Game Changing Talent Strategies

1. Game Changing Talent Strategies

2. “Are they going to fall in love with Apple? Because if they fall in love with Apple, everything else will take care of itself.” - Steve Jobs, Apple

3. Talent innovation… Just because big players such as Google & Apple have million dollar budgets, it doesn’t mean as an SME you can’t utilise some of their talent strategies to attract your own game changers. The key to talent innovation is being different to your competitors and knowing the value of an outstanding hire vs an average one. Google once estimated this to be 300 x productivity!

4. Be Inspirational like Apple Steve Jobs understood that in order to attract the best people, Apple needed to have an inspirational talent brand and passionate people. The best people are attracted to the best companies. Showcase why your company stands out with a strong brand and inspiring vision. Focus only on recruiting people who are passionate about your business. In addition to passion, think innovation. Your company does not need average people – it needs the best. For this you need to focus on recruiting “purple squirrels”. A purple squirrel is an extremely talented and sought after hire. Apple’s hire of Tony Fadell, the concept creator of the MP3 at Phillips, is a key example of a purple squirrel hire. Apple recruited Fadell to bring innovation and expertise which resulted in creation of the iPod. Not only did this single hire net Apple billions in revenue, it also weakened their competition, and paved the way for future innovation within the company and their product line. Purple squirrel hiring truly means focussing on recruiting one really talented person instead of a few average ones. This strategy significantly increases productivity and revenue. If you are interested in learning more about this concept, and how you can implement it within your business, you can also download our Purple Squirrel Hiring resource.

5. “The most talented people on the planet have way more options than they used to….that’s why it becomes even more important to create a kind of workplace where those people want to be.” - Lazlo Bock, Google

6. Value your Talent like Google In addition to being one of the most successful companies in the world, Google consistently rank highly as being one of the best places to work – that is no coincidence. In order to recruit the best, you need to invest time in the selection process. Google invests an average of 8 hours interviewing per hire. This consists of a mix of telephone screening, peer interviewing, testing and management assessment. It is important to plan recruitment processes and allocate sufficient time in order to find the best people through your selection process. Google also demonstrate the value they place on their staff through their creative benefits structure. They craft their benefits around not just reward, but also business collaboration and creativity. Some examples include: 20% time (employees are given 20% of their working time to pursue work projects that are of particular interest to them); holistic therapies to reduce stress; weekly TGIF events; on site fitness and health activities; staff recognition incentives. Many companies believe that to create a great benefits structure they need to spend a lot of money – this is not always the case. For a simple process ask your employees what is important to them, and then look at your budget and give as much of it to them as you can. In addition to their great benefits, Google also ensure that their employees feel valued and motivated throughout their career. Their staff development process centres around four core values: interesting work; continuous learning; continuous challenge and feeling of value. Every position from senior management to support staff is crafted to ensure that these four elements are always at the core of their work. The key to recruiting and retaining top candidates? Make them feel valued. When developing your recruitment and retention processes it is important that the value of your staff is core to your strategy.

7. Build Relationships like Facebook Facebook takes a proactive approach to talent acquisition and focuses on building relationships with desired talent rather than cold, reactive recruiting. This process can often take longer to turn a relationship into a hire but by building strong relationships with top talent you can stay ahead of the competition and truly get to know a potential recruit before making an offer. At Duo, we build talent pools for our clients who don’t have time or resource in-house. If you want to build this in-house, some ideas would be to create a talent group on social media, an in-house database, or a network of regular events and attendees. Take time to really get to know your desired candidates and when the time is right, approach them about opportunities within your business.

8. “A great workplace is stunning colleagues” - Netflix

9. Challenge the traditions like L’Oreal In order to build game changing strategies you often have to flip traditional talent strategies on their head. L’Oreal – Creative Recruiting - L’Oreal revamped its recruiting strategy and took direct sourcing from number seven in the ways they source, to number one. In order to do this, they had to think outside the box. They applied their company ethos, as a company that has created many “firsts” in the beauty industry, to their recruiting strategy. Instead of using traditional mediums such as visuals or text, L’Oreal’s recruitment strategy uses the medium of sound. They built a career profile on SoundCloud and uploaded recordings of internal conversations. They then took this further by inviting employees, potential candidates and followers to share what inspires them via the platform. This not only created its own content but also resulted in a huge follower base, and inevitably, candidates in the pipeline. Rather than telling people about their employer value proposition like traditional recruitment, they simply showed what makes them different and innovative.

10. Challenge the traditions like Netflix Netflix – Freedom Culture Netflix caused a stir when they published their Freedom & Responsibility Culture document online. Their culture and “nonpolicy” approach displays many benefits that challenge traditional culture and performance management strategies. Netflix manages its culture and people through a couple of core pillars: by recruiting only “fully formed adults” and “outstanding employees”; and by all employees agreeing to always “act in the best interest of Netflix”. By recruiting and managing staff in this way, Netflix created “a culture of creativity and self discipline, freedom and responsibility.” Through this culture, Netflix have an unlimited vacation policy, no time tracking, no set expense policy, management that uses context not control and ultimately a business full of high performing employees. In order to recruit top candidates, you have to think outside of the box and not just use the traditional methods. Because they trust their employees to make responsible decisions, they give them plenty of freedom. While many companies feel that policies and processes are imperative to success, Netflix does not. They believe that strict processes actually curtail innovation and do not allow companies to adapt quickly to market changes, which is optimal for long-term success. Think about how you can craft your recruitment strategy to stand out like L’Oreal, or how you can showcase your company culture, like Netflix, to attract and retain great people.

11. Contact us… Hopefully this resource has provided you with some ideas of how you can adapt game changing talent strategies for your business. If you would like to talk to us more about creative talent strategies we would love to hear from you! You can email us directly on: info@duogloblalconsulting.com