Medical Device Talent Podcast

Ten Reasons Why Top Employers Hire the Best Talent

As the unemployment rate continues to drop, 2017 promises to be a very tough year in the war for talent. Here are the top ten reasons why the very best companies succeed in hiring top talent.

• Planning – Organizations that are geared towards hiring the best acknowledge that it takes time to attract, identify, and land great people. You can’t just start recruiting when you need someone to start. The best employers take a proactive approach to identifying the talent they will need and building the pipeline necessary to hire the best.

• They move quickly – Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast. The best companies have a fast and smooth hiring process. They move from resume to phone interview then on to face to face and an offer very quickly. Fast hiring processes allow top performing companies to “swoop up” in demand talent before their competitors can make a decision.

• Incredible candidate experience – The best employers know that candidates are customers too. They treat their candidates like a high-value commodity. They are not like a cattle call. Providing great “candidate service” makes the candidates they are courting feel important.

• Outstanding employee experience – The best employers treat their employees like the critical asset they are—great benefits, plenty of free parking, aggressive pay, and great career growth. You can’t fake this one. Many companies pretend to treat their employees great and then wonder why they have trouble hiring. If you’re really treating your employees amazing, they will be referring people all the time. 

• Humility – The most effective employers are humble. They acknowledge that great candidates have choices and work hard to earn the right to hire those people. Some companies are so arrogant that they expect people to all line up to work for them. Humility will drive a great employee and candidate experience. Don’t take the “you’re so lucky to work here attitude.” 

• Promote great leaders and fire poor ones – Great leaders have top tier followers. The best companies aggressively look to give more responsibility to outstanding leaders and get rid of poor ones. By building a culture of inspirational leadership, these companies attract the best people.

• They build a hiring process that identifies people who are not looking – Headhunter secret #1: the best people are not looking for a job. By putting talent attraction strategies in place that target people who are not looking, they are able to fish from a pool of better people.

• Stellar employment brand – The best employers implement #2, #3, #4, #5, and #6 to bring together a stellar employment brand. They also invest time and energy in shouting it from the rooftop. 

• A team approach to hiring – Partnering an inspiring manager with a great HR team and headhunters who really get it create a “dream team” approach to acquiring talent. The best companies know it’s not us vs them when it comes to external recruiters and internal talent acquisition.

• Leaders who take responsibility for hiring great people – The final tip from the most successful attractors of talent is that management takes responsibility for hiring the best. A relentless pursuit of great hires results in guess what? Great hires.

While this list may not be all inclusive, it represents the top ten success practices of companies that go above and beyond to hire the best talent. 

How to Get in to Management

How to Get into Management

As a headhunter, many people who are not currently in a management role ask me if I can let them know about opportunities in management. Unfortunately, that’s not the way it works. “Getting into” management isn’t something that companies hire people off the street to do. Trust me; they already have plenty of people in their company who want to get into management.

If you prefer to listen or watch about this content, we have also produced a YouTube on the subject 

“Getting in” is something that is best accomplished by implementing a solid career strategy and executing it within your current company. If you don’t see a path with your current organization, you must identify a new company and invest the time and effort to build your reputation as an individual contributor and then implement a career strategy geared towards developing into a leadership role.

Here is a simple acronym to remember the steps you must take to get into leadership: BELT. 

Build

Enlist

Lead

Train

 

Build a Plan – Let’s be realistic here. Developing leadership skills takes years, typically 7–10 as an individual contributor and then another 2–3 to develop the reputation, leadership skills, and experience to be truly seen as a manager.

Enlist Mentors and Advocates – The good news is that all leaders in your organization have faced this same hurdle. It’s not an easy transition. Invest time in identifying people who can advise you and be your advocate when the time is right.

Lead – Look for informal opportunities to demonstrate leadership within your organization. Leaders have followers! The best way to be seen as a leader is to start demonstrating your leadership skills. Look for opportunities to contribute to the direction of your organization. Speak up in meetings. Mentor others. When you start looking for these opportunities, you will be surprised how many are out there 

Train – Become a dedicated student of leadership and management. Reading this article is a good start but don’t stop. Invest in yourself—take classes, read books, listen to podcasts, and identify as many learning opportunities as you can. Getting your boss to invest in that cool new management class is a great start but don’t stop learning.

The best way to become a leader is to be seen as one, so implement the BELT strategy and start leading. As you execute your career development plan, develop your leadership skills, and cultivate a stable of mentors and advocates, you will develop a level of momentum that will be impossible to stop.

 

How to GET PROMOTED

Getting promoted sometimes feels like a mysterious process. We all have seen that colleague that was “surprised” to get that promotion. I am here to tell you that for top performers, promotions are not a mystical process. They are a process that you must methodically implement to ensure that you maintain a career trajectory that will get you where you want to go.

 

If you prefer to listen or watch about this content, we have also produced a YouTube and Podcast on the subject. 

Let’s use the acronym PROMO to remember the steps we must take to achieve our goal.

Plan

Review

Objectives

Maximize

Outspoken

 

Plan – We must have a career plan that we revisit regularly. This will help us to ensure we are actually on a career path and not drifting through work.

Review – You must review your plan regularly and also review it with your boss to ensure that he/she is aligned with your career plan.

Objectives – You must work with your boss to set realistic performance levels or objectives so that you know what you must achieve to get promoted to the next level.

Maximize – Ok, I am stretching here. What I really mean is EXECUTE. Get as much done as possible. If you want to be promoted, you need to be seen as an individual who really gets things done.

Outspoken – When you do get things done, don’t be content being in the background. Look for opportunities to communicate your accomplishments. Creating visibility for your high level of achievement is critical to getting regularly promoted.

By incorporating the PROMO strategy into your career as a regular part of what you do, you can achieve a career path where you receive promotions every 2–4 years. This becomes much harder to do once you reach Director and VP, but in the first 12 years of your career, you should strive for regular promotions. If you can’t achieve this at your current company, it may be time for some self-reflection or a job change.