal processes are likely to be discovered by the superstar and pointed out to you for correction.
Companies that have always performed in a certain manner struggle with these issues. At times it appears that these companies want to grow profitable revenue without making internal adjustments to fuel the desired growth.
We always recommend companies make strong hires, but you have to be prepared to handle the new directions that the superstar will take your department and company.