Tips to Attract the Best Talent for Your Team.
Coming From the Eyes of the Talent that You are Trying to Attract.
Good help is so hard to find, right? We have all heard it before, but when you think about that expression for a second or two, you start to realize that it just makes pure sense.
Easy and good almost never go in hand. If you want something good, you are going to have to work for it. If you want something really good… work hard for it.
So yes, good help is hard to find, but it isn’t difficult to find. You need to know how to attract higher quality candidates for the jobs that you are trying to fill, and maybe that isn’t as difficult as some may find it.
1.) Stop Looking for Good, Fast, and Cheap.
There is this old concept that I used to see floating around the internet that explains that when you are buying a product (or maybe a service) you can pick any two of these three elements, but you will not get the third.
Anything thats:
- Good and fast, won’t be cheap.
- Good and cheap, won’t be fast.
- Fast and cheap, won’t be good.
Realistically, the same concept goes for hiring talent. If you want high quality talent that will do their work in a timely manner, you won’t get it cheap.
If you want work done in a timely manner for a low cost, you won’t get high quality work.
And lastly, if you want high quality work that’s done for a low cost, you won’t see anything getting done in a timely manner. Actually, with this one, you might just not find it at all.
Remember that this is just an analogy to help you understand how to attract better talent.
When it comes to actually hiring and working with other people, there are a lot more elements that come into the game like the candidate’s character and their experience.
You can’t have everything you’ve ever wanted in an employee, but the closest you can have is everything except for low-cost. If you want good help, then pay for it.
So What’s the Advice?
The advice here is this,
Keep yourself fully aware of why you hire the people that you do, or why you work with the people that you do. Be honest.
Always keep your reasoning for hiring someone in mind as time moves along, and bring it back to the front of your mind when you are considering budget costs, pay cuts, layoffs, etc.
If you hired a candidate because they are high quality and get things done in a timely manner, odds are that they aren’t going to stick around after seeing a substantial pay cut.
2.) Understand That They Know What They Do, Better Than You Know What They Do.
THIS is a point that comes up a lot for freelancers. I’ve seen it myself doing freelance production work, and have also known this to be a common issue for freelance writers too. It has to be an issue for all freelance talent.
To put it in short, there is a huge issue with smaller companies and/or startups trying to scrape up freelancers to do work for them, underpay them, and then also tell them that they are doing the work wrong.
Business owners, please… Always remember that the reason you are hiring someone in the first place is because you need their knowledge and expertise on the matter. Writers aren’t looking for clients to teach them how to write…
Imagine hiring an accountant to help you with your taxes, and then telling them exactly how everything would be done. Would that save you any money on taxes? No! That defeats the entire purpose of the hire.
So treat hiring employees and building a team the same way. Don’t add anyone to the roster unless you actually want that person on the roster.
The Advice Here, is to Give That Guy a Shot.
Basically, don’t micromanage. When you hire new talent, look for people that look like they are ambitious and ready to work with you. Those are the people that are going to try to do the best job, and if the very first project they crank out isn’t a huge hit… don’t sweat it. Let them learn and grow.
Remember, people always want to do a good job, and they always do what they think is right. The common mistake is to hire the guy that has oodles of experience and is basically just going through the motions now. That guy doesn’t give a care in the world about your project. You’ll find better help from the guy that wants to work with you, and has the opportunity to grow with you. Give people opportunities.
3.) Hire. On. Character.
I’ll try not to beat a dead horse on this last point, but it is so important that you build your team with character as the priority.
As an organization, you should have a mission, you should have goals, and you should have values. When you are looking to build a team, keep all of those things front and center in your mind.
The best candidates will be the ones that have alignment with your mission and your values. That immediately provides a sense of purpose to the individual, and that’s perhaps the strongest factor in whether or not that individual will stick around and work with the company.
Lastly, individuals with strong character will have absolutely no problem building the necessary skills to do the job. That comes with time, patience, and work.
On the flip side, people with strong skills will have a problem changing their character. They will also be more likely to feel victimized by you, as their employer, and cause HR problems within the organization. Demanding higher pay, or threatening to leave, without very good reasoning to back it up.
The advice here is the heading itself. Hire on character.
Final Words.
I’ve been doing freelance work for a short while now, and whenever I am looking for new clients, I am always looking for whether or not the relationship will be a good fit based on what I can provide in terms of my character.
If I see a job posting for podcast production, I already know that there are plenty of people out there that can do the podcast production. When analyzing the job, I instead look to see if the project is something that needs a consistent, timely, and cooperative freelancer to get the job done. That’s where I come in.
I also look at the character of the client, to see if they are a good fit. I will not work with podcasts that are not committed to continuing on with their project, or that seem like they are jut “testing the waters” with podcasting. It is important to understand as a freelancer that you can reject and fire clients as needed. It really helps in a lot of cases.
All of this in a nutshell is to say that I believe that professional relationships should be built around character, values, mission, and the like. Simply matching up hard skills to jobs that need them never seems to end well, and undervalues all of the people involved in these projects.
Putting more time and effort into creating good working relationships hold this magical sort of power that will make everyone better at what they do. Try it out.
