When hiring for top talent, your focus should start with setting a strong strategy and then tactically executing that strategy. Very often companies employ the exact opposite methodology. The strategic decision has to be centered on whether to employ a Scarcity Model or and Abundance Model before the hiring process begins.
An abundance model is what we might think of as the traditional method: Assume there are an abundance of qualified talent for your role, cast a wide net via traditional job postings to multiple sites and / or engage multiple recruiters to feed talent into your pipeline, weed out the weak and marginal candidates until you’ve narrowed the field to only the best. This model can be very effective for certain roles (e.g. if you’re looking for a large number of individual contributors) but too often this same methodology is errantly used to try and find highly specific talent with specialized skill sets. And the assumption that there is an abundance of this type of talent can cause serious problems to an organization’s hiring process.
When the demand for talent is greater than the supply, a Scarcity Model should be utilized to attract the best talent, not the Abundance Model designed to weed out the weak. The Abundance model is designed to hire the best person who applies, whereas the Scarcity Model seeks to find the best person available. Often a company seeking a specialized talent will find that the Abundance model may provide a large number of applicants but those applicants do not represent a strong enough match to their criteria. They will then try to raise the selection standards by tightening the talent filter, resulting in a smaller number of still unqualified talent.
If you are truly looking for the best talent, it’s best to employ the Scarcity Model. This model starts from the strategic assumption that there is a shortage of the specific talent your organization is seeking. It compels the hiring team to look at the role from a perspective of what constitutes success for the organization, rather than simply trying to fill bullet points in a job description. The Scarcity Model seeks to construct an ideal talent profile based on a series of dynamic performance objectives that are realistic and measurable coupled with a look at what comprises an ideal career path for a talent, rather than a simple job description emphasizing skills, academics and required experience. Designing a talent profile that not only highlights past performance indicators but clearly defines what the role is trying to accomplish in your organization is the first step to finding the right talent. And a key part of the hiring process must be the involvement of hiring managers, not just internal Human Resources to be responsible and fully-engaged in the search.
Strategy should drive the tactics that are being used to hire, not the other way around. Hiring situations are fundamentally different based on each company; using the tactics at one organization to drive the talent acquisition function at another makes little sense. But employing the Scarcity Model will work no matter which company is using it. Our philosophy at Hager Executive Search is to get the best talent, the strategy must be done first, the tactics flawlessly executed, and the principle of scarcity always assumed; otherwise the best talent will not be identified.