How to find top talent and attract them to your company

For recruiters and entire HR departments, the search for new IT talent is literally like looking for a needle in a haystack. Large and small companies face the same problem: applicants who they find through their own HR department or paid job ads are not qualified enough. Or – even worse – no applications come in at all. Even the leading companies in employer branding know this problem.

Everyone racks their brains over the same question

How do we get the best developers to apply to us and not to the competition?

How to identify top talent

In order to be able to fulfill this wish, you must first identify which qualities make such talent – an A-player – at all. Geoff Smart and Randy Street suggest the following definition in their book “Who: The A Method for Hiring”:

“An A-player is a candidate who has a 90% chance of getting into the top 10% of employees.”

This definition contains 2 important components that characterize such an A-player: On the one hand, the ability to be in the top 10% and on the other hand a very high probability of being able to achieve this in the specific position.

How many frogs do you think you’ll have to kiss before your A-Player wish is granted?

Here the sad truth: Jeff Hyman proves in his book “Recruit Rockstars – The 10 Step Playbook to find Winners and ignite your Business” that, according to a study by IQ Leadership, 46% of new hires are no longer with the company after 18 months and only 19 % (!) of new hires meet or even exceed the expectations placed on them and are therefore a clear success in hiring. Yes, you read that right: a measly 19%.

But the statistics reveal another sad truth: 35% turn out to be B-players. You wouldn’t hire them again – but if they’re already there …

But why do you need A-players? Can’t you compensate for the performance gap simply with practice and good training? Not really! Because designing training is just as difficult. So difficult that a study by Tim Baldwin and Kevin Ford concluded that while hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on training each year in the US, no more than 10% of that spend actually transfers to work improvements. A study by Scott Tannenbaum and Gary Yukl even came to the result that only 5% actually apply what they have learned. Laszlo Bock found for Google that it was almost impossible to turn an average B-player into an A-player. Your chances are therefore rather bad.

It is precisely for this reason that the great company founders, leaders, and executives have always devoted their greatest attention to the search for talent. Jack Welch – named “Manager of the Century” by US magazine Fortune and described by many as the best manager of all time – and his protégé Larry Bossidy are known for having given this search top priority and half of their time.

What do all A-players have in common? They are ambitious, constantly want to learn, and get better. An A-player is someone who would be enthusiastically reinstated by previous employers and whom their former team members would still look up to years later and follow to a new company without hesitation. You don’t need to impose any tasks on him, because he is always looking for new challenges. He doesn’t make up excuses, just a way to get his job done and move your business forward. Solving problems is the daily bread of the A-Player. He doesn’t just think outside the box, he rather wonders why there should be a box at all.

The chances of hiring an A-player are diminished by one circumstance: The entire hiring concept is subject to a mistake of thought. A-players do not cavort on job boards and do not read job advertisements. Because: they already have a job. Did you forget? – They are A players.

Again and again, candidates report to headhunters that they have never applied for a job – despite many years of professional experience in various companies. The positions were always “brought” to them.

The fact is

THE BEST TALENTS DON’T APPLY. THEY MUST BE FOUND.

How to find top talent

You probably already know that an important and extremely effective way is to generate recommendations from the personal network of existing employees.

Pat Ryan once said that every time he meets someone new he asks, “Who are the most talented people you know that I should hire?” If talent is not already recommended by everyone, give this tip a try!

As important as recommendations from outside your company, nothing is a better strategy than recommendations from your own employees. After all, who knows your corporate culture and the values ​​it embodies better than them?

A. EMPLOYEE REFERRALS

Employer branding is the trend word of the hour. But there is actually only one thing behind the many flowery words and videos: satisfied employees recruit new employees. And be honest? If you would not warmly recommend your own advertised position to your best friend, why should your employees think otherwise? The basic requirement is therefore that you create a corporate culture that lets your employees do nothing but go out into the world and shout out loud: “I work in the best company in the world, come join us!”

