Rumor has it that an economic recovery is underway. Maybe your employees haven’t ditched their chairs to sit on piles of cash (yet), but it’s at least evident from the slight uptick in the job market. If you’re fortunate enough to be adding to your teams this year, you’re probably doing so with great caution so getting the very best people matters more than ever.
Surely we all understand the costs — in lost productivity, morale and coffee — of making a disastrous hire. And most likely, your hiring skills are honed such that you can weed out these obvious stinkers during the initial interviews, if not before. The trick, though, is finding the truly great in a sea of good enough — finding a candidate who’s an indispensable game changer and not just another competent game player.
In my experience, it’s not dumb luck, but rather a combination of a rigorous process, an investment of effort and creativity, and a willingness to trust your gut (but only if it has largely served you well in the past. Otherwise, trust someone else who has a better one).
Here are a few proven tricks to jumpstart your talent scouting efforts:
1. Invest care and creativity in your job description.
If you’re using dry, boilerplate job descriptions, get ready to read lots of dry, boilerplate applications. Instead of viewing your job description as a classified ad, think of it as a marketing effort aimed at your ideal future employees. They’re not going to work for you, let alone apply to work for you, let alone even read your job description, if it doesn’t speak to them. Also, when you put time and effort into your postings, you’ll be pleased to see that great candidates do the same, and then it’s much easier to pick them out of the clutter.
2. Require cover letters and weigh them heavily.
Thanks to the Internet and fancy Word templates, anyone can crib together a smart-looking resume. But a compelling, thoughtful and well-written cover letter — those tend to come only from bright, interesting people. Great writing skills are an asset in any position, so it’s safe to assume that if people can’t craft an engaging page about themselves for a job they want, they’re not going to be any more engaging when, say, communicating with one of your customers. The time you spend reading all of those cover letters is time you won’t spend interviewing a bunch of duds. Candidates won’t do it, you fear? They will if they are humble, committed, caring and interested people, which are key characteristics of a true rock star employee.
