5 Helpful Tips to Find and Hire Your Next Super Star

With the focus of most interviewing skills training programs on the key questions to ask of a candidate to learn about their core abilities and attitudes, there is little attention paid to the recruitment side of the process or to securing their acceptance of your offer. When you are looking for your next super star, you need to look in the right places, attract their attention, and convince them that your business strategy and outlook makes sense and that they will thrive and prosper within your unique corporate culture.

Forget the egg-on-the-spoon race. Here are five tips on how to conduct your search and how to win the competition for top talent that fits:

1. Never stop looking.
Keep your pipeline of talented potential hires filled. Get to know who is out there and, even if you are not ready to hire, keep in touch so that you are poised to make an offer when a position opens.

2. Cast your net in the right places.
Be sure you are fishing in the right pond. Think about what media your target recruits consume and what networks they belong to. Surely they are on LinkedIn. And they are no doubt in touch with many other top players in their own and other industries. Put the word out through your own team and network.  Request they pass it on to friends/colleagues who might be interested.

3. Use a compelling pitch.
Please do not start your ad with a bland description of what your company does. You want go-getters, not folks who have the time to read through boring text to get to the main point.

Start off with what a top job seeker would be interested in: career development and potential, salary, opportunities and challenges and innovative tools. Grab their attention from the very start. And then you can continue with a compelling description of the company and industry. Speak directly in the first person and use active language. Don’t narrow the field by listing too many requirements, especially those that are not absolutely critical to job success and cultural fit.

4. Be upfront with your interviewing process.
There is nothing more discouraging to a top candidate than to be led through a long series of interviews with no end in sight. At the outset, explain what hoops they will have to go through before a hiring decision is made. They may not like it but at least they will have been forewarned and are likely to be more patient as the process drags on.

5. If your culture is high performance-oriented, use that competitive edge.
Top talent like to know that they will be respected and valued in your corporate culture. They will want to join a winning, positive, valued team and one that has the support of the executives with the purse strings.