Take a look at this letter from your hiring manager. As you read it, make it personal. Put your name at the top. Think of a hiring manager you think would send you something like this and put his or her name at the bottom. Then send it to a hiring manager who is the least likely person to send it. Hiring top people is a two-way street. Unfortunately, for most recruiters it's always uphill.

Dear (put your name here),

I'm frustrated. You've let me down too many times to let this continue. As your client, I believe your performance must improve in order to succeed in building and developing a strong team. Your role is critical, but somehow you've trivialized it. I don't want to see average candidates anymore and I don't want to see people who are obvious misfits. You need to take on a bigger role in this process, be more involved, and become more of a consultant than a vendor.

However, with that said, I am not without fault here. Since I want you to have an equal stake in the outcome, I must be more involved in the process from beginning to end. With this in mind let's describe our new partnership relationship in finding and hiring more A-level talent.

Let's play "Recruiting Monopoly." As you'll see, there are a number of critical stages in this game that correspond to the recruiting and hiring processes at most companies.

In a recent article - Does Your Company Really Have What It Takes to Hire Top Talent? - I presented a 10-point assessment on how to measure your company's ability to hire top talent. Take the evaluation to see where your company stands. In this article, I'll make the case that by implementing an operating system for hiring top talent, companies will finally be able to win the war for talent by making sure everyone involved in hiring is on the same page - using the best tools and techniques available. Even better, I'll suggest that a proven operating system (OS) already exists - Performance-based Hiring.

Here's your chance to take a unique Hiring Top Talent evaluation of your company's hiring effectiveness. In 15 minutes, you'll find out how your recruiting department compares to the best in the country -- and what you need to do to get into the upper echelon.

I just read an article about the supposed "benefits" of the steel tariff, but which also reminded me that there are really three types of metrics.