Recently, I had the pleasure of attending the traveling production of Les Misérables. It was the fourth time I had seen the musical, so the most surprising thing might have been that in the 20 years and several revisits since my first Les Mis experience, the play still turns me into a sobbing mess. However, what surprised me most is that the play offers several lessons that can be applied to recruiting.

Those of you who have seen Les Misérables, as well as those of you who haven’t, may immediately assume that this connection is a stretch. Frankly, I don’t blame you. What may be more disturbing to me than any skepticism you have about this is the fact that I was thinking about work lessons during a brilliant musical. Perhaps, though, what this really highlights is how the lessons we learn which dictate how to live and how to interact with others really do apply to professional dealings just as much as to personal relationships and actions, and they apply to the real world as much to fantasy.

Les Misérables offers quite a few lessons that apply to business and recruitment, but here are the five most prominent ones:

Very Bad Decisions May Haunt You for a Long Time

In the story, the main character Jean Valjean steals a loaf of bread to save his sister’s child from starving, and as a result he ends up on a chain gang for 19 years. Once freed, he makes another poor choice that leaves him hunted for the rest of his life by Inspector Javert. Because of this, he has to live in fear under a false identity, even though he proves himself time and again to be a decent and selfless person.

Making a bad decision at work is unlikely to require you to take an assumed name and live in hiding for the rest of your life. For certain, there are circumstances that may warrant such dramatic action, but for the most part bad choices in the workplace will not have such consequences. And, of course, everyone makes mistakes once in a while. At the same time, your decisions and their aftermath do live in people’s memories and will directly influence how you are viewed, trusted, and accepted by customers, candidates, and peers alike. For instance, if you set an expectation with a customer or a candidate and then don’t meet that expectation — you don’t follow up in a timely manner or you leave a candidate hanging rather than deliver the difficult news that role has been offered to someone else — that individual likely will remember it for a while to come.

In some instances this may have little impact, but in some it may significantly damage both your reputation as a recruiter as well as your company’s reputation, either as a recruitment firm or as an employer. So take care with the choices you make so that they reinforce the positives you have to offer and don’t become your own personal Javert, chasing you across the years.

Be Sure You and Your Subordinate Managers’ Expectations Are Aligned; Know That Their Actions Will Directly Impact You

When it is discovered that Fantine, who works at a factory owned by Jean Valjean, has a daughter who is being cared for by an innkeeper, her foreman fires her. During the tussle that leads to Fantine’s firing, Jean Valjean is present for a moment but directs the foreman to take care of the problem and then leaves. By the time Valjean learns the full story of Fantine’s circumstances — both regarding her daughter and her slip into prostitution after losing her job — Fantine is at death’s door, and she blames him for her situation. While Valjean’s actions redeem him, had he been sure that his foreman was sensitive to the perils of being a single mother (at that time, of course), the crisis may have been averted. Additionally, although Valjean was not in the room when the foreman fired Fantine, he ended up blamed anyway as well as looking for ways to repent.

Don’t end up in a similar situation. Make sure the recruiters who report to you and/or the hiring managers you support know your expectations of them within the recruiting process and can meet them, and also know that you ultimately will be held accountable for their decisions.

Be Both Smart and Sensitive About Whom You Ask to Take on Important Responsibilities

Just before the fighting begins on the barricades, Marius asks Eponine, who is in love with him and therefore unwilling to deny him help, to deliver a message to the woman he loves. She completes the task for him and then returns to the barricades only to end up the first martyr of the fight.

Have you ever delegated an unpleasant task to a colleague, particularly one with less experience, who was not entirely qualified to manage it? It’s not uncommon, though it also isn’t easy to admit. Whether the task involves cold calling, direct sourcing, sifting through piles of resumes, searching an ATS database, responding to leads or any other critical task, the important takeaway is that if you are in recruitment, you need to take great care to ensure you consider well what you delegate, to whom, and why. It’s true that everyone needs to be stretched and challenged to learn new skills and grow professionally, but be certain this is your motivation. Realize the impact a failed task may have on your colleague, particularly if the colleague is relatively inexperienced – anything from diminished confidence to a lost exceptional candidate to a more concrete, deleterious effect on his or her reputation or career … or yours.

Sometimes Even Those Who Break the Rules, Those With the Worst Intentions, Come Out on Top

Comic villains named the Thénardiers cause mischief throughout the story of Les Misérables, from managing an inn that steals from its clientele to running a gang of thieves, to stealing from the dead. They are cunning, non-sympathetic, and cruel. And yet, in the end, while they don’t earn respect, they do end up wealthy.

The same holds true in business, including in recruitment. Often, those who maintain high ethical standards and who conduct themselves professionally end up successful. However, sometimes those who seem to have no concern for others, who convey little moral fiber, who will say anything time and again to “sell” a candidate on an opportunity even if the reality doesn’t match the pitch, do end up on top.

If You Actively Give Up, You Just May Die

At the end of the musical, Jean Valjean appears to decide that it is his time to die. He is old and tired; he has finished running from his pursuer; and he has helped save his daughter’s loved one from the barricades, a man he is certain will care for her now. He seems to decide that now he can finally have peace. In the musical, the moment is poignant and bittersweet.

In recruitment, just like in any business, your mindset, your decision to succumb to defeat, can do the same. It’s obvious that if you decide to just give up, you will fail. That’s pretty straightforward. But if you decide that finding and hiring the right candidate is highly unlikely or even impossible, even if you persevere your belief will increase the likelihood that you won’t succeed. That mindset can close you off to fresh ideas which could ultimately make the difference between a lost cause and a great hire. So weigh your options wisely for any endeavor, and if you decide to go forward, do so with the belief that you will do well.

When it comes to the “war for talent,” Asia is today the hottest region. With national and global organizations in growth mode, the pressure on the talent market has increased tremendously, and many employers are unprepared.

Even the largest multinationals that over the past few years have won over students around the world with their strong employer value propositions and attractive employer brands face a whole new set of challenges when setting their eyes on the Far East.

Tough Local Competition

According to the Universum IDEAL™ Employer Survey 2011, Asian students associate foreign employers with no job security, poor work/life balance, and a competitive and cut-throat environment. As we know, this does not sit well with the millennials, not even in markets like India and Japan.

Large national employers, on the other hand, are perceived as offering exactly what new graduates are looking for: a stable career with opportunity for growth, market success, competitive benefits and a friendly work environment. (For more on this, see the slides at the bottom of this article.)

