Every company wants to hire the top 15%.  A few actually do – typically those with the big brass brands and compelling employee value propositions.  Those with a small wind or rhythm section can do pretty well, too, under the right circumstances.  For just about everyone else, there’s a feeling that getting to average is about all that can be expected.  Well strike up the music, it doesn’t have to be that way.

Over the past year, I’ve been making the case that the best people – the top-third of your future workforce – won’t look for jobs, nor decide which one to take, based on the primary sourcing processes you now use. Making matters worse, traditional behavioral and competency interviewing are not designed to differentiate between the best and least best of your fully-qualified candidates, even if you can find them. To address these issues, fundamental changes are required to improve the overall talent level of your company as the economy improves.

The financial gain of hiring A-level talent is probably 10-100 times the person’s compensation.

The financial cost of hiring a walking lawsuit is probably 10-100 times their compensation.

Assuming the duds and the stars represent 10% of your total hires, it’s what you do with the other 90% that really matters.

As you know the best people typically don’t look for new opportunities the same way as everyone else does.  For one thing they’re looking for careers, not lateral transfers, and they find them largely through some type of networking effort.  This suggests a massive shift away from generic job boards to new tools for networking including the implementation of an aggressive employee referral program.  It also implies using a different approach for closing that gets candidates to consider the long- and short-term factors in balance before making any decision.

There was a great op-ed in a recent LA Times written by Jonah Goldberg, called Avatar and the Faith Myth. Mr. Goldberg, obviously a very educated person, at times complaining about the superficiality of the movie and at others describing the religious implications of the movie, both positive and negative, depending on your point of view of God vs. god. As for me, I thought it was great entertainment. I must have missed the religion connection, since all I noticed was that it was filled with great recruiting tips. 

Maximizing your use of time is the key to hiring more top performers. In a recent webinar with Jobs2Web, I described the sourcing sweet-spot. This is the point just before and just after a fully employed person decides to consider looking for another position. This time-frame represents the window of opportunity to hire the best passive candidates and early-birds with less effort and salary premiums than any other point.

In a previous article, I suggested that most companies don’t have a formal hiring strategy in place that drives planning and decision-making. As a result, some default strategy predominates how hiring is done; generally, some mashup of competing ideas. Typically this is hiring manager-driven with individual managers determining who gets hired.

At an early age I had the unique opportunity to work at the corporate offices of two different Fortune 500 companies. One was number 37 on the list, and the other one 497. While there, I learned a few timeless strategy lessons. They might be useful as you develop the hiring strategy for your company or organization.

As you know I suggest using the 10-factor talent scorecard to measure quality of hire on a pre-hire and post-hire basis. This form is available for members of the Recruiter’s Wall network to download. Using it is based the on the concept described in my book, Hire With Your Head (John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 2007), suggesting that in order to maximize assessment accuracy, candidates need to be assessed against real job needs. This way,10-factor talent scorecard rankings pre- and post-hire are directly comparable.