What Every HR Leader Needs to Know About Sourcing Top Talent

Most companies wait until there’s an open position to start scrambling for new talent. This is a mistake. It is even dysfunctional.

To be truly prepared to make your number, you need a constant supply of top talent on deck.

To do this, you must set up a “virtual bench” of go-to talent that can be on-boarded quickly and efficiently.Here’s how to make it happen.

A feast-or-famine approach to sourcing makes it impossible to attract a team of “A” players.

To read about Talent Development and Retention, leverage these two recent SBI Blog Articles:

1. Inside the Art of Onboarding and Developing Talent
2. How to Spot, Develop, and Retail Top Talent

    

Need help attracting and identifying “A Players”?

Download the “A Player” Sales Competency Assessment Tool. This helpful tool:

• Aids in assessing your Sales Organization to Emerging Best Practices.
• Defines different competency metrics.
• Captures key attributes of “A”, “B”, and “C Players” and rates their competency.

   

Source Top Talent In Advance

The first step of a Talent Strategy should be to develop the profile for an “A” player in each key revenue goal. After that, you should assess each member of the Corporate, Product, Marketing, and Sales teams against their profile. This will help pinpoint where your talent strengths and gaps are.

Now, you’re ready to actively source the talent capable of filling current or future Corporate, Product, Marketing, and Sales positions. You may find these key players outside or inside the organization. If there are people you can promote from the inside, it’s important to set up a clear succession plan.

It’s crucial not to wait to trigger this process until there’s an urgent demand for new talent. This delay-then-scramble approach to sourcing makes it impossible to attract a team of “A” players. And it will leave your team fighting to fill important positions at inconvenient times.

To make this process more concrete, we have provided below a simple questionnaire that will check off all the necessary boxes for sourcing the best talent.

Ask These Seven Questions:

1. What are our current sourcing needs?
2. What do we estimate our future sourcing needs to be?
3. Who is responsible for sourcing?
4. When we find a qualified candidate, how do we use a virtual bench to keep them interested?
5. How do we blend traditional sourcing techniques with modern social techniques?
6. Who is responsible for our sourcing process? Who else contributes to it?
7. How do we reduce the time to fill an open position with an “A” player?

When the time comes that you need a quick replacement for a top position, you’ll be happy you asked these seven questions. With the right talent available to operate in the best performance conditions, your business will stay on track to make the number without missing a beat.

To make this process as smooth as possible, come to the Studio for a talent-based workshop based on SBI’s Revenue Growth Methodology (RGM). This will allow you to import best practices from the top performing companies into your environment. Take a sneak peek of the RGM Workbook, and then schedule a meeting at your earliest convenience.

Need help attracting and identifying “A Players”?

Download the “A Player” Sales Competency Assessment Tool. This helpful tool:

• Aids in assessing your Sales Organization to Emerging Best Practices.
• Defines different competency metrics.
• Captures key attributes of “A”, “B”, and “C Players” and rates their competency.

   

Schedule a working session at SBI’s Studio.

Located in Dallas, TX, our facility offers state-of-the-art meeting rooms, lounge, full-service bar, and a studio used to tape our TV shows. SBI provides the location and facilitators, all at a compelling price point.

As a guest of The Studio, you’ll get unlimited access to SBI’s CEO, Partners, and a handpicked team of experts. Together we’ll focus on developing an action plan for your needs by getting a month of work done in just eight hours. It’s an amplified experience that you can only get in one place: The Studio. I hope you join us.