Looking at the Universum IDEAL™ Employer Rankings in China, based on more than 45,000 respondents, we can see the truth behind the statement “perception is reality.” In 2011 local employers dominated 70% of the Top 10 list, while in 2006 China Mobile and Bank of China were the only two Chinese companies amidst eight Multinational Employers.

This is consistent with the rest of Asia. Another case is India: in 2006, Infosys was the only local employer listed in the Top 10, but one of five in 2011.

Quality of Candidates Still a Challenge

With an organization’s success depending on the management of the talent supply and the ability to attract and retain the right talent, it is more important than ever for organizations to have strong knowledge of the markets and the students they want to attract.

This means fully understanding what their target audience is looking for, their preferences and career goals, but also the perception of the industry, the company’s employer brand and that of the recruitment competitors.

Despite Asian students now exhibiting strong millennial traits, some of their priorities still differ from their counterparts in the West; especially when it comes to career goals and drivers of employer attractiveness. But most importantly, the differences and nuances across Asian markets and universities are very significant — which is why an EVP will not fully resonate unless it is localized to each individual country and target group.

The recruitment marketplace has experienced a number of seismic shifts over the course of the last 15 years or so. Fifteen years ago, email was barely being used; Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and even Google didn’t exist (Mark Zuckerberg was 12 years old!), and advertising for roles was done in print, not online; CVs were still largely being faxed or posted, and the only way to get good candidates in the market was to advertise, use an agency, or through internal referrals.

Now with the Internet, social media, and applicant tracking systems, organizations are no longer entirely reliant on recruitment firms to provide candidates and market intelligence. Of course there has been a shift toward corporate internal recruiters and RPO models in the past 10 years, but internal headhunters (which I differentiate from internal “recruiters”),  and real market-mapping and cold-call headhunting is still very rare. Why? Well, mapping out competitors and building market intelligence takes time and time are of course expensive. Whereas an internal recruiter may work on upward of 100 vacancies per year (the numbers hugely fluctuate from company to company influenced by seniority of role, etc.), an internal headhunter doing the full lifecycle process may work on as few as 15 to 20 searches per year.

There’s also the issue of the skillset required to do both roles. It’s very different asking a recruiter to sift through 100 resumes received in an inbox from a job posting than it is to ask a headhunter to start with a blank sheet of paper and map out the firm’s top six competitors and cold-headhunt call everyone at those firms who may have a relevant skillset. In my time spent heading up an executive search function at J.P Morgan, I never once posted a job advertisement. My role was purely to headhunt top talent in the market.

An internal headhunter is of course a role that should be used only for particular vacancies. It may be the most senior roles, or for niche roles, where typical channels to market aren’t satisfying the requirement.

So how do you convince the budget holders to invest in an internal headhunter who costs more than a typical internal recruiter, but who works on far fewer roles? The easy answer is that it’s cheaper than an external headhunter, but that’s not where the true value lies. It all comes down to how important it is for a company to find the best candidates in the market, not just those on the market, and there is a big difference.

The real true ROI of internal headhunters though is your connection to the market … both from an information gathering point of view, but also from a rapport building long-term strategic hiring point of view. This is someone in your organization who has time to meet with people for a coffee and spread the good news about what you’re doing. When these meetings happen at the right level, good news travels fast. You’ve also got more chance of receiving referrals to good candidates from good people you’ve built up a rapport with over time.  High-volume internal recruiters simply don’t have the time to add this kind of value to your business.

In recent years too much faith has been put into the power of using social media to passively engage “new” candidate audiences like it’s the new solution to our recruiting challenges. The engagement is still too passive. Audience implies participation and while social media makes it easier for us to connect with people, recruiters aren’t really fully exploiting these new channels to the best of their ability (usually through no fault of their own — they aren’t afforded the time).

Sure, if someone is looking for work, social media channels have opened up vast new lines of direct communication to job hunters. However, those who are not looking, but who may be open to a discussion for something relevant, are blind to the passive carrots being dangled in front of them on their mobile devices.

It’s wrong to assume that pumping out ads and setting up social groups means the best candidates in the market are all of a sudden sitting in the “available for work” audience. That’s not to say these aren’t highly effective candidate attraction methods, but energy needs to be put back into the connections we made before email: calling people.

Where there isn’t an audience (having a LinkedIn or Twitter account doesn’t constitute audience) you have to make the connection, on the phone. We have to reach out to these people who aren’t actively looking or bothering to respond LinkedIn emails and talk to them. Establish over the phone the circumstances which would lead them to consider a career move and go from there. The mechanics of that call and how it works with 99.9% effectiveness will be discussed in the breakout session at the ERE conference on September 7.

One thing is clear. If an organization relies only on job board advertising including social media campaigns for all levels of hiring, they will only access the 5% to 20% of the working population who are actively considering a career move. Mapping out competitors and directly headhunting brings you as close as you can be to ensuring you have identified the best candidates in the market, and not just those on the market.

In the ERE conference session on September 7, “Beyond the dollar — the real ROI of internal headhunting” I will outline a model that graphically illustrates to the internal budget holders why they should be investing in real internal headhunters, along with a step-by-step guide to planning an internal headhunt strategy.

Excellence matters, and technology advances so fast that the potential for improvement is tremendous. So, since becoming CEO again, I’ve pushed hard to increase our velocity, improve our execution, and focus on the big bets that will make a difference in the world. Google is a large company now, but we will achieve more, and do it faster, if we approach life with the passion and soul of a startup. — Google CEO Larry Page

With these powerful words, Google’s CEO Larry Page demonstrates that as Google grows in size, it must take actions in order to maintain its speed and startup-like attributes. If he fails, Google will slide into what I call “the Great to Good downward spiral.” It has already happened to notable firms like Kodak, Xerox, AOL, HP, 3M, Sears, MySpace, and Yahoo. In part 1 of this article I covered the 25 factors that can be used to identify if your organization is already in a bureaucratic slide. This Part 2 covers potential action steps that corporate leaders can take to prevent a slide at newer firms or to turn it around at more established firms.

20 Action Steps for Stopping or Preventing a “Great to Good” Slide Into Mediocrity

Although many of the actions that leaders need to take are simply the opposite of the 25 “slide identification measures” contained in part 1, there are other additional actions that can allow a firm to remain “start-up like” throughout their growth. Some of these actions may initially seem harsh or aggressive, but like a cancer, strong remedies are required to kill the insidious components of a bureaucracy. If these recommended actions sound familiar, it is because they frequently mirror the critical success factors of a performance culture. The recommended actions are broken into three categories.

