Leadership IQ

Collectively, we’re doing a lousy job of attracting great talent. That’s a tough thing to hear, especially since it happens to be true. But I didn’t say it first; you did — via the collective voice of your peers.

Over the past several months, Leadership IQ has been conducting one of the largest talent-management studies ever done. We’re looking at executives from more than 1,000 companies, folks strategically selected to represent every company size, every industry, and every major country. Our goal is to learn what’s working — and what’s not working — across the full talent management continuum (e.g. recruiting, hiring, developing, engaging, leading, retaining, etc.). It’s a massive undertaking that’s already presented us with tremendous amounts of information. And one thing that’s coming through loud and clear is that the current trends in recruiting definitely aren’t working.

One thing we asked the executives participating in the study to evaluate was their companies’ talent pipelines. And we asked them to consider in particular how successful they were in sourcing the following four categories of talent: executive, professional, technical and unskilled. The feedback we got, frankly, is not good at all, and here’s what I mean. For each of the four talent categories named above, fewer than 10% of the companies said they were doing an Excellent job at sourcing that talent. Uggh. And, at least 65% of the companies said they were Average or Below Average in sourcing talent in each of the four categories.

Now some people look at that 65% and say, “Huh, I could live with being average — it’s better than totally stinking.” And I guess to some extent that’s true; technically speaking, being average is better than totally stinking. But average isn’t good enough to get the talent you’re after. This is an issue I see so many organizations getting wrong that it’s worth taking a minute to really nail it down.

I don’t care if you’re hiring a housekeeper, an engineer, a nurse, or your next CEO; you want somebody in that role who “gets it” — who wants to be great at whatever they do. As a leader in your industry, it’s not your job to hire people that aren’t totally awful. It’s your job to hire high performers, the people who have the right skills and the right attitude to succeed at your organization. But the people you want to drive to your organization aren’t always going to come knocking on your door.

High performers aren’t looking for an average job opportunity, you know, a place to go five days a week just to kill some time and get a paycheck. They want more than that, they want ongoing success. They want a job where the culture fits their personality, and where there’s a clear path in front of them that always leads to being a high performer. But these great people aren’t just sitting around waiting for your call. Generally, they’re employed someplace else. Or even if they are in a career transition, you can bet they are going to carefully choose their next job, and not just jump at the first place that offers a steady paycheck.

Ok, you might get lucky and find that your next high performer is in a weakened negotiating position. Maybe he’s been out of work for a while or she’s just entering the workforce. Or maybe you found a true “diamond in the rough” that nobody else has discovered yet. But I wouldn’t make hope or luck the foundation of your talent strategy.

Thinking competitively is a pretty typical and, for the most part, accepted mindset in the sales world. You have competitors, and those competitors have customers that you most certainly will try to steal away. You’ll identify those customers, try to find where they’re hurting, figure out how to solve that pain, understand what drives their purchasing, hone your pitch, highlight your advantages and call, call, call. Welcome to Sales 101.

The thing is, we understand and even celebrate this need for competitive differentiation and pursuit in the world of sales. But when it comes to sourcing talent, we often operate as though there’s millions of high performers sitting around with nothing better to do than jump at our job ads. We act like all we have to do is describe our open positions and, voilá, the best of the best will be lined up outside our door.

It’s time to grasp the reality that unless you want to remain trapped forever in a world where fewer than 10% of leaders have “excellent” talent pipelines, you’re going to have to change the way you recruit for the talent you want.

Imagine you’re out on a date (it could be date night with your spouse, or a blind date with a total stranger, or whatever). Now, let’s say you really want to win that date over, become the only person in the room he or she can see or hear. We’re talking full-blown smitten here. How do you think you should start that date — by talking about yourself, or by talking about your date?

Now, almost everybody gets the right answer in the date scenario. Of course, you talk about your date. But here’s the shocker: In the world of recruiting, a place where you also want to quickly capture the positive attention of another person, almost everybody gets it wrong. And it’s destroying a lot of recruiting pitches.

Let me prove it to you. Over 90% of job ads begin with a paragraph like this:

ACME Corp. is a top-tier solutions firm that provides information technology, systems engineering and professional services to customers in the public and private sectors. With 30,000 professionals worldwide, the company has the customer knowledge, technical expertise and proven performance to manage large-scale, mission-critical IT programs. With fiscal year 2010 sales of $10 billion, ACME Corp. is the third-largest company in our industry. Our vision is to be our customers’ first choice in each and every market we serve. To earn our customers’ trust and meet their individual needs, we will provide valued solutions with the best prices, products and services that make our customers’ lives easier. But we’re not finished. We’re on our way to even bigger and better things. Providing superior customer service requires superior people.

Unless you’re attending a narcissist’s convention, this opening paragraph is terrible. You don’t even have to read every line to feel the automatic turn off. This ad is all about “you”: when you were founded, how many clients you have, how big you are, how many awards you’ve won, etc. In the blind-date equivalent of this ad, you’d be sitting alone at the bar before the first round of drinks arrived. It doesn’t matter if you are recruiting one person or a thousand; the only way to grab a high performer’s attention is to open your pitch by discussing the issues that matter to them, and whether or not you can meet their needs.

Neurologically speaking, the opening paragraph of your ad (the first few seconds you have someone’s attention) are the most important. It’s during these first precious moments that your audience forms their opinions about you, when their brains decide whether or not to allocate any more neurological energy to listening to what you have to say.

The lesson in all this is, whether you’re dating to find the perfect match or recruiting to find the perfect match, always start the interactions by talking about the other person and their interests. Let them know that you know what they want to hear about, that you are sensitive to what they want to gain from this interaction, and that you care about the same things that they care about. And if you don’t know what their interests are, do some research and figure it out.

This might sound like heresy, I know, but candidates really don’t care how long you’ve been in business or how many awards you’ve won — at least not right off the bat. Is somebody really NOT going to apply because you don’t have enough employees or awards? Are they really sitting there thinking, “Well, I would have applied, but they only have 30,000 employees and $10 billion in sales, and I have a strict rule that I will only work for companies with over 40,000 employees and over $15 billion in sales.”

People care about whatever they care about, so that’s what you need to give them in your job ad. Meet their needs, and you’ll attract them. Don’t and you won’t.