Do you know how I know you’re going to really enjoy this podcast conversation with Talent Partner & Qualified Mental Health First Aider Mischa Walmsley?
Here’s just a handful of reasons, off the top of my head:
Continue reading “Investing In Individuals, Teams, and Mental Health First Aid feat. Mischa Walmsley”Whether on the the battlefield or in business, victory — consistent, repeated victory — is achieved by teams of talented people.
But what is “talent”? How do you define it? How do you identify it? How do you even begin to know how to look for it?
In this episode, you’ll hear my conversation with Mike Sarraille and George Randle, the co-authors of the upcoming book “The Talent War: How Special Operations and Great Organizations Win on Talent”.
Continue reading “Talent + Leadership = Victory … With “The Talent War” Authors Mike Sarraille & George Randle”One thing that has become obvious in my time exploring the Recruiting & Hiring industry is how much of a disconnect there is between Job-Seekers and their potential Employers.
More often than not, this disconnect typically leads to a lot of distrust, blaming, finger-pointing, and more importantly: a LOT of confusion and a LOT of questions.
In this podcast episode I’ve decided to answer a handful of those questions I see frequently in one form or another, because clearly people aren’t getting answers yet.
Continue reading “Your Job Search Questions… Answered”One of the most confusing and confounding bad hires I ever made taught me my most important hiring AND leadership lesson.
I was a few months into my first executive role at a Startup here in Austin, and ensuring that we hired quality, talented Software Engineers was ultimately my responsibility.
We’d just hired a mid-level software engineer who’d come over from a much larger tech company, and while they were clearly bright and technically capable, after a few weeks it seemed like this hire might not have been a good decision.
Continue reading “My Most Valuable Leadership Lesson Came From My Greatest Hiring Failure”(If you love the Rebase podcast, please leave us a review at RateThisPodcast.com/rebase.
YOU are the KEY to helping more people discover a “Profession With Purpose”. The more people we can reach with the podcast, the larger and more meaningful a impact we can make, and reviews are the lifeblood of podcast exposure.)
Is your unspoken definition of “culture fit” actually hurting your organization?
Is it possible that your current approach in assessing a candidate’s ability to fit in your organization is actually hindering your growth and preventing your success? Can you clearly speak to what it exactly means to be a ‘culture fit’ in your environment?
Continue reading “The “Culture Fit” Fix”Are you a Startup or Small Business looking to hire, but feel like you’re wasting a ton of time and effort?
Or are you a Job-Seeker, getting sick and tired of submitting your resume dozens of times and hearing crickets?
Continue reading “Part II – Where To Find Your Next Great Hire (Or Your Next Great Job)”(The following techniques are cited in my book Hack Your Hiring: The Tactical Playbook To Find, Evaluate, and Hire A+ Talent, which gives you 75 PROVEN Strategies, Techniques, and Best Practices to solve any Hiring problem you might have… anything from defining an open position, to attracting & screening Applicants, to beating out other competing offers and closing the Candidate of your dreams.)
When it comes time to hire a new position, one of the first challenges you face as a leader is also one of the toughest: How do you describe what you need in this role? The responsibilities, skills, expertise you’re looking for in your perfect candidate?
A lot of bigger corporations will literally purchase Job Descriptions from other companies. While this may be ok for them, for small-to-medium sized businesses, your needs probably are more unique & specific, so a generic off-the-shelf JD is probably not going to cut it.
Use these three simple & straightforward techniques to produce a clear Job Description guaranteed to attract the right people.
Reach out to current teammates who you’d consider an A-Player with experience in a position similar to your open role.
Ask each teammate plainly about
Every Job and every Candidate is going to be unique in some fashion. However, no Job is so unique that it’s without ample comparative examples. By compiling a list of obstacles, strengths, and skills from the experience of others you trust, you start building a sort of composite avatar of your ideal Candidate.
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For each technical skill and intangible strength, grade the level of expertise using a method that clearly describes the ideal candidate’s level of competency & expertise.
Useful Frameworks to reference include:
The conventional method of conveying desired levels of expertise was born from the requirement of formal education (2-year / 4-year degree), and in most cases it has outlived its usefulness.
As an increasing percentage of the workforce becomes knowledge workers, the search for expertise hinges on the ability to find candidates who have actually grown and developed a level of expertise or mastery in various skills.
Unfortunately, spending years exercising a particular skill in no way guarantees that a worker increased her expertise in that skill.
Isn’t it true that someone who’s been driving a car for 10 years could still be a poor driver? Or that someone with a good teacher + some natural talent could be an excellent driver in her first few years behind the wheel?