Communicate that every employee will benefit from having great talent around them. Because in the end, everyone is in the same boat, right?

Guy Kawasaki, who was responsible for the marketing of the MacIntosh in the early days of the Apple Group, quoted a statement by Steve Jobs as follows in a sentence that has since been reproduced like a prayer wheel by almost every HR manager: “A-players hire A-players; B-players set C-players ”. One may consider this sentence to be correct or controversial, but there is certainly a grain of truth in the fact that it takes an A-player to be able to recognize another A-player.

So ask your best employees what outstanding talents they know and you will see: A-players know enough other A-players. Because they love to work by their side.

B. ACTIVE SOURCING

The other buzzword of the hour is active sourcing. This is primarily a synonym for the targeted search and approach in social media of talents who are not actively looking because they are not fundamentally dissatisfied with their current employer.

According to a study by LinkedIn Talent Trends, around 60% of users are generally willing to change, while only 12% are actively looking for a new job. In the so-called war for talent, the majority of IT talents are contacted daily by at least one recruiter or headhunter. As self-protection, many have therefore passed over to clearing their profiles on LinkedIn from keywords in order to keep the inexperienced recruiters at bay.

However, experienced IT recruiters always find a way to find the best IT talent. The experienced IT sourcer and recruiter Jiri Herodek shows in his lecture “Tools to legally find candidates who don’t want to be found” how you can find the best candidates on GitHub and Stack Overflow using Octohunt, Git Awards, and Data Stack Exchange. Developers move in their natural realms, so to speak, without being constantly courted by recruiters. Dozens of tools such as Talentwunder, AmazingHiring, and Pocket Recruiter can support you, but in the end, the work of choosing always remains with you.

Since there are so many recruiters on LinkedIn, it is also much easier to contact candidates by email and refer to their GitHub or Stack Overflow profile.

Other tools are used for talent pipeline automation. These can help you to draw the attention of talents to you and to slowly introduce them to you. This process can automatically extend over several weeks or even months. Candidates are suggested by you for example after events. They receive selected and personalized emails and are thus more and more enthusiastic about your company. If you finally address them actively, they will identify to a large extent with your company and are ready to be poached by you.

Certainly one task in choosing the right tools is to find the right one for you and your budget. Small and medium-sized businesses naturally find it difficult to handle 5-digit amounts for recruiting software and invest the time to implement the processes.

If you use all of these strategies, you won’t have to start searching when you have vacancies. You will already have a few candidates in mind that are eligible. And these candidates will all be A-players!

However, there is one thing you should take to heart: the more subject-specific a position and the less often it is filled, the more it makes sense to seek professional help.

You probably already know that an important and extremely effective way is to generate recommendations from the personal environment of existing employees.

Pat Ryan once said that every time he meets someone new he asks, “Who are the most talented people you know that I should hire?” If talent is not recommended by everyone, give this tip a try but once off!

As important as recommendations from outside your company can be, nothing is a better strategy than recommendations from your own employees. After all, who knows your corporate culture and the values ​​it embodies better than it?

A. EMPLOYEE REFERRALS

Employer branding is the trend word of the hour. But there is actually only one thing behind the many flowery words and videos: satisfied employees recruit new employees. And be honest? If you would not warmly recommend your own advertised position to your best friend, why should your employees think otherwise? The basic requirement is therefore that you create a corporate culture that lets your employees do nothing but go out into the world and shout out loud: “I work in the best company in the world, come join us!”

Communicate that every employee will benefit from having great talent around them. Because in the end everyone is in the same boat, right?

Guy Kawasaki , who was responsible for the marketing of the MacIntosh in the early days of the Apple Group, quoted a statement by Steve Jobs as follows in a sentence that has since been reproduced like a prayer wheel by almost every HR manager : “A-players hire A-players; B-players set C-players ” . One may consider this sentence to be correct or controversial, but there is certainly a grain of truth in the fact that it takes an A-player to be able to recognize another A-player.