1. Strategic goal and role setting actions
2. Actions to increase innovation, speed, agility, and change
3. People-management-related actions

Strategic Goal and Role-setting Actions

1. Set a goal to create a performance/innovation culture — The first step is to set a clear corporate-wide strategic goal and provide an accompanying set of expectations that your organization will use to become and then maintain its status as a performance and innovation culture.Corporate leadership must make it clear that no matter what size your organization is, they want it to be “startup like,” which means being a first-mover leader, having disruptive products, and dominating any marketplace that you enter. In order to reinforce that expectation, leaders, managers and employees must be measured, recognized, and rewarded on their performance, speed, and innovation, rather than effort and seniority. In addition, rather than a vague target, leaders should set and communicate a fixed expectation for a “rate of improvement in results” each year (e.g. 12%). And this “results improvement goal” must apply to every individual, team, and organizational unit, so that every employee will fully understand the need for innovation, speed, and agility. This is because you simply can’t succeed with the imbalance that occurs when half of the organization is moving at market speed, while the other is improving at a bureaucratic rate.
2. Assign the executive committee the role of overseeing a startup approach – Everyone in the organization needs to accept responsibility for avoiding a slide into a bureaucracy; however, the executive leadership team needs to take ownership of implementing and maintaining an integrated approach. Its first step should be making maintaining startup-like agility one of its primary goals and a part of the bonus criteria. It needs to accept the role of monitoring the organization’s status and reporting it to the CEO and the stakeholders. It may be important enough to include in the annual report (Facebook included it in its IPO prospectus).
3. Create a startup/bureaucracy dashboard – In order to avoid a gradual slide, executives, managers, and employees need to be constantly aware of where your firm currently stands on each of the key startup vs. bureaucracy measures. The summary results for each manager should be distributed on a quarterly basis in a ranked list so that everyone will know the leaders and the key offenders.
4. Calculate the dollar costs of bureaucratic behavior – Knowing the impact on the bottom line must be a key driver in any successful effort, because unless they know the impact on corporate revenues, executives are liable to put off decisive action. Leaders must work with the CFO’s office to estimate the dollar impacts on corporate revenues as a result of a loss of speed, agility, and innovation.
5. Put limits on overhead functions – Everyone must realize that the role of overhead functions should be to find a way to expedite and allow managers and innovators to do what is needed. However, because few overhead leaders accept that role, the growth in the size and the power of overhead functions has been a major contributor to the creation of a bureaucracy. So executives need to set a ceiling on the percentage of the budget that can go to these functions. In addition, the rewards and success measures for these overhead functions must be changed. They need to be measured and rewarded based on how operating managers rate them as supporting and directly contributing to (rather than inhibiting) an increase in speed, agility, risk-taking, collaboration, and innovation. Leanness and a limit on excessive rules, approvals, policies, and prohibitions must be continually assessed. In order to limit the proliferation of overhead programs, each function should be required to drop their lowest-ranked program or service every two years.

Actions to Increase Innovation, Speed, Agility, and Change

1. Build speed, impatience, and acting with urgency into the organization – In today’s business world, it’s not the big that eat the small; it is the fast that eat the slow. The old adage is simply wrong: speed doesn’t kill, slow kills. Moving fast does increase error rates but moving too slowly guarantees that you will not be a leader in the marketplace. In order to set the appropriate speed target, executives must monitor and then match the speed in which the fastest competitors (especially startups) move. Many firms try developing a sense of urgency or they use so called “change agents,” but in order to guarantee success, you have to go further and focus on the required actions and behaviors. Indicators of organizational speed, like the number of approvals, the hierarchical levels, the time spent in meetings, and the rate of innovation should be monitored. Identifying speed-related best practices and critical success factors requires benchmarking the fastest-moving internal teams and functions, as well as a great product-testing process. Executives must set “stretch goals” when setting deadlines, but leaders must educate managers and employees on how to move fast while still minimizing errors. And finally, how individual employees act with urgency also needs to be assessed and rewarded.
2. Develop a fast learning and sharing capability – The most important corporate competency may be rapid learning and the ability to use that learning because it drives innovation and speed. If you’re going to lead an industry, no employee can be exempt from fast learning. Startups thrive because everyone is responsible for continuously remaining on the leading edge, and their small size makes sharing learning and best practices easy. Faster learning is difficult when you go first and innovate, because there are few to benchmark against and learn from. If you want to remain “startup like,” don’t create a large corporate learning function. Instead concentrate on enhancing individual informal learning. One learning speed facilitation tool to consider is identifying and then sharing “how the best learn” (where you let everyone know the learning approaches and the sources that the very best performers use). Organizations also need a social-media-type approach to ensure that rapid sharing occurs across the organization. Another recommended tool is individual development budgets, so employees can own and drive their own learning. Because slow learners are a drag on fast learners and teams, they must be fixed or released. Incidentally, leaders should consider all major failures as learning opportunities, so they must require “failure analysis” so that errors are not repeated.
3. Improve decision making speed – There are few things that indicate that you are a bureaucracy more than slow risk adverse decision-making. If you’re going to maintain the shortest time to market in the industry, the amount of time it takes to make major decisions must be tracked against a standard. Managers must be trained on how to make decisions with less-than-perfect information. In addition, you must identify those that make slow decisions and those that put up barriers and excessive approvals that restrict fast decision-making.
4. Build obsolescence and scalability into everything – In a fast-changing world, every product, tool, approach, and process eventually becomes obsolete. In a bureaucracy, there is a high tolerance for the status quo, so years might go by before anyone realizes that a process has become obsolete. In order to ensure continuous renewal, every major product and internal process, tool, program and approach needs to include a “use by date” when the process must be reengineered or abandoned. In addition, every plan for a new program or tool must include the development of a next-generation process which will be capable of replacing the original design. And finally, every new program must be built to be scalable, so that it can continue to work as the organization grows dramatically in size.
5. Identify barriers to innovation, collaboration, and productivity — Most leaders already take actions to increase innovation, collaboration, and productivity. Even though speed requires streamlining, few managers take the time to identify and eliminate restrictive barriers, even though eliminating barriers has an immediate impact and an extremely high ROI. Because these “barriers” are often informal, they sometimes creep in without being noticed. What is needed is a proactive approach which uses manager and employee surveys, as well as metrics, to identify these hideous barriers. In addition, individuals who are responsible for creating these barriers need to be fixed or released. Because collaboration is critical for innovation, there should also be measures of process integration, the degree of cross-functional collaboration, the level of cooperation, and whether there are organizational silos.
6. Make innovators, game-changers, and pioneers heroes, not managers – At startups, everyone knows the value of innovators. However as organizational size grows, there is a tendency to instead make those with formal titles and power the most admired. So it takes a major effort on the part of senior leaders to counter this tendency and instead to recognize, reward, and communicate to all the incredible impact of innovators, game-changers and pioneers. Making heroes of innovators not only increases their rates of innovation but it makes everyone want to become one. There is a tendency to give innovators formal titles but this burdens them with administrative responsibilities. A superior approach is to instead let them select their own team members and to allow them to operate with some degree of autonomy on a project (for at least one year), while receiving management level pay.
7. An external competitive focus – When organizations are successful over a long period of time, there is a tendency to become arrogant and to adopt a “groupthink” mentality (i.e. no one can compete with us). In order to limit this arrogance, everyone needs to adopt a competitive focus and to continually do competitive analysis. Organizations need to continually compare themselves to the products, services, speed, agility, innovation, and results produced by first-movers, startups, international firms, and rapid growth firms in related industries. Leaders need to ensure that their employees also use their competitors’ products and services in order to fully understand their capabilities and weaknesses.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s thoughts – “The Hacker Way is an approach to building that involves continuous improvement and iteration. Hackers believe that something can always be better, and that nothing is ever complete. They just have to go fix it — often in the face of people who say it’s impossible or are content with the status quo. Hacker culture is also extremely open and meritocratic. Hackers believe that the best idea and implementation should always win — not the person who is best at lobbying for an idea or the person who manages the most people.”

