Finding Great People Should Be a Top Priority, Especially in a Bad Economy

Ryan – great article!

At one of my former companies, we actually struggled with this. The best employees want to work for great companies – not mediocre ones. Do you have any insight into how you can not just recruit but actually retain great employees?

I've seen at least one organization become a revolving door for the best talent because they became frustrated within a year of joining.

- Chris

Thanks for the insights, Ryan. Coming from the other direction, I think it's important for job seekers to understand that in order to get hired in the current economic climate, they *must* be great people, not adequate or ordinary.

We just put up a post discussing Ryan's article over at The Recruiter: http://therecruiter.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/11/be-great-not-ordinary-grab-employers-attention.html

Let's not forget that it doesn't end with hiring. It's about hiring AND retaining the great people.

Great point, Rachel. And part of employee retention is not becoming too enamored and obsessed with "the new guys" that you forget the rest of the workforce. As for new hires, companies (and job seekers) would do well to focus on niche job boards with a more specialized audience, instead of appealing to the masses with general job boards.

Interesting. If you take the typical bell curve and call that the pool of applicants, you don't want to recruit the right tail, they'll likely leave within months. The people on the left tail aren't qualified. The mean is just average. What you want to recruit is the section just above the mean. They're intelligent and qualified enough that they'll produce good results, but they're not so good that they'll go start their own company or leave for another firm.

I can't recall the name of the test, but there's one that's done by some of the staffing agencies. They'll rank the applicant based on their aptitude to stay and work based on the type of job.

Excellent post!

So many companies will hire mediocre individuals because they don't cost as much or because they're less likely to shake things up. However what they fail to realize is that during a bad economy it is these great people that will come up with new ways to generate business, put in the extra time on projects, and help their company move the sales needle.

I can attest to the difficulty of finding great people. As an online resume writer, I have done my best to build a reputation for excellent work and heightened customer service. It has served me well for 13 years. But what I notice is that when I hire contract writers, the attention to detail is never the same. Also, if I let them work with the clients directly, they don't provide the same attention and customer service as I do. I guess no treats your customers the way that you do.

I am working on a training program at this time that should help me in communicating to my writers exactly what I expect from them in terms of writing style/quality and customer service. But the biggest value of this will be that I can eliminate dead weight and have a training program that will get new writers up to speed very quickly.

But you can be sure that no one leaves us unhappy … I personally see to that!

[...] Ryan rounds out the other half of our only blogging couple to make the top 10 list. Employee Evolution has been on every previous list of the Top 10 Gen Y blogs, and I don't envision it going anywhere, even with Healy's partner in crime, Ryan Paugh, taking a different route. Ryan's often the epitome of brazen and it definitely shines through in his posts and likely resonates with his audience. Here's a gem. [...]