So ask your best employees what outstanding talents they know and you will see: A-players know enough other A-players. Because they love to work by their side.

B. ACTIVE SOURCING

The other buzzword of the hour is active sourcing. This is primarily a synonym for the targeted search and approach in social media of talents who are not actively looking because they are fundamentally not dissatisfied with their current employer.

According to a study by LinkedIn Talent Trends, around 60% of users are generally willing to change, while only 12% are actively looking for a new job. In the so-called war for talent, the majority of IT talents are contacted daily by at least one recruiter or headhunter. As a self-protection, many have therefore passed over to clearing their profiles on LinkedIn from keywords in order to keep the inexperienced recruiters at bay.

However, experienced IT recruiters always find a way to find the best IT talent. The experienced IT sourcer and recruiter Jiri Herodek shows in his lecture “Tools to legally find candidates who don’t want to be found” how you can find the best candidates on GitHub and Stack Overflow using Octohunt , Git Awards and Data  Stack Exchange can find . There developers move in their natural realms, so to speak, without being constantly courted by recruiters. Dozens of tools such as Talentwunder, AmazingHiring and Pocket Recruiter can support you, but in the end the work of choosing always remains with you.

Since there are so many recruiters on LinkedIn, it is also much easier to write to candidates by email and refer to their GitHub or Stack Overflow profile.

Other tools are used for talent pipeline automation. These can help you to draw the attention of talents to you and to slowly introduce them to you. This process can automatically extend over several weeks or even months. Candidates are suggested by you for example events, receive selected and personalized emails and are thus more and more enthusiastic about your company. If you finally address them actively, they will identify to a large extent with your company and are ready to be poached by you.

Certainly one task in choosing the right tools is to find the right one for you and your budget. Small and medium-sized businesses naturally find it difficult to handle 5-digit amounts and invest the time to implement the processes.

If you use all of these strategies, you won’t have to start searching when you have vacancies. You will already have a few candidates in mind that are eligible. And these candidates will all be A-players!

However, there is one thing you should take to heart: the more subject-specific a position and the less often it is filled, the more it makes sense to seek professional help.

Passive candidates have several advantages

More motivation: Once you have been able to persuade passive candidates to switch, it is because of a challenge that they currently lack. They will do everything possible to prove to you and yourself that they are capable of it.

More impact: According to a LinkedIn study, passive candidates are 120% more likely to want to make a difference.

How to win top talent

Due to the great interest in IT talents, their callousness is also very high. You have to come up with something to arouse the interest of potential candidates. Simply offering a job is no longer enough. You have to get the candidates excited and convince them why they should listen to you and work for you. So take a close look at their publications, the GitHub projects, and the Stack Overflow profile of the respective candidate. Find interesting projects, shared technologies, and visions. But above all: be interested in the personality behind the candidate!

Even Dale Carnegie – who made dealing with people his life’s work and whose course diploma even Warren Buffet still proudly wears in his study as one of his most important achievements – taught in “How to make friends” that the art lies in the fish to lure with a bait that he likes.

His namesake Andrew Carnegie – the great steel tycoon – also learned early on that you have to speak of what others would like to have if you want to influence them. His sister-in-law is said to have been very worried about her two sons. They were so preoccupied with their own business in New York that they did not think of writing home and paid no heed to their mother’s pleading letters. Andrew Carnegie made a bet that he could get the two boys to write by return mail without even asking. The bet was accepted and Carnegie wrote his nephew a friendly letter in which he casually mentioned that he put five dollars in the envelope for every five dollars – a lot of money at the time. Then he “accidentally” sent the letter without the promised enclosure. The answers arrived immediately. “Thank you dear Uncle Andrew for this letter, but unfortunately” … You probably know the rest of the sentence!

So don’t think so much about what you would like. Rather, think about what the candidates want in your next cover letter. Appreciate their time, only make them offers that you would consider in their position, and personalize your messages.

