Can Your Company Hire A-level Talent?

Every company wants to hire the best people, but most haven't figured out how to do it consistently and across the board. Here's a short checklist of prerequisites. Rank yourself on a 1-5 scale to see where you stand, with 5 being the best and 1 being worse than pretty bad. If you don't score at least 35-40 on this 10-factor survey, you've got your work cut out for you. After you've finished this assessment, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it if you'd like to find out how to get started right away on hiring A-level talent every time.

Ten Prerequisites for Hiring Top Talent

1. A focus on finding careers for top people, rather than finding candidates to fill open jobs. If your job descriptions emphasize skills and experiences you get one point. If they clearly describe outstanding career opportunities in compelling fashion, you deserve all five points.

2. Strong hiring managers. If your hiring managers don't have a track record of hiring and developing top talent, you get one point. If they do, you get all five.

3. Strong recruiters. If your recruiters can't find top people, don't know how to position your jobs as careers, can't get 2-3 top referrals per call, and make lots of excuses why they can't find anyone who's any good, you get one point. If they have a track record of consistently finding and closing top people for any type of position you get all five.

4. Active candidate sourcing that consistently yields A-level talent. It doesn't really matter how you do this, if it works. You get five points if it does and one if it doesn't. Generally speaking, though, most companies are moving to a hub-and-spoke sourcing process designed to find the best people as soon as they enter the market.

5. A passive candidate sourcing approach that consistently yields A-level talent. Recruiters need to be able to uncover top people who aren't looking, get them excited, keep them interested and get them hired, on every search. If they can do this while partnering with their hiring manager clients, you deserve all five points. If this process is non-existent, inconsistent, or inefficient you get one point.

6. A proprietary pool of high-quality prospects. Building an ever-growing and private pipeline of strong people nurtured by a robust CRM and driven by a proactive ERP is one leg of the low-cost, just-in-time, high-talent sourcing model of the future. If you're not doing this, or don't know what this means, you get one point. If you're doing this, whether you know what it means or not, you get all five points.

7. Using technology to maximize productivity. If your recruiters complain that your technology (ATS, career site, posting methodology, sourcing tools, etc.) slows them down, either get rid of your recruiters or upgrade your technology. Regardless, you only get one point for either cause. On the other hand, if all of your recruiters who learn to use your technology almost rave about it, enjoy working with it, and are more productive, give yourself all five points.

8. A recruiting and hiring process designed around the needs of A-level talent. Top people don't select one job over another the same way as those who are less talented. If you provide an information exchange process that allows top people to gather the information needed to progress step-by-step, you get all five points. Of course, if most drop out along the way, you lose these points. If you force people to decide too soon and/or expect them to be excited before they've learned about your career opportunities, you get one point.

9. An assessment process that accurately predicts on-the-job performance. If you can't accurately assess top talent, it doesn't matter how good your sourcing is. If most of your new hires ace their performance reviews and you're not surprised, give yourself all five points. If you're surprised about a new hire's performance review results, whether they do well or not, give yourself one point. At the same time, stop everything you're doing on the assessment side and This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

10. You hire every top person you want at a fair compensation. Finding and assessing top people are the first two steps involved in hiring them. If all of the top people you see and decide to hire accept your offers based on career opportunities rather than compensation, you ace this final piece of the puzzle. However, if you have to struggle to close, lose too many good people along the way, or you pay too much or they reject your offers too often, give yourself a token one point.