People-management-related Actions

1. Fix bad managers – It’s not the buildings or the equipment that become obsolete in bureaucracies, it’s the people management practices. A significant amount of the organization people management problems emanates from bad managers. With rapid growth, it’s only natural that some individuals without management training will be rapidly promoted into management. But a large percentage will fail as managers but few firms are willing to acknowledge when they made a mistake. Leaders need to be aware that nothing negatively impacts hiring, retention, motivation, productivity, and innovation more than a weak manager. To counter this hideous problem, there must be a formal “bad manager identification program,” coupled with a metrics-driven approach that rapidly fixes, demotes, or releases weak managers. In order to avoid creating “little dictators,” the role of a manager must also shift, so that they become influencers and coaches more than those that give orders.
2. What you measure and reward drives behavior – In a startup, it is obvious to everyone what is important. However, as an organization gets larger, it’s common to overly rely on the corporate culture to communicate your message about the importance of performance, innovation, speed, and calculated risk-taking. Because, “what you measure and what you reward … gets done,” your cultural message must be unambiguously reinforced on a daily basis through your measurement, reporting, and reward processes. Providing significant differences in rewards is critical because if employees receive almost the same rewards for playing it safe as they do from innovating and taking risks, many will eventually settle into the “playing-it-safe mode.” And finally, transparency in reward criteria can make it crystal clear what is really important, and widely reporting the ranked performance of managers by name can help to increase internal competition.
3. Release the evildoers quickly – A consistent indicator that your organization is in trouble is a high level of tolerance for bureaucratic behaviors. Like a bad apple in a bin, these bureaucrats frustrate your innovators and top performers. As a result, executives should proactively identify those who exhibit bureaucratic or political behavior and as well as those that use “the culture” as a weapon to slow change. Because it is extremely difficult to “fix” employees who love rules, policies, approvals, and the status quo, rather than relying on the traditionally ineffective performance management process, these bureaucrats, along with weak managers and poor performers, need to be quickly released. Rather than going through all of the legal issues related to a formal firing, a superior and faster approach is to simply bite the bullet and pay these individuals to leave before they can do more damage. Rapidly releasing evildoers also sends a message to everyone else that you simply won’t tolerate bad, blocking, political, or bureaucratic behavior.
4. Getting managers to pay attention to great hiring — When your organization is growing, you have no choice but to add employees through recruiting (or acquisitions). Just like in sports, if you have the ability to attract great employees and managers, that alone will keep you near the top. Fortunately, one overhead function that has proven its high ROI is recruiting. Executives at both Google and Facebook, for example, already know the power of recruiting and as a result, they generously fund it. But a major problem occurs when hiring managers hinder recruiting when they give hiring a lower priority (because they perceive that it has a delayed impact on their results). You can minimize this problem by directly measuring and rewarding hiring managers for their number of quality hires that benefit the entire firm. In addition, managers must be provided with powerful data-supported recruiting tools like modern employee referral programs that are tied to social media efforts. That means that just like when you were a startup, every manager and employee must accept their role as a 24/7 “talent scout.”
5. Focused retention is a superior approach – Your success will invariably attract external recruiters who will attempt to pull away your very best. Rather than diluting your efforts by trying to retain everyone, your retention effort should be prioritized and focused on high-impact key employees who can’t be replaced. Managers must own retention but they can’t be expected to excel at it unless they are provided with powerful data-supported retention tools. These tools should include helping managers identify who might leave, why they might leave, why they stay, and what are the most effective personalized approaches for keeping key employees.
6. Internal movement and development must be accelerated – As firms get larger, cross-functional and cross-business movement naturally slows. To make matters worse, managers frequently learn to hoard their talent because it may improve their short-term results. A superior approach is proactive internal movement, where an internal recruiting team facilitates the rapid and accurate placement of employees, in order to increase productivity, development, excitement, and retention. This effort should be supplemented by a “project marketplace” that makes everyone aware of virtual and part-time projects which serve the dual purpose of getting work done as well as broadly exposing employees. Managers must also be measured and rewarded for developing and then releasing talent to other functions and business units.
7. Great assimilation is required to maintain your culture – When startups grow, they almost always do so partially through acquisitions. In order to ensure that these newly acquired employees (as well as new hires) don’t rapidly dilute your culture, a strong data-supported assimilation program must be developed. Acquired individual employees must also be measured on their level of acculturation and those who miss the mark must be fixed, released, or isolated.
8. Individual motivation and management – In smaller startups, leaders routinely managed to the personality and idiosyncrasies of individual innovators. This personalized treatment maximizes excitement, because these key individuals are provided with the right set of motivators and the management style that fits them perfectly. As organizations get larger, however, it obviously becomes increasingly difficult to personalize your motivation and management approach. An alternative method is to target your motivation and excitement approach only on your key employees and innovators. Start by having their manager survey or interview them in order to identify their key motivators, excitement factors, and turnoffs. Also consider asking for their help in identifying the most effective way to manage them and then make sure that their manager adapts their style in order to maximize their performance. If you have the time and resources, you can also survey every employee and simply ask them for their preferences in motivation, communications, scheduling, and the most effective way to manage them. Obviously managers can’t meet every individual need but a few small steps alone may be a major motivator.