You will be amazed by how many people listen to you through this. A-players in particular are always looking for new challenges! Your job is only to offer them! Almost all A-players will listen if you are interested in them and offer them a vision and perspective that might suit them. Try it!

DEFINE THE ROLE

There is no such thing as an “egg-laying woolly milk pig” A-player. Even the best A-player cannot master all roles in a company equally well. Therefore, before you even begin your search, always think about how you would define and quantify success in a specific role. If you were to look back at a candidate’s record in 2 years, what would it look like? Which qualifiable and quantifiable goals would he or she have achieved?

All the great headhunters – from Geoff Smart to Jeff Hyman – will give you the same advice on this: Create a scorecard with 5 to 10 core competencies for a potential candidate and use it in every subsequent interview for that position. Rate each applicant in the required core competency in a 1-10 rating system, with only a 9 and 10 being an A-player rating.

Candidates with a rating of 7 to 8 are considered A-Player potential. Any candidate below 7 should be eliminated from the process. Remember, you are looking for an A-player and you can no longer settle for less.

Equally important, if not even more important, is the organizational and cultural fit. However, these are not simply the same principles that you listed in the corporate mission statement or in the general list of values. Rather, it is about the actual personality traits that your current A-players have in common. This is their DNA. It is their core personality. Google calls this DNA “googleyness”. These are certain personality traits that have been ingrained since childhood and that cannot easily be changed (such as the attitude towards work, how to deal with challenges, how to deal with criticism, and other opinions). If these characteristics are not closely aligned with your company’s DNA, you run the risk of damaging your culture.

The fundamental difference between DNA and competencies is that competencies and skills can be improved, but DNA cannot. It fits or it doesn’t.

It is also important that you understand that the DNA of an A-player is fundamentally different from that of others. For example, all A-players strive for self-actualization and have a deep desire to face challenges and find fulfillment in what they do.

In a sense, you can think of DNA as the essence and soul of your business. It regulates which actions and settings are expected, which behavior is desired, how employees should interact, and how information is distributed. While this DNA can evolve as your business grows, it is important that you make sure that your employees always match the current DNA of your company.

STRUCTURE AND STANDARDIZE JOB INTERVIEWS

Tricia Prickett and Neha Gada-Jain, two psychology students at the University of Toledo, report in a study they carried out together with their professor Frank Bernieri that the result can be predicted in the first 10 seconds of an interview. For this purpose, actual job interviews were recorded on video and assessed by students only on the basis of the first impression. The only problem with this is that those predictions from the first 10 seconds are useless.

Because the rest of the interview is all about confirming what we think of someone, rather than actually evaluating them. This is called confirmatory bias, which is the tendency to seek, interpret, or prioritize information in a way that confirms one’s beliefs or hypotheses. Based on the slightest interaction, we make quick, unconscious judgments that are heavily influenced by our existing prejudices and beliefs. Without realizing it, we then switch from evaluating a candidate to looking for evidence to confirm our first impression.

In other words, most interviews are wasted time as 99.4% of the time is spent confirming the impression the interviewer got in the first ten seconds.

But which interview technique works?   Laszlo Bock apologized in the run-up to his book publication for the case interviews and brainteasers used by many companies – and sometimes by Google too. These include problems such as: “Estimate how many gas stations there are in Manhattan.” Or: “How many golf balls would fit in a 747?”. One of our personal favorite hate questions is: “Where do you see yourself in 5 years?”  The answers to which no one is really served.

Performance on such questions is, at best, a skill that can be improved with practice, rendering it useless in assessing candidates. In the worst case, they rely on trivial information or knowledge that is withheld from the candidate. The main purpose of these is to make the interviewer feel smart and complacent. It is difficult or impossible to predict how these candidates will perform in a job.

