Hiring the Best & Brightest
Many organisations say they aim to hire the best and the brightest but somehow their actions are not congruent with their aspirations. Although most people understand that wrong hires cost the organisation a lot of money, hiring is still an emotional process for hiring managers and where logic sometimes gets thrown out of the window. I am not saying that emotions are not good when it comes to making a good hire as gut feel is as important as all the other elements of the hiring process. I am referring to common mistakes that hiring managers make such as hiring friends, hiring on impulse and allowing our preferences or prejudices to get in the way. The worst one of these is hiring like “we did in the past” where companies are stuck in a hiring pattern as it worked in the past so “it has to work today”.
The market and business environment has changed and it is completely different from what it was in the past. This means that our past hiring criteria may need to be updated as some of the criteria may no longer be valid.
Let us take a look at what it means to hire the best and the brightest first, as this impacts everything we do in the hiring process.
1. Searching for the Best Candidate for that Job
Country boundaries these days are not that relevant. People are born in one country, educated in another and end up living in another country altogether. The book “third culture kids” sums up this trend. Anyone entrusted with a hiring responsibility needs to be able to embrace this and not restrict searches to a specific country or citizenship type. This would restrict the talent funnel and go against the overall goal of hiring the best and the brightest.
2. Casting a Wider Net
Besides running borderless searches, hiring managers need to recognise that their candidates may come from outside the company; they could be a competitor or an ex-employee. Some companies have a preference to promote from within or hire someone they “know”. If it is the aim of the company to have the best talent for the job, then they need to focus on keeping this as their primary aim and set up a clear and tangible criteria for hire. This then becomes the template against which all candidates can be evaluated in order to remain objective. It is also important to bear in mind that the ideal candidates could come from a different culture – not just company culture – this requires the hiring manager to look at people who are “not like us”.
This creates a certain degree of discomfort, but the current market conditions are uncomfortable to start with and it requires those who are entrusted with the important function of hiring and talent acquisition to think outside the box; be open and creative.
3. Identifying Someone who is Different from the Predecessor
Some companies find it hard to swallow this pill but hiring to fit the current needs means being able to hire best person for the job. 60% of university graduates in North America and Europe are women. Similar sort of statistics are prevalent in other parts and yet when we look at top management these days, this is not reflected. How can a company say that they are hiring the best and the brightest when they have a male dominated management team? More organisations are starting to embrace this. Piyush Gupta, CEO and Director, DBS Group, says “At the end of the day, it is not about creating processes to change women; it is about creating processes to change the company”.
4. Fast and Efficient Assessments
There many tools out in the market. Find one that fits your company’s need. Profile some of your top performers and identify traits that are similar amongst them. This is a useful shortlist tool. However, nothing beats the human touch; every now and then, challenge your assessment system and review to see if it is still relevant.
5. Taking Time yet Snagging them Fast
Sometimes we make rush decisions and this often backfires. Hiring senior talent takes time. Make sure that you give yourself enough time instead of making a fear based decision out of the urgency of the situation – It has been said that 40% of a person’s salary is the cost of having to let go someone after hiring them. I think it costs more than that if we consider morale and how it affects the team. However, once in touch with a talent, keep in mind that the process of evaluating them and the offer has to be quick and efficient so we do not lose them due to internal delays.
6. Educating the Existing Team to Accept the Change
There are other implications to the company that is often overlooked when organisations decide that they want to hire the best and the brightest. This has to do with the existing people within the organisation. Sometimes people get threatened as they may feel that they will eventually get replaced. There is also the whole topic of assimilation. Sometimes organisations don’t put enough thought to this and as such people struggle within organisations to accept new blood especially one that is different from the rest. HR people and senior leadership within companies must make it priority to on-board the new hire and prepare people who are within the organisation for this change. Bringing on board diverse teams can lead to dynamic environments and it requires skilled leadership to support team dynamics. So there is also the aspect of preparing leadership to manage the best and brightest. The same method of management may not work with people who know they are smart and are in demand.
Finally, other aspects like ethics and values, potential for growth, fit into company’s value system are also important considerations. Sometimes a very bright person may have intellectual smarts but not emotional intelligence and may lack the relationship skills needed within a matrix reporting structure. Hiring the best and brightest goes beyond the actual hiring process, it is easy to go out and locate good talent but whether we are able to get the best out of the talent raises the important question of how committed the leadership of an organisation is towards this goal. It is a whole company initiative, not one that is just confined to the talent acquisition team.