Here’s a personal example: At the time I’m writing this, I am 37 years old. I have been using MS Excel and other spreadsheet software since the age of 10. The claim could be made, then, that I have 27 years of Excel experience, yet I will be the first person to admit that I am far from a Excel/Spreadsheet Expert.
Using a commonly-understand and explicit grading scale to describe levels of expertise is the best way to communicate — both internally and externally — what levels of proficiency are required to succeed in a particular role.
In addition to more clearly defining desired levels of Expertise for a role, classify the importance of a candidate exhibiting each skill to the desired level of Expertise. This can be as simple as classifying a skill as “Must-Have” / “Should-Have” / “Nice-to-Have”, or you could use a more complex ordering mechanism.
There is no position on earth where every desired competency is equally critical to achieving success in the role. Yet, Job Descriptions nearly always provide a list of skills that appear to be of equal importance (and are usually all required).
This can deter many otherwise-qualified job-seekers, while also inviting applications from unqualified candidates who don’t have a clear sense of which areas truly require a level of expertise vs those where familiarity or basic competence are acceptable.
It’s also important to recognize that an Applicant’s expertise in a particular area is constantly changing and would continue to change if they came to work for you. The Résumé they submit is a mere snapshot of a moment in time. If there are skills where “Expert” would be nice but “Intermediate” is Critical, it’s important to call this out.
A Hiring Manager who struggles to fill urgent roles almost always struggles precisely because he’s not explicitly clear — with himself and with others — which skills and skill-levels are critical, important, desirable, or simply a nice bonus.
Whenever we identify a Hiring need in our organization, a bunch of questions naturally come to mind:
Then there is the Question we almost never ask:
Continue reading “Where To Find Your Next Great Hire (Or Your Next Great Job) Part I”Employee Turnover has become an epidemic.
Every single year, Retention rates drop and Turnover seems to find a way to set a new record high.
Companies finally seem to be taking notice, too, and implementing so-called “Employee Retention measures” to reduce the costs and pain associated with high turnover. But are these tactics really effective?
Continue reading “Simple Employee Retention Strategies That Nobody Talks About”I spend a lot of time thinking about the Hiring space, specifically as it relates to the problems & challenges faced by smaller employers.
One of my favorite “Thinking Time” questions is
“What are the gaps between my customers’ needs and the products & services that are available?”
(for more on Thinking Time, see the must-read book The Road Less Stupid by Keith Cunningham)
Here are some of the key problems I observe in companies that are beyond that “scrappy bootstrapped” phase but without multiple consecutive years of impressive, steady growth.
Here are Early stages of an idea to fill these gaps. I’m not implementing this idea, mind you, simply brainstorming.
In sports (and other industries), organizations have talent scouts whose primary responsibility is to identify, evaluate and start building relationships with players the team may be interested in, whether now OR in the short-to-medium term future. The relationships they build keep the players as “warm leads” so the team can stay prepared and doesn’t get caught with its pants down needing to fill a particular position all of a sudden.
(It’s also worth noting that many large corporations dedicate full-time employees to the purpose of scouting.)
What I’m picturing is this provided as a subscription service targeted at smaller, time- and resource-constrained organizations.
The “Talent Scout” spends a little time with company leadership on a recurring basis to identify positions and skillsets they may need in the near future. They then connect the talent they meet with the company, but on a casual, low-pressure basis (this is the other problem for in-demand talent: Recruiters & Headhunters *can* be pushy & relentless, a huge turnoff). The Talent gets to know the Company, and if turnover or growth leads to an open spot, it could be filled rather quickly by someone on this bench.
For argument’s sake, let’s say Monthly Cost to the Employer is around $5–10k (could tier it based on number & type of positions or something), lower than almost any 15–25% Recruiter Fees on a single hire. Risk to the Employer is paying for months when they have zero need for hiring (which, given high average turnover rates, seems fairly low risk)
Benefits include the ability to better anticipate future staffing needs, reducing reactive behavior, shortening time-to-hire, less time & energy spent sourcing (and most likely for less $$ than an Agency).
Admittedly, there are bound to be a hundred holes in this idea, as I haven’t vetted it beyond the concept stage. I also haven’t researched a ton of comps, so maybe it’s the least original idea ever.
But for those of you in small-to-medium businesses, especially those on a Hiring Team, I’m curious to hear your thoughts.
Drop me a comment and let me know: Does any of this sound like it would be valuable, time-saving, effort-saving in your organization?