Back in 1998, Frank Schmidt and John Hunter published a meta-analysis of 85 years of research on how well ratings predict performance. They examined 19 different assessment techniques and found that typical, unstructured job interviews were pretty poor at predicting how someone would behave after being hired. However, they are still used.

Unstructured interviews can only explain 14% of an employee’s performance. This is somewhat ahead of the informative value of reference tests (7%) and the number of years of professional experience (3%).

The best prediction of a person’s performance in a job is assured by a work sample test (29%). This includes giving applicants an example of a task that is similar to the task they would do on the job and having their performance on it evaluated. This is one reason why coding challenges have their right to exist. Even these cannot predict performance perfectly, however, since actual performance also depends on other skills (e.g. how well the candidates ultimately work together with others, adapt to uncertainties, and learn).

The second-best performance predictors are tests of general cognitive ability (26%). In contrast to case interviews and brain teasers, these are actual tests with defined correct and incorrect answers, similar to IQ tests. They are predictive because general cognitive skills include the ability to learn, and the combination of intelligence and the ability to learn makes most people successful in most professions.

Structured interviews (26%), in which candidates are asked a consistent series of questions with clear criteria for assessing the quality of the answers, are just as predictive. There are two types of structured interviews: behavioral and situational interviews. In behavioral interviews, candidates are asked to describe previous successes and compare them with the requirements of the current job (for example, “Tell me about the last time you faced a difficult problem. How did you proceed? What would you do differently today?” …? “ ). Situation interviews represent a job-related hypothetical situation (“What would you do if …?”). A good interview is characterized by the fact that the interviewer deals in depth with the thought processes behind the stories told by the candidate. Because past behavior can be used to draw conclusions about future behavior. Especially if you combine this with the candidate’s ability to reflect and learn. Try to understand the essence of the candidate, understand their mindset, and anticipate their behavior for your company.

Structured interviews are a good predictive tool even for jobs that are themselves unstructured. Google also found that both candidates and interviewers have a better experience and that these interviews are considered the fairest.

Then why aren’t more companies using them, you might be wondering. Well, because they are difficult to develop: they have to be worked out first, tested extensively, and it must also be ensured that the interviewers adhere to them (Google does this through a kind of peer review). And then you also need to keep updating them so candidates don’t compare notes and just memorize the best answers.

Google itself even combines behavioral and situational interviews with tests of general cognitive skills, conscientiousness, and leadership skills.

So there is a lot of work going into a good interview process, but the alternative is to waste the time on an unstructured interview and relying on gut instinct. Are you sure you want to pay for it with so much wasted time? After all, you might as well break off each interview after 10 seconds and save both you and the candidate the remaining 59 minutes and 50 seconds.

Only if you incorporate this structure into your interview you can ultimately trust your gut feeling. Because you have completely screened out the subjective factors beforehand.

In the end, recruiting is an art – it’s all about human interaction, intuition, and anticipation – but without the scientific and well-founded basics, you cannot go about the search for the best IT talent. If Michelangelo had not learned the basics and working methods of sculpture in years of training, then today the appearance of the famous David would hardly be admired by visitors from all over the world.

So you create comparability and structure and above all one thing: A welcome and positive atmosphere in the conversation. Not every candidate fits into your company – and that’s a good thing and just as important to find out – but you can dismiss anyone from the interview with the feeling that they would like to work for you. Because Warren Buffett once said: “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and 5 minutes to destroy it.”

Most candidates report that their last really positive memory of an interview was a long time ago. Sell ​​first, screen second! First, sell your vision – always remember that A-players are mostly passive candidates and therefore not necessarily dependent on your offer – you can always reject them later! In any case, your goal must be: to be remembered as positively as possible. Because in the worst case the specific A-player rejects the offer but recommends another suitable A-player. Never forget that at stake for the candidates is always more than for you. You may have a large number of employees, but each candidate only has one job.

Hiring people is an art, not a science, and resumes can't tell you whether someone will fit into a company's culture.

Howard Schultz

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