Talent Tactics: Abundance & Scarcity

Intro

Hiring Talent is an Investment

When you start seeing it as only a cost, it’s time to reimagine your approach. Yes, talent costs money, as everything does, but it’s how you look at it that changes the game. Your talent is often your spearhead for innovation, your guerrilla marketing team, and your client keeper, developing delighted customers.

The Story

Talent

In some environments I have been in, 30 days in, they’ve already declared the person ineffective and done. Should fire them. But they haven’t even seen the person work yet really. And if the person is that bad, that’s not their fault. That’s the company’s, that’s the hiring leaders, that’s the process that, it’s not a person’s fault, short of them completely misrepresenting themselves in an unfortunate but effective way. Now, if you determine, they aren’t the right fit for sure, you do need to make a quick change so that you don’t drag on the inevitable, but if they haven’t had enough time, if they are good enough to develop, then it’s best to reconsider.

Consider how you invest in them, because in a lot of cases, it’s not what you’re getting off the street with talent, but it’s the potential and the coach-ability and it’s raising the ceiling that gets them to the next level, not straight off the street, 100% talent ready. 100% Talent Ready is such a myth for so many hires. Yes, their are qualified candidates, and there are really great fits for roles, but few are truly perfect. Remove perfect from your vernacular for most talent—it’s rare, and it is extremely limiting to think you must hire perfect talent.

So unless you’re the highest payer in the market, the most attractive brand, a true “employer of choice”, which few are, you need to seek the talent that is the best fit, which does not mean they can step off the street and do 100% of the job—they need to be qualified, a great fit culturally, with skills, and with the upside and ability to grow in the role. The reality is—most companies don’t even know what they want until someone starts, so you need talent that can adapt and mold, and is willing to do so.

Candidates don’t need to be perfect, they need to be great people, a great fit, exceptional talent that will develop into your firm. It’s your job to make them more effective as long as they have the fit to the job, the basic skills, the knowledge and the desire to learn. Let me be clear—I’m not talking about making bad hires intentionally, rather I’m talking about making the best fit higher based on the entire package as far as compensation, your correlating budget, the actual need for the job, availability in the market, things of that nature with finding the best candidate that you can mold into what you want. You do have to mold those best fit candidates, and not expect them to walk in and understand how you do things at your company how you want them to perform and just have it all translate. Sometimes you do have to put the effort in so as long as that is worth it, it’s up to you to make it happen and invest the time. I always think about that. I must invest what I want to get out of that individual.

Sometimes specific engineering skills and other technical roles have non-negotiable requirements, and I very much get that, but much of it is made up arbitrarily by HR, Executives, Hiring Leaders, and sometimes, whoever is the keeper of job descriptions (JD). Often, the hiring leader doesn’t even see the JD, the JD is a canned list of company approved jargon, not specific to the real job. So when the request is quite specific, it goes back to what must you have with base skills and experience, and what is the personality and culture fit that will actually learn what they need to do be effective. Most roles above $13-15/hour require significant learning even if the lowest level of job skills are needed.

Closing

Embracing talent as an asset changes your business, pushes you to care for your people, links performance, and long-term thinking, versus short-term decisions.

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About the Author, Graham Peelle