Yahoo’s CEO Scott Thompson’s thoughts – There’s a lot to do and that’s why I can’t stress enough that we all need to focus on getting stuff done. Getting stuff done is short hand for eliminating bureaucracy and barriers so we can all innovate as fast as our customers and the industry requires. That’s pretty fast.

Final Thoughts

For over 30 years, I have been researching how once-great firms slid to the point where they can only be called lumbering giants. Many management experts have concluded that as an organization grows in size, it’s impossible to avoid transitioning into a bureaucracy. The exact opposite is true; organizational atrophy can be stopped. Becoming a bureaucracy is much like gaining weight; most do gain weight as they age, but the causes of the weight gain are identifiable and fixable. Firms like Apple, Starbucks, and Wal-Mart demonstrate that it is possible to remain agile. The solution simply requires deliberate data-supported actions that unfortunately, are often completely off the radar of many CEOs and HR leaders.

To me it is sad how so many firms struggle to regain their former greatness by trying what seems like fruitless approaches including revolving CEOs, large-scale layoffs, reorganizations by the dozen, drastic cost-cutting, and even trying to make money through patent lawsuits or sales. But in my analysis, all of them miss the mark completely because they don’t directly address the factors that keep a bureaucracy alive. Bureaucracies are a lot like weeds, they will survive until the end of the world (or the firm) because no one takes the time to identify and fiercely counter the strengths that allow them to thrive. Many replacement CEOs focus on strategies and product lines that make business sense, but they all too often fail because they simply can’t be successfully implemented because of their firm’s strangling bureaucracy that systematically kills new approaches, innovation, speed, risk-taking, and agility.

My summary advice to Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, or any other CEOs struggling with this potential slide from startup into a bureaucracy comes in three parts. First, realize that the downward slide is not inevitable and that it is possible to dominate your industry for decades (i.e. Apple). Second, understand that there are real measurable indicator factors that can show the degree which your firm is no longer “startup like” and whether you are becoming a bureaucracy. And third, realize that there are many management actions that can, when implemented, reverse any slide and return your organization back to the performance culture that it once was. And finally, my goal was simply to get leaders to begin thinking about a more systematic approach to fighting this heartbreaking and disillusioning slide. I don’t claim to have all the answers but I hope that in this article I have provided enough of them to at least get you thinking in a new direction.

Note: Comments, questions, and especially additions are encouraged. Entered them into the comment section following this article on ERE.net or send them directly to Dr. Sullivan at JohnS@sfsu.edu.

There are three messages that need to be conveyed to a customer early in a prospective sourcing transaction.

Most sourcers never discuss these concepts that are directly linked to building the value of your services and obtaining exclusivity of your services in the future.

The three messages that matter are:

1. All sourcers are not the same.
2. It really matters who represents a customer’s interests.
3. My market knowledge and search skills are superior to other sourcers.

Let’s look at each of these messages that matter:

All Real Sourcers Are Not the Same

One of the primary messages used by inferior sourcers and discounting agents is that we are all the same; that there is essentially no difference between Best Sourcers and other sourcers.

We need to convey that each sourcer offers a different “type” of service and applies different techniques to deliver that service.

One sourcer may employ an Internet-only level of service and experience, while another uses an Internet “checked” by phone level of service while still another employs a telephone sourcing service that might use the Internet for initial research but essentially relies primarily on the telephone to generate names and information.

Another level of sourcing service may be the provision of competitive information about a target (or targets) along with the sourced names. This add-on may be offered by any of the sourcers just mentioned.

You want to create a clear distinction between what you do and what other sourcers do. An analogy outside of sourcing that illustrates service and quality differentials is highly effective. Car comparisons are easy to use because car companies have spent lavishly building their brands differentiating themselves out of the pack.

You could use your first (or second) meeting with the prospective customer to push this differentiation message across. Let it be known that because you want the customer to be delighted with your service, the two of you should take the time to go over these differences and understand exactly the level of excellent service you can provide.

Like this: “There is a tremendous difference in the sourcers you can work with. Each sourcer operates differently and these differences ultimately deliver differing results. I’d like to spend some time with you up front to clearly understand your objectives and needs to ensure a successful relationship between us. Does that make sense?”

It Really Matters Who Represents a Customer’s Interests

In this section, you are building the value of your service and moving it away from the guy looking up “names” on the Internet and channeling them (unchecked) to the customer.

A Best Sourcer knows this is the least valuable part of a sourcing service.

Any sourcer with access can enter a Boolean string into the keyboard of a computer and generate a LinkedIn (or job board’s) list of names.

Heck, you don’t even need a sourcer to do that anymore the way Internet sourcing has become automated!

Borrowing a story from the author of the article that inspired me to write this post:

There is a story about a senior executive who was having problems with his computer. They called in their technology expert to fix his problem. The technology expert looked at the computer diagnostically for a few minutes. He then reached into his briefcase for a small hammer; he tapped on the computer three times, and it was fixed. He then handed a bill to the senior executive for $500.

The executive said, “I won’t pay this; you were only here five minutes. That’s outrageous! I want you to itemize this bill.” The technology expert then itemized the bill. It read: “Two dollars for tapping on the computer and $498 for knowing where to tap!”

What you tell the customer at this point is that you are one of the few sourcers who know where to tap!

The sourcer a customer selects to represent their interests in securing their next hire can affect:

• The candidate selected
• The value that candidate brings to an organization (over time)
• The customer’s financial position years down the road
• The customer’s ability to avoid legal pitfalls
• How the customer company is presented (if the sourcer is indeed making that first contact)
• The stress experienced by customer
• The timeliness of the search/hire
• Communication during the search/hire
• The price paid for the candidate

Looking at all of these factors demonstrates how important the selection of a sourcer is!

Fishing in the wrong ponds can create many problems for a customer that will radiate from that selected hire for years, affecting even the next hires!

You could ask the customer which of these issues concerns them the most. You can also ask, at this point, just what it is they want to accomplish and in what time frame.

Understandwhat it is they want. It may just turn out that yours is not the best service and/or most cost efficient service for them, and you might refer them to a trusted colleague in the service area needed.

