Fish in the right ponds.
Writing in Harvard Business Review earlier this year, Professor Peter Capelli of Wharton Business School stated:
“Businesses have never done as much hiring as they do today. They’ve never spent as much money doing it. And they’ve never done a worse job of it.”
At our ‘2020 Vision’ event in December I made this point:
“The key challenge in 2020 isn’t going to be winning new business but winning new talent. As the market expands, competition for the right people will increase and intensify.”
I suggest there are three ways you can improve your chances of finding the right people.
1. Engage a recruitment agency that is truly proactive and sources candidates that are not looking, ie they head hunt. Most, (make that nearly all) of the best people in the industry aren’t looking for jobs. They’re busy working for other agencies and a good recruiter will be identifying and courting them. I used to coach Nicola Broomham when she was at Romans and I find her approach to recruitment and video interviews with selected candidates to be very refreshing: https://www.broomhamrecruitment.com/
2. Approach recruitment as you do new business – (or should do) – and prospect for a minimum of 45 minutes every day. You need to build a database of candidates and referrers and work it daily. This could be the most important job for the MD/senior people right now.
3. Break with tradition and get talent from outside the industry or pools not properly explored. In his excellent book, ‘The Sales Acceleration Formula’, Mark Roberge, (Head of Sales at Hubspot), located the businesses deliberately in the vicinity of companies with an outstanding reputation for having amazing sales teams. Which companies in your area are great at sales? Find out what they pay, etc. and then design your package/proposition accordingly and go get ’em. Teaching someone proven in sales all about estate agency is a lot easier than teaching someone who can’t sell how to.
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