Q #218: How to differentiate from competitors when recruiting high-potential people?

John Sullivan

John Sullivan is well-known as a provocateur, a characteristic that has both guided and distinguished his work throughout the years. Through speaking engagements, publications, corporate workshops and advisory service projects, he and his firm (DJS) have challenged the antiquated role of HR and championed a new breed of business performance minded human resource professionals.

In one of Sullivan’s articles, The 20 Rules for Great Recruiting, he responds directly to the question posed. Later in this Q&A, I provide a link to the complete article. Here are the first three Rules:

Recruiting Rule #1: You must declare war and act like warriors in order to win.

It takes an aggressive approach to get the best talent. Aggressive recruiting starts with competitive intelligence and a strong desire to win. It ends with the goal of continually improving everything you do so that you can stay ahead of the competitors.

You must continually improve your recruiting processes on the assumption that your competitors are continuously copying your best practices and as a result, they will soon catch up. Warriors hate to lose, so every time you lose a head-to-head battle for top talent, you need to do a “post-mortem” in order to identify the reasons why you lost. A fast-changing world with an uncertain economy requires an agile approach if you are to stay on top. Unfortunately, HR often changes “at the speed of rock” — so changing things internally requires expert knowledge, hard proof, and most of all, enormous courage!

Recruiting Rule #2: The war for talent is over. And by the way… guess who won?

As long as the unemployment rate is low, managers need to realize that the power has shifted from the company to the worker. [Note: This article was published on March 26, 2001.] Top performers must now be treated like free agents and all applicants must be treated like customers if you are to get them to leave a perfectly good job and accept yours. [Note: That is always true, whatever the given economy.] This means you must do extensive market research into identifying what these “customers” will and won’t accept. Because there are niche markets in recruiting just like in product marketing, chances are that you will have to “mass personalize” their jobs and their offers if you expect to sell them.

Recruiting Rule #3: Talent matters and top talent matters most.

Just like in sales, there’s an 80/20 rule in recruiting. 80% of the profit comes from the efforts of 20% of the employees. This means recruiting must prioritize its efforts and focus on the managers, divisions, and jobs that have the most business impact. Instead of treating them all the same, it is essential to put your resources into the ones that make the most difference. You don’t have the time or the resources to do them all well.

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Here is a link to Sullivan’s Web site where you can read the complete article as well as dozens of others among the resources provided:

http://www.drjohnsullivan.com/

Comments, questions, requests, or suggestions? Please share them. They will be most welcome and I thank you for them. Best regards, Bob

Q #217: Why do the most original minds in business win?

Mavericks at Work

That is the subtitle of Mavericks at Work, a book co-authored by William C. Taylor and Polly LaBarre. Here is their response to the question posed: “Why do the most original minds win in business?”

1. The understand why “playing it safe” is not playing it smart. Citing the success of former coach Pete Carril’s Princeton basketball teams against far more talented opponents, “in business, as in basketball, the smart can take from the strong –the best way to outperform the competition is to outthink the competition.”

2. They do the work that matters most. That is, “the work of originality, creativity, and experimentation.” Jason Jennings would also say that they “think big but act small” and “nail the fundamentals.”

3. They demonstrate that you can build companies around high ideals and fierce competitive ambitions. They understand that “the most powerful way to create economic value is to embrace a set of values that go beyond just amassing economic power.”

4. They have an undeniable sense of purpose. Their leaders are comfortable using words such as “lighten and enlighten” as well as “shine,” reflecting a genuine sense of mission “and a feel for the interplay between seriousness of purpose and flat-out fun.”

5. They have an underdog mindset. “Each company’s strategy tends to be as edgy as it is enduring, as disruptive as it is distinctive, as timely as it is timeless.”

6. They are totally committed to constant experimentation. Because creativity and innovation are so important to them, each could also be called “Ideas, Inc.”

7. They attract high-potential people. Why? Because their peak performers are centrally involving in recruiting, interviewing, hiring, and training initiatives. John Sullivan observes, “Stars don’t work for idiots.” What Jim Collins calls “A players” prefer to associate with other “A players” or with those who obviously have that potential.

8. They have seamless alignment of their “stars” with their systems. In fact, their systems provide structure, order, and support to their highly talented people who, in turn, constantly improve those systems to increase their efficiency as well as their effectiveness. As Taylor and LaBarre note, “the interaction between stars and systems defines everyday life” for those who possess – and productively use – “the most original minds.”

Here’s a link to a wealth of resources you may wish to check out, especially the single most valuable list of links to other Web sites that I have as yet come across:

http://www.mavericksatwork.com/

Comments, questions, requests, or suggestions? Please share them. They will be most welcome and I thank you for them. Best regards, Bob