SmartPulse — our weekly nonscientific reader poll in SmartBrief on Leadership — tracks feedback from more than 190,000 business leaders. We run the poll question each week in our e-newsletter.
How effectively do you recruit and hire outstanding talent?
- Very — we consistently higher top performers: 16.24%
- Somewhat — we get high performers from time to time: 42.44%
- Not very — we struggle to find and hire top talent: 30.26%
- Not at all — it’s rare that we bring on a top performer: 11.07%
Good People are Hard to Find. Top talent is difficult to find and even harder to get in the door. Once you’ve got them, it’s also hard to keep them. To increase the amount of top talent you bring in and hold onto, look for them in nontraditional settings. Recruit from sources that aren’t the well known ones. Look for “best athletes” versus someone with a ton of experience in that particular field. And be sure to hire them for their next role in your organization so they have room to grow. If you follow the rules for hiring and retaining top talent, your performance should improve dramatically.
Mike Figliuolo is managing director of thoughtLEADERS, author of “Lead Inside the Box: How Smart Leaders Guide Their Teams to Exceptional Results” and “One Piece of Paper: The Simple Approach to Powerful, Personal Leadership.”