Compound Thinking

Marketing’s job in Hiring (and keeping) Great People

The most important thing a manager can do is find the right people, and convince them to work with you, not just for you!
If you do this one thing right, your odds of success go up exponentially.

Recently Guy Kawasaki (former “Chief Evangelist for Apple computers) posted his thoughts about on the subject. I’ve already mentioned the virtues of hiring people that are better than you, so I won’t dwell on that part of Guy’s post. He also advocates valuing skill, motivation and talent over the less relevant factors like experience and education. So, it’s nice to see that I’m not alone in looking for talent rather than experience or skill.

The real kickers for me came in later:

Use all your weapons. Once you’ve found the perfect candidate, use all the weapons at your disposal to land her — not just traditional tools like salary, stock options, signing bonuses. More important–and more telling–is the attractiveness of your vision for how you’ll change the world

I hadn’t thought of it before, but Guy just naturally views the hiring process as an opportunity to sell your company to people.

So, start selling your company at the beginning of the process, and keep selling until you know the fit is not right. Remember, even if you don’t hire this candidate, you might want to hire one of her friends. Or, she might end up working for one of your customers, or marrying the owner of your largest client.

Of course, if you sell a candidate on how they can change the world, how cool the people they’ll work with are, and how amazing your company is, you will have a much easier time when the time comes to make an offer.

Sell all the decision makers. A candidate seldom makes a decision all by herself. There can be several other people contributing to the decision.

People don’t exist in in a vacuum, their social and familial network plays a large part in their decision making process. But it goes beyond just that, the level of support and encouragement from spouse’s, parents, children, and friends plays a big part in how happy the candidate will be working for your company after she accepts the job. Sell these people on your company, and they’ll participate with you in keeping morale up. Remember, the whole social network of the people who work for you can and will participate in helping you to change the world for the better, but only if you give them a chance to see and appreciate your vision. There’s nothing in the world more de-motivating than a spouse, or children, who hate your job — and there’s nothing more motivating at work than a supportive network of friends and family at home.