Do you see a sourcer’s influence and the effect on the candidate selection process 

Doesn’t it make sense when I say that it’s fundamentally important what sourcer a customer selects?

My Market Knowledge Is Superior to Other Sourcers (in my Space)

We have to prove that our sourcing knowledge is the gold standard. To accomplish this, understand supply and demand in the marketplace.

A Best Sourcer understands how the marketplace affects a prospective customer’s prospects at success and that this understanding represents a clear competitive intelligence advantage for a customer.

You demonstrate value when you can use market knowledge both throughout your presentation to the customer and in the search itself.

There are few sourcers who really understand the effects of the dictating law of supply and demand on the marketplace.

A Best Sourcer has a grasp on what the marketplace holds both in terms of talent availability and at that talent’s different price points. This gives a clear, quantifiable measure of the competitiveness of the marketplace your customer is approaching and the approximate talent numbers available in that marketplace.

An important concept in understanding market knowledge is grasping the fact that your analysis should be presented as a “snapshot.”

Any sector of the economy can be changed overnight triggered by economic events.

What makes sense for the customer on Tuesday may not make sense on the following Monday when Big Blue announces a layoff or Cisco announces hiring in Canada or a lawsuit is filed that will change the face of the U.S. talent community (and recruiting!) into the foreseeable future.

Every sourcer should have a process they follow that the customer can understand at any point along the way. Sourcers should give their customers timely start and end dates and updates on progress and info gleaned along the sourcing trail. And, questions (and marketplace information) that arise during the sourcing process should be shared with customers regularly.

The final report should be clean and easily understandable when sent to the customer; the method and type of information delivery should be established early on. Upon receiving a Best Sourcer’s sourcing results a customer should be able to sit down at her desk, pick up the telephone, and call the names provided (without having to look up a phone number)!

The science of recruiting is years behind our peers in other disciplines, but when I see research like this journal article, ”Paying More to Get Less: The Effects of External Hiring versus Internal Mobility,” I know we’re beginning to catch up.

This study was published in the Administrative Science Quarterly in September 2011 and recently described in detail by Peter Cappelli (my favorite Wharton Professor), in his column for HR Executive magazine, Paying More to Get Less.

It is perhaps the best work I’ve seen in years.

In the original research, the author describes how he dug into the data of one financial services firm to identify and track a number of jobs filled by both internally and externally sourced candidates over a protracted period of time.

He then compared subsequent performance ratings of the incumbents (over years) and found statistically significant evidence that:

• Internal candidates performed better than those hired from the outside.
• External candidates took as long as three years to achieve the performance levels of their internally promoted peers.
• External candidates were paid 15% more on average.
• The performance of individuals who were externally sourced was higher if they were not brought in through search.

Now this is science I enjoy … not because it is necessarily true beyond the one firm in which the study was done, but because it is transparent, describing methodology openly and in a way that we (dear readers) would be able to improve on and replicate within your own firms.

As someone who is getting tired of tons of unsupported opinions stated as fact and megatons of research by vendor content creators with serious conflicts of interest, this is refreshing. Give me more.

Most organizations need to work on how they develop and articulate their employer brand strategies. Just over half of employers claim to have an employer brand strategy (51%), a fifth (19%) are in the process of revising one, and 24% are working towards one. That’s what Bernard Hodes Group learned from our new research, called The Growing Value of Employer Brands.

Of those employers that claim to have a strategy, the average age of it is 4.3 years. The results suggest that many employers are using strategies pre-dating the Great Recession. Relying on an old strategy is a recipe for disaster given the changes in workers’ attitudes wrought by turbulent labor markets and the rise of new channels such as social media.

The survey polled 175 employers across the U.S. in a spectrum of industries from education to manufacturing. About 240 employees were surveyed and were not necessarily employed by any of the participating employers. When comparing the two sets of data, there are some stark disconnects (see the graphic in the upper right). Some of the most noteworthy include:

• Only 25% of employers indicated that compensation is one of the most important attributes of an employer brand, compared with 64% of employees.
• Job security was ranked highly by 41% of employees, but only 21% of employers.
• Just 15% of employers felt that recognition is important in attracting new hires, while 33% of employees ranked it highly.
• Nearly half of employers (44%) felt career growth and advancement opportunities are important to attracting talent, while just over a quarter of talent (27%) agreed.

Looking at the data, one gets the impression that many employers may have lost common sense.

Compensation, benefits, and recognition are still important to job seekers, but employers may have downplayed those attributes of employer brands due to recently scaling back to trim costs. Job security, of course, is something no employer can promise, but if an organization has a record of stability, the data suggests it could be a powerful selling point in today’s more sober labor market.

Employers’ Frustrations

Employers have their share of disappointments as well. Most tended to disagree with the statement, “Employees feel a direct connection between the organization’s prosperity and their own prosperity” (see the graphic at right). Whether this is an acknowledgment that the organization’s efforts to educate workers on their role in the enterprise’s success have fallen short, or an implicit admission that employers are simply no longer “sharing the wealth,” is unknown.

Employers estimated that, on average, one-quarter (23%) of employees would refer friends or former colleagues to an opening, while 60% of workers said they would refer someone they knew to their employer. This disconnect may be due in large part to employers either not having a formal referral policy or neglecting to promote the one they have. The finding suggests that if employers put some effort into motivating employee referrals they could reap significant rewards.

Employee engagement surveys are the most commonly used tool to measure employer brand strength (63% of employers), and the scores from those surveys provide the metrics used to judge the success of employer branding efforts (according to 56% of employers). Employers can take comfort, then, in the knowledge that the overwhelming majority of employees who responded (72%) felt that they are “closely matched to their employer.”

Employers Ahead — or Behind — of Employees?

When asked about tactics, it appears that employers for once are out ahead of workers when it comes to recruiting efforts (check out the visual on the right). While almost two-thirds of employers (65%) say they are using social media to attract new talent, only 29% of employees say they use social media to look for new opportunities.

There have been other studies that suggest some people like to keep their social media experiences more personal and less formal. Another explanation could be those individuals using social media are in the vanguard technically, and with technical opportunities going begging, a strong social media presence puts the employer in front of the most difficult-to-hire talent. For employers, this means having a social presence now will appeal to the most tech-savvy talent while establishing a brand that will be waiting when the mainstream begins to shift towards the channel.

