Hunting for A-Players is an art. Many aspiring hiring managers overlook potential A-Players because of bias about what the ideal employee should look like on paper. Whether we admit it or not, we all have biases toward people who are more like us or who possess the traits we associate with success. For an entrepreneur, allowing those assumptions to control the hiring process can severely limit the talent available to the organization. The ability to recognize valuable qualities in unconventional candidates can become a competitive advantage, particularly for entrepreneurial companies that cannot always compete with larger organizations on salary, prestige, or benefits.
In How to Hire A-Players, Eric Herrenkohl identifies several places where employers can find talented people who might otherwise be overlooked. These possibilities include campus recruiting, former entrepreneurs, women reentering the workforce, teachers, retail employees, company alumni, and interns. The important lesson is not simply that employers should recruit from these particular groups. It is that talent does not always arrive in the package some would expect. A candidate’s previous job title or career path may not immediately reveal qualities such as initiative, resilience, communication ability, leadership, or adaptability. Some technical skills can be taught. Those underlying qualities can be much more difficult to develop.
Entrepreneurs should therefore avoid letting their employment marketing grow cold. I think of recruiting almost like heat energy. Cold particles move relatively little and consequently have fewer opportunities to collide. Apply energy, however, and movement increases. Recruiting works in a similar way. The more actively an organization interacts with universities, former employees, professional networks, interns, customers, community members, and other potential talent pools, the greater the opportunity for a productive collision with an exceptional candidate. An employer should not wait until a position becomes vacant to begin searching for talented people. Talent scouting should be an ongoing entrepreneurial activity.
I take Herrenkohl’s argument one step further. Finding unconventional talent only creates an advantage if the entrepreneur understands what that person values in return. Employment does not always have to follow the traditional model of a full-time employee working a conventional schedule. An intern who is deeply invested in developing a career might provide tremendous value while working full-time during the summer. A parent reentering the workforce may possess extensive experience but value scheduling flexibility. A former entrepreneur might value autonomy and meaningful responsibility more than another candidate does. A talented employee’s definition of a great opportunity may therefore be very different from what the employer initially assumes.
This is especially important for entrepreneurial businesses because they may not have the financial resources to win a bidding war for talent. Fortunately, compensation is only one component of an employment value proposition. Flexibility, autonomy, professional development, meaningful work, reputation, reduced stress, and time all have value. People routinely sacrifice one resource to obtain another. Entrepreneurs should recognize what their organizations can provide and understand what prospective employees actually value instead of assuming that every candidate is motivated by the same thing.
This also makes the hiring decision more consequential than simply filling an open position. Noam Wasserman’s The Founder’s Dilemmas emphasizes the importance of the people decisions founders face as they build their organizations. Every person an entrepreneur brings into a growing company contributes not only labor, but also skills, relationships, expectations, and influence over what the organization may eventually become. Recognizing an overlooked A-Player can therefore have effects well beyond satisfying an immediate staffing need. The entrepreneur is helping build the capabilities and culture of the future company.
That is why recognizing and appreciating people matters so much in entrepreneurship. The smartest hiring strategy is not necessarily to compete with every other employer for the most obvious candidate. It may instead be to recognize exceptional qualities that others have overlooked and create an opportunity that matches what that individual values. Entrepreneurs have an unusual degree of freedom to do this because they are often designing both the organization and its jobs as the company grows.
As entrepreneurs and leaders within our communities, we are in a unique position to affect the lives of the people who interact with our businesses. Recognizing an A-Player means seeing beyond a résumé and understanding what someone is capable of becoming. Appreciating that person means recognizing that employment is an exchange of value rather than merely an exchange of labor for a paycheck. You are not just selling a product to your customers. You are also selling a life to the people who choose to work for you.
References
Herrenkohl, E. (2010). How To Hire A-Players. Hoboken, New Jersey, United States: John Wiley & Sons Inc.
Wasserman, N. (2012). The Founder’s Dilemmas. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Leave a Reply