Hanging With the Cool Kids In The Talent Pool - Winners Hang With Winners...

When I was a little guy, my mom used to tell me to choose my friends wisely.  Cue the Forest Gump audio - "my momma always said life was like a box of chocolates".  Like any kid, I thought my mom was full of it, and I only wanted to hang out with the cool kids.  Of course, my mom was right in her admonishment to choose carefully when it came to friends.  A little incident involving me setting an abandoned farm building on fire with Greg Ensign should have been my first clue that she was right.  But I had to experience many more incidents, some greater and some lesser, before I found out mom was dead on the money with her advice. 

As I think about CRM (Candidate Relationship Management in the recruiting world) and how it relates to recruiting, I think we would all be wise to heed our mom's advice about choosing our friends wisely.  Oddly enough, once we're in the recruiting game, that leads us back to the cool kids.

I know - I burned a barn, my Mom warned me, and now I'm back to chasing the cool kids.  Let me explain...

This epiphany came to me a while back when I was the Director of Talent Acquisition at FirstMerit Bank.  As some of you may know, the team I built at FMER was widely recognized as being one of the most aggressive and successful corporate recruiting engines in America. While there, I began to utilize and cultivate, into our talent acquisition tactics, an old cliche - "winners hang out with winners and losers hang out with losers".  I know the HR weenies in our group will hate this expression and, frankly, much of what I say, because this concept is completely contrarian to their "level the playing field", equitable, treat everyone the same, social worker approach to their job.

Any recruiter who has been in this profession longer than 30 seconds knows that talented people flock together like the Velocaraptors from Jurassic Park. The idea, which we will explore in a later post, that you can have relationships with all candidates is complete CRAP.  Why would you want to have relationships with ALL candidates? I don't know about you, but I am not in the business to hire ALL candidates.  I want to hire high-performing employees.  I say have relationships with true talent and create great candidate experiences with them. Hang out with the talented people around the talent pool.  Essentially, hang out with the cool kids.

This is capitalism at its finest.  I have found in 14 years of recruiting, both in corporate and third party environments, that I don't have time to talk to everyone and I certainly don't have time to have relationships with everyone.  I keep a very select group of talented, known high performers and well-networked talent in my pool of relationships I build, cultivate, contribute to and leverage.  This leads to a higher level of success when conducting and closing searches or in developing business. 

So listen to your Mom and choose your friends - and talent - wisely!  I'm the guy in the letter jacket at the cool table, BTW...

Editors Note - Michael Homula is the founder of Bearing Fruit Consulting, a national recruiting consulting firm based out of Michigan.  Prior to founding BFC, Michael served as a Director of Recruiting/Talent Management for multiple companies in the Financial Services industry.  FOT team and readers, please move to Michael's table in an orderly and civil fashion to soak up the benefits of being with the "cool" crowd...

Comments

[Michael Haberman, SPHR]

Mom's advice is also found in the advice of Peter Drucker, Tom Peters, Earl Nightngale, Harvey Mckay, Brian Tracy and other very successful people. Winners do hang with winners. Success of others helps breed your own success. Employees reflect the company and as a result any recruiter that does not recruit winners (of all shapes and sizes)is not doing hir/her job. Success is not discriminatory, it comes in all ages, sexes, races, colors and religions.

[Jessica Lee]

homula! yep, i've gotta agree. being around other high performers makes you step your own game up. i like being in that pool. give me my letter jacket!

but do you think there's a place for b-list folks? i like to keep a few b-list individuals in my arsenal, if i'm to be honest. there are some roles where i don't want someone who is an uber-high performer with lots of potential... because you'll only want to be my receptionist, my file clerk, mail room guy, etc... for, oh, about 3 weeks until you're looking for your promo.

what say you?

[HR Wench]

Building on what Jessica said...

This is all fine and grand if you work for a company whose pay meets or leads the market and is comprised of mostly cool kids already.

If you work for a company whose pay lags or barely meets the market and is comprised of extremely paranoid B and C listers, the cool kids will never stay.

[Michael Homula]

jlee, your letter jacket is in the mail! I will sadly admit to having rocked the old school, Happy Days lettermans sweater in high school. Sad, I know, but my high school had a long tradition with them so I sported that bad boy.

I do think there is a place for b list folks. I have worked with clients on developing competency models and behavioral interviews and during the SME meeting inevitably someone (usually the CEO) says we want to hire only the best and brightest. I argue "what is best and brightest isn't what makes your company successful? What is pathetic and stupid makes your organization click on all cylinders and get results?" Sure I am being dramatic but some companies really function and perform better with so called b list players. I have seen the data in our competency models to support it. The key, in my humble opinion, is understanding which positions, departments and/or divisions truly perform best with this mix.

HR Wench I adore you! You are awesome. I would argue that pay is not what attracts the best to a company. Again, at BFC we have conducted surveys on this and what we commonly find is that pay is 4th on the list of decision making criteria a high performing passive talent uses to make a career change. If you work for a company that lags behind in pay then you have to have other compelling reasons to work there - meaningful work, challenging work, making a difference, a cool employee culture, innovative etc. There are plenty of organizations out there whose pay is not that of their competitors but they attract superior talent because they offer all the "other things" that meet the decision making criteria of high performing passive talent. As for the paranoid b and c listers, you have to be willing to move them up or move them out. That is again where most companies lack the courage and fortitude to do the right things with their talent culture.

[Jer - Grandmaster Sourcer]

(kewl kid > cool kids) + (CRM > ATS) = FTW.

Jer #_#