Surprisingly, nearly half (41%) of employers report they still use newspaper or print advertising. The percentage of those recruiters using mobile media — mobile-enabled Web sites or text messaging — barely registered, despite the meteoric growth of smartphone usage in the U.S. (now over 50%). Nearly half of employers (47%) report using e-mail or e-newsletters to recruit, despite evidence that 18- to 34-year olds are dropping e-mail in favor of instant messaging or apps. A study published by Business Insider found that advertisers in general spent 29% of their budgets on print, a medium where the average American spends 6% of their day, and spend roughly 1% on mobile advertising, where we spend 23% of our day. Clearly, change is coming; these disparities suggest it is inevitable.

What’s Next

The study has many other surprises embedded. Perhaps this is to be expected, given the rough ride our economy is hopefully finishing. One feels like they are coming out of their storm cellars and surveying the wreckage. Now that the economic “storm” has passed, it’s time to start getting back to work. Here’s how:

1. Make sure your employer brand is an authentic reflection of the current organization. If you haven’t revised your employer brand since the last decade, it’s time to revisit it. Evaluate it in light of the changes your organization went through since 2007, as well as new communications channels (which were barely a blip on the radar five years ago).
2. Make a concerted effort to understand your employees and candidates. Beware of drinking your “company Kool-Aid.” Don’t assume because your CEO thinks it’s a great place to work that your rank and file share the passion. Survey your workers (and do so in ways that ensure their anonymity; these days, everyone assumes you will try to weed out naysayers, and employees’ responses will be guarded and skew to the overly positive). Use employee communications as a dialogue rather than a broadcast medium. When all else fails, put yourself in their shoes.
3. Use metrics to build the case for a strong employer brand as a foundation for operational excellence. Many of the issues this research uncovered stem from cutbacks made during the Great Recession. No one is naïve enough to believe that those could have been completely avoided, but if a tighter link between excellent results and a strong employer brand is established, the next time cost-cutting is needed, it may not all fall on HR’s plate. Make sure the metrics you use matter to the key decision-makers on your executive committee (not just the head of HR). If you can dazzle the CFO, you’ll know you have a hit on your hands.

We end this week with a collection of odds and ends and surveys from our overflowing inbox.

Our first item is especially worth reading for those of you with teenagers. (If your offspring is graduating from college this spring, skim this, but don’t miss the next item.)

Since you’re a recruiter, you already know that jobs for millennials, let alone seasonal work for 16-19 year-olds, is tough to come by. That’s not likely to change, says Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

“While teen employment is likely to see further improvement this summer, job gains will probably once again fall short of pre-recession figures,” said John A. Challenger, CEO of the global outplacement firm. Last year about 1.1 million teens got jobs. More will find jobs this summer, but not a lot more.

Among the reasons: the millions of older millennials who can’t find jobs and will be competing with the teens for the seasonal work, says Challenger.

College Hiring Plans Up

Here’s a little silver lining to that news, courtesy CareerBuilder. Says the company, 54 percent of the surveyed employers said they planned on hiring recent college grads this year. That’s a big — no — a huge improvement over past years. In 2011 only 46 percent said they had such plans; 44 percent in 2010 and 43 percent in 2009.

Employers were most likely to report they will pay between $30,000 and $40,000, the survey found, though 20 percent will offer less than $30,000, and 28 percent will be over $50k.

Freelance Opportunities Booming

This may not help your teen, though everyone knows at least one kid with the tech chops to reprogram your phone, but freelance jobs, including business process types, are booming.

Freelancer.com says its job postings in the first quarter skyrocketed up 31 percent. The site is where companies around the world post their project, contract, and freelance jobs. Dominating the top 50 job activities tagged by hiring managers and recruiters in their 170,000 postings: IT and virtual assistant tasks.

Why so, “sign of the times?” Says Freelancer CEO Matt Barrie, “We have seen a huge increase in outsourcing on the whole, with businesses rethinking their strategies.”

LinkedIn Wins (Again) in Poll

With only 92 responses to this survey, we would counsel against anyone building a strategy around the results, but still, we found it interesting that yet another set of recruiters says LinkedIn is even better than sliced bread. (OK, they didn’t actually say that.) They just ranked LinkedIn ahead of all other sources (not including, it seems, employee referrals) for the quality of candidates.

The poll by Job Board Doctor Jeff Dickey-Chasins rated social media as a recruiting channel more frequently used than any other, including employee referrals, which is the first time we’ve seen that result.

Manufacturers May Be Headed Back To U.S.

Finally, if you recruit for manufacturing, here’s a survey finding you are going to really like: “More than a third of U.S.-based manufacturing executives at companies with sales greater than $1 billion are planning to bring back production to the United States from China or are considering it.”

So says the Boston Consulting Group, which conducted the survey in late February. Of the decision-makers at the 106 companies participating, “37 percent said they plan to reshore manufacturing operations or are “actively considering” it. That response rate rose to 48 percent among executives at companies with $10 billion or more in revenues — a third of the sample.”

Monster is a winner today on Wall Street; its stock up more than 16 percent at one point after reporting earnings that were double what analysts forecast.

It closed at $8.93; up 9.44 percent.

In the first quarter, the company saved its way to a 4 cent per share profit, not including one-time expenses or income. Though less than last year’s 5 cents, the earnings reflected the commitment Chairman and CEO Sal Iannuzzi made in previous financial reports to strengthen the company and keep a lid on expenses.

The $246.1 million in revenue the company reported was 6 percent below last year’s $261.4 million, with declines in each of its three sectors: North America, international, and advertising and fees. Savings from staff reductions and general restructuring helped make up the difference.

Counting all expenses, including one-time restructing charges and a restitution of $5.4 million in connection with the stock back-dating cases from the mid-2000s, Monster earned 3 cents a share. Last year it earned nothing.

Speaking during a conference call with analysts, Iannuzzi expressed a cautiousness about the future, as well as guarded optimism. Bookings, an indication of future business, were up in the first quarter by 8 percent overall, Iannuzzi said. North American bookings were up 6 percent, and 9 percent internationally, helped by a $23 million contract with the UK’s Department for Work and Pensions.

He also said that the company’s products, especially SeeMore and its 6Sense search technology, have been performing well with demand for them powering many of the booking deals, including the one with the DWP. “The new products” he said in answer to a question, “are really beginning to get more traction.”

However, he cautioned that global employment growth is facing stiff headwinds.

He predicted that “current uncertainty and market volatility” will continue during this second quarter, pointing out that earlier in the year, “Many predicted a steadily improving global economy. That view has now changed and many fear a failure of the economy and weakening business conditions, particularly in Europe. The optimism of last quarter was overstated.”

