The importance of recruiting, hiring and retaining the best and most qualified employees cannot be overstated. Hiring and recruiting takes significant time an effort, so it would be in the employer’s best interest to focus their efforts in finding the right people. Some might argues that it’s easier said than done, but in reality the right people might be right in front of them. While some jobs might have a direct pipeline or source of employees, others can be more flexible and take advantage of transferable skills. High performing employees, or as Eric Herrenkohl call them ‘A-Players’, are highly motivated individuals that already have the right attitude and can easily learn the ropes of a new business and take it to the next level.
Employers need to be open-minded and creative in order to identify those A-Players within reach. Some of those untapped pools of talent include women reentering the workforce, restaurant personnel, employees working at well-operated national retailers and college students (Herrenkohl, 2010). Women reentering the workforce and college students might be looking for more flexible schedules to accommodate for children, class schedules or other needs. If a business model is able to accommodate these needs, utilizing flexible schedules as a recruiting tool might help to attract valuable talent from these two pools. Restaurant personnel and employees of well-operated retailers such as Starbucks, Nordstrom or Whole Foods can also be fertile grounds for A-Players. These two pools provide the additional benefit that an employer can actually see these individuals in action and assess their performance. Recruiting form these two pools might be consider more incidental or passive, but employers should not shy away from reaching out to those service employees who go above and beyond expectations.
This same concept can be applied to executive level recruitment. During a recent interview with Vicki Floyd, Director of Administration for an executive recruiting consulting firm, she described the importance of finding the right cultural fit for executive teams despite not having a perfect match in terms of technical skills. Executive applicants require some level of technical knowledge, but are more sought after for their leadership skills, strategic approaches, or specific experiences. This rationale was the main reason that led the former Vice President of Transformation at the New York Times, Erin Grau, to Away, an up-and-coming luggage startup. Her experience at the New York Times bringing a settled and mature business into the digital era piqued the interest of Steph Korey, Away’s CEO, to help shake things up in the established luggage industry (Fairchild, 2018). There are numerous examples of executives going into different industries and helping move organizations forward.
This approach to recruitment seems to open the door to a completely new world of talent. Entrepreneurs can certainly take advantage of this practice at all levels of recruitment. A recent Forbes article lists technical, communications, critical thinking, multitasking, teamwork, creativity, and leadership as the most transferable skills. Utilizing these broad categories as guidelines to recruiting from untapped talent pools can be helpful. Overall, the idea is to always be on the lookout for the next great hire.
References
Fairchild, C. (2018). When everyone wants to work at your startup, what do you do next? Retrieved from https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/when-everyone-wants-work-your-startup-what-do-you-next-fairchild/
Herrenkohl, E. (2010). How to hire a-players: finding the top people for your team- even if you don’t have a recruiting department. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
My Entrepreneurship Blog Site. (2018, September 20). Retrieved September 27, 2018 from https://jfsaavedra.com/interview-with-vicki-floyd-director-of-administration-with-adk-consulting-executive-search/
Yate, M. (2018). The 7 transferable skills to help you change careers. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/nextavenue/2018/02/09/the-7-transferable-skills-to-help-you-change-careers/#77be5e484c04
I agree with the thought of finding A players by looking in a different industry. Some great people can be found in customer service oriented industries. Hiring them and giving them opportunity in your own field coud be a great asset!
Mark,
I never really considered this approach until reading Herrenkohl’s book. It simply makes a lot of sense. I think we can get caught in a sort of a vicious circle of only expecting employees form a predetermined prepackaged source. When we close our eye to other sources, we are missing out on a lot of great talent right in front of us.
-Jose