I’ve discovered a few critical recruiting principles over the past 30 years placing hundreds of top performers in staff, management, and executive positions. Here’s a quick summary of Lou’s Recruiting Rules:

What’s a hiring mistake?

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, send us an email if you'd like to find out how to get started right away on hiring A-level talent every time.

If it wasn't for hiring managers, recruiting would be so easy. But, alas, this is not to be. Instead, we can either confront them head on, or put our heads down in despair, and find still other perfectly qualified candidates they still won't like. Unfortunately, too many recruiters fall into this endless productivity-draining black hole, and wonder why the latest new sourcing wonder drug quickly loses its effectiveness.

A few months ago I predicted the recovery would begin in July 2009. I was lambasted as some wild-eyed hippie, smoking something illegal everywhere, except in California. Well, they were right about the stupid prediction part… it won't start until September. With that in mind, here are some things corporate recruiting departments and third-party recruiting firms need to do to get in shape:  

In a past life at a company that shall remain nameless, an employee made the mistake of hitting "reply all" to a corporate announcement instead of forward. Her reply went, not to her close friend as she intended, but to the whole company. While embarrassing, this would not have been a career-limiting move except for the fact that the reply detailed her job search and her urgent desire to get out of her current (insert uncomplimentary adjective here) job.

Performance-based Hiring is about recruiting top performers, and in today's economy recruiters and companies have a chance to pick up some really great talent.  The key word here is "chance." One prerequisite to finding and recruiting top talent is that recruiters must understand the mentality of a top performer.  If I had to sum it up in one word it would be "Picky"! Top performers want the right job, not just any job.  The job has to offer a challenge and be with the right company and the right people, not to mention offering the right compensation and benefits package.  While timing is important, top performers won't rush into taking just any job.  They are confident in their capabilities, and their job search is part of an overall master plan.