Consequently, Monster says it expects bookings to be in a range from +1 percent to – 5 percent. Revenue is expected to be down 8% to down 4% compared to the second quarter 2011 of $259 million. Second quarter earnings are expected to be in the range of 4 cents to 8 cents per share.

Before opening the session to questions from analysts, Iannuzzi said he wouldn’t provide anything new about the potential sale of the company, or other alternatives.

During the Q&A Iannuzzi said business from staffing firms was “a bright spot,” as that sector continues to grow. “I think the staffing companies understand we have more to offer.”

On pricing, he said Monster intends “to be extremely aggressive,” competing with other career services on that basis, and also on “the strength of the solution.”

Overseas, Iannuzzi said, there’s been a slowdown, even in the previously strong German economy. “Across Europe you are seeing, I wouldn’t call it a disastrous situation,” Iannuzzi said, observing that job revenues in more than one country were down by double-digit percentages. “Every country in Europe has slowed down.”

“For the time being, we don’t see a significant change,” Iannuzzi said, speaking of international economies and the U.S., too, “Up or down.”

Next week, LinkedIn reports its 1st quarter financial results. The careers and business networking site has been reporting steady, strong growth for several quarters even before going public a year ago. Investors will be watching on May 3 to see if the company can beat the Street, as it has in the past. Analyst estimates are for a 9 cent per share profit on revenue of $178.36 million.

As we gear up for the upcoming NFL draft this weekend, teams (and their fans) are studying, analyzing, prognosticating, and deciding which talent they should hire to help them achieve their goals.

In my preparations for the draft I recently ran across a really great article by Field Yates about the role of cognitive testing as one of the many pieces of predictive data used to help teams make player personnel decisions.

As a rabid fan of both testing and football and a self-proclaimed expert in each, I feel we can all learn a lot from the situation discussed in this article.

The article uses the controversy around the fact that Morris Claiborne, a cornerback who is projected to be a high first-round pick, did very poorly on the Wonderlic Exam (a cognitive ability test that all draft entrees are required to complete). The author suggests that Claiborne’s seemingly impossibly low score may actually be the result of a learning disability that will likely not hamper his on-field performance and uses this story as a lead-in to discuss the issue of using tests as a surrogate predictor of on-field performance.

I really enjoyed the author’s take on the importance of testing as a predictor of performance.

Just like a near-perfect score doesn’t equate to guaranteed success, a far-from-perfect score does not signal impending failure.

The point is — and this is what has been lost in the recent Claiborne headlines — the Wonderlic exam will always be a part of the draft equation, at least until a better metric is derived to replace it.

The premium each organization places on a particular Wonderlic score will inevitably vary; consensus is a rarity in personnel evaluation.

But what will always remain true is that every available tool to measure a player’s ability — the Wonderlic, 40-yard dash, bench press, and most importantly his film—is a piece of the draft puzzle.

I could not agree more with the author’s take on the value of testing as one piece of the bigger picture, the value of which is determined by the situation and the goals of the individuals who are responsible for making decisions. In my own work with testing and assessment I tend to recommend a model that focuses on the collection of a variety of data points. They all tap into different things that are important for success. Some can weed applicants out at key points in the hiring process; collectively, they can be “added up” at the end of the process to provide the data needed to make an informed final decision between candidates.

Here are a few more thoughts about the parallels between the article’s main points about predicting success in sports and my own insights around predicting success in the workplace.

1. The “whole person approach” is important: The Wonderlic is a test of basic cognitive ability and a very tried-and-true one. There is no doubt that it is provides very valuable information, but that there are other traits and abilities that are important too. It is often not a good idea to base all hiring on one test; understand what success looks like and build a measurement model that includes tools to measure all of the key things required. Just as the 40-yard-dash time is a critical component, so might be typing speed or skill with Java.
2. Understand the characteristics that are most valued by key stakeholders: When designing a selection system I am always delighted to have the chance to start at the top and let the organization’s strategic goals drive the process. The more all stakeholders are given a say in what they value and see as critical for success, the better. The combination of traits that are valued will likely be different in different situations, and this is what should drive the development of selection tools. An organization that prides itself on defense may look at the draft and its data differently then one that is more offensive-minded. Similarly, one firm may value innovators, while another firm may value experience, or free-thinking, or raw ability, or people who can follow a traditional path.
3. Provide applicants with a strong connection between the test content (or the hiring experience) and the real job: Tests are nothing but proxies for measuring an individual’s ability to perform in real situations. Real situations are often hard to model and evaluate, and thus we dissect the real experience into the basic traits required to perform, and then create tests to measure these things. The closer one is able to replicate the real situation, the more confidence one can have in its ability to identify those who will be successful in that situation. Tests that do not appear job related often require a leap of faith. In the world of sports, this is somewhat taken care of for us, as the author suggests film study of actual real-life situations is never going to take a back seat to a test score. The value is not in abstract skills like analytical ability, but in how those abilities are applied on the job (reading defenses when a giant lineman is trying to remove your head). While there is value in testing, there is even more value in making your test look like the job. The less it does so, the more its value may be questioned.
4. Don’t underestimate the value of training and experience: While natural ability sets some individuals apart (Barry Sanders, Lynn Swann, etc.), there are plenty of regular Joes (and Janes) out there who have some innate gifts but who also can be developed into champions. We strive to identify the best talent and make the best predictions, but there are only so many persons who are operating on an exceptional level. Hiring for basic ability and coachability is a fine strategy as long as you know what you are starting from (the correct level of raw talent) and have good coaches on your staff. Sometimes you hire someone for the intangibles and work tirelessly to coach the other stuff (think TimTebow) to a useable level.
5. Cast a wide net and don’t believe the hype: My favorite team has found some of its very best players in the furthest corners of the lower divisions of the NCAA. The moral is that raw talent is not always operating in the limelight. A good evaluation process will help mitigate the biases in perception about where one finds it. We have all lived through the many busts that have occurred when an individual is overly hyped and then fails to live up to expectations. A good evaluation process can also help cut through the crap and separate the pretenders from the contenders.
6. No matter how good you are, you will never be right all the time: Get over it already.Humans are extremely unpredictable and our behaviors and choices often defy all logic and explanation. The best NFL scout and the best hiring managers and recruiters all share the burden of the imperfection inherent in predicting human behaviors. Failure is part of the equation. It’s how you deal with failure and what you learn from it that will make or break you.