The objective of every smart leader is to surround herself with a team of bright and committed people. To achieve and then scale sustainable competitive advantage, you need to hire (and keep) those with the potential to grow. That’s always been the indisputable imperative of every successful organization. Talent fuels the mission and makes the vision achievable. Without star performers, you’re destined to perish. Indeed, today’s tight labour market gives employers a once-in-a-generation opportunity to rethink their recruiting strategies. (Though the principles apply, the course does not focus on junior staff nor C-suite personnel. Rather, it deals with everyone in between – knowledge workers and managers.)
Unfortunately, few enterprises today have mastered the art of recruiting and retaining the best. And “the great resignation” has made the challenge more difficult. Worse, they can be clueless when it comes to ridding themselves of mediocre employees without unintended consequences. Industry-specific knowledge is no longer among the top five attributes sought. You can always rent the hard skills that demand specialized expertise but you must buy the requisite soft skills in those you intend to develop and keep. The goal is to hire for what can’t be taught but that will make all the difference to your continuing success.
Bad hiring is common. Overwhelmed by a pressing need and tight time lines to choose the right person, interviewers too often use same-old questions that reveal little about what they really need to know. The answers given to cookie-cutter questions rarely unearth the traits and potential every organization so desperately needs. Worse, they nudge candidates to respond with canned, sometimes deceitful confabulations that fit what employers assume make great employees. Hence, most recruitment efforts tend to rely on biased, knee-jerk emotional judgments. And, too late, they acknowledge their failure to build talent.
Knowing how to rehabilitate or remove the bad apples is critical to the ongoing health of your business. Among the questions you need to ask and answer are these: Why do our extraordinary employees leave us and how can we change that? How do we manage people who know they’re indispensable? How can we keep the ones we have to retain? Should we hire ex-employees? Are there novel recruitment practices of which we are unaware? How do we hire for the remote/hybrid workplace? Do we have innate hiring biases that imperil our ability to recruit the talent we need? What’s the right and wrong way to build talent muscle that delivers what our clients are asking for?
Topic outline:
❏ Genesis, caveats and the great resignation
❏ Who are the best and what do they want?
❏ Why bad hiring is common and what it costs
❏ Defining the ideal candidate for your business
❏ What capabilities matter in today’s marketplace?
❏ Should you hire boomerang or ex-employees?
❏ Hire or promote from within: How to decide?
❏ The pros and cons of owning vs. renting talent
❏ Interviewing: How, why and what to look for
❏ Virtual interviewing: The pluses and minuses
❏ The questions to ask to determine truthfulness
❏ Does personality testing work in recruitment?
❏ Novel ideas for finding the star performers
❏ Reference checks, decision time and the offer
❏ Three things to know about compensation
❏ Understanding Non-competes and NDAs
❏ Retention: Why people leave in the Covid era
❏ The primary predictor of productivity & loyalty
❏ What employees seek & what managers believe
❏ What independents want & how to retain them
❏ How to keep the indispensables at home longer
❏ Dealing with under-performers & counteroffers
❏ Rehabilitate or terminate: The process for each
❏ Protecting intellectual property & key clients
❏ Learning from the experience: Do’s and don’ts
This webinar includes a Pre-course Workbook and supplemental notes.