TIME KILLS ALL DEALS!

How Slow Employers Lose Great Talent

When I was a kid, my friends and I would often say to each other, “If you snooze, you loose.” When I finally entered the working world, I heard the grown-up version of this mantra, “Time Kills Deals”. Both of these sayings essentially mean the same thing: With every minute that elapses – after you’ve been presented with an opportunity that you don’t take – the chances become less likely that you’ll ever get it.
I’m here to tell you, the recruiting and hiring process is no different.
So if you accept that the hardest to find, or the most talented candidates are getting the lion’s share of the interviews – how likely is it that these talented candidates are going to patiently wade through your slow hiring process? Don’t kid yourself, it isn’t likely.
Even those candidates who are employed have to be very judicious about the time they take off from work to go on interviews – so they have little patience for a long, drawn out hiring process.
So, how do the very best employers snag the top candidates? Well, they act decisively. They understand that top talent is a highly perishable resource. They don’t skip steps, cut corners or accept sub-par talent – they just compress the hiring process. Even though plenty of people are out of work today, the most successful companies understand what it takes to land rare, top-notch talent – and, believe me, it isn’t a slow, bureaucratic process.
Here is what recruiters experience throughout the year –
The client calls and explains that they need to fill an open position “ASAP”. So, the recruiter rallies the troops and begins a blitzkrieg of activity to quickly uncover the very best candidates and then “sell” the most qualified prospects on the opportunity. Within days, the recruiter presents a slate of candidates to the client. A week later the client gets sidetracked with other priorities. Another week goes by and the candidates are getting a bit irritated and the client is just starting the process of pulling together the cast of folks who are going to meet the candidates. By the end of the third week the recruiter finally gets the approval to start scheduling interviews – but by then some of the best candidates have already accepted offers from other employers. As each day goes by, more and more of the very best candidates are lost.
Now consider a survey I recently read: According to a national poll, 61% of all U.S. households are living paycheck to paycheck and 30% of all households earning over $100,000 per year are in the same position. And, even when you consider the number of families who have three to six month emergency funds, you learn quickly that few families are prepared to weather a long job search.
So, is it any wonder that great job candidates, who have been out of work for a couple months or more, are unwilling to put up with a slow hiring process?
You might ask, as an employer, “What can our company do about it?” Well, first of all, consider that your survival in the marketplace is directly tied to hiring BETTER candidates than your competitors. Start taking the hiring process far more seriously by killing your bureaucratic processes and understanding that reducing time-to-hire can often dramatically increase talent quality – as well as reduce opportunity cost and customer service issues caused by long-term vacant positions.
Before you get the wrong idea, I am NOT suggesting you rush into decisions.
What I am suggesting is that you move through your recruiting and hiring process as rapidly as possible – without violating your due diligence process. You need a proven and thorough selection process, but that doesn’t mean it needs to take a long time.
It’s time to update the old adage, “Hire Slow and Fire Fast” to – “Hire Fast and Fire Fast”.
Lastly, the most important advice I can give any employer: You should be actively talking to prospective candidates – throughout the year, even when you don’t have an open position.
It’s highly unlikely that the very best talent will be actively looking for a position during the same, small window of time when you absolutely have to fill an open position. That’s why the best managers are looking for talent – every waking minute.
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SEVEN WAYS SLOW JOB SEEKERS LOSE GREAT JOBS
1.) After they lose a position, they lick their wounds and/or use the front end of their severance as a vacation – and don’t immediately begin their job search. During this delay, several windows of opportunity come and go.
2.) After they determine they want and need to change positions, while currently employed, they don’t immediately begin their job search – and instead, wait until they are miserable. During this delay, several windows of opportunity come and go.
3.) They don’t respond to employer phone calls or emails within the same day.
4.) They don’t rearrange their schedules to quickly get in front of employers who show interest in interviewing them.
5.) They don’t complete/submit paperwork or provide additional information in a timely fashion (e.g. applications, references, compensation history, work samples…).
6.) They are slow to tell the employer that they are sincerely interested in the position.
7.) They don’t accept the position within the time prescribed by the employer.

Coop and Court!!

Happy New Year!!

Success or Failure, your CHOICE!

Your Success and Failure in Your Business and Personal Life is Up To You.

This is absolutely correct. The burden is yours and yours alone. From the mid 1990’s until about the mid 2000’s, there were a series of books written named Chicken Soup for the Soul. The series was co-authored by Jim Canfield. One of Mr. Canfield's books, The Success Principles: How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be gives us the secrets to success in all forms of life, including how to achieve the highest goals possible in your career.
Canfield says that “If you want to be successful you have to take 100% responsibility for everything that you experience in your life.” “This includes:

* The level of your achievements
* The results you produce
* The quality of your relationships

You have to be brutally honest with yourself about yourself. To accomplish this you have to give yourself a reality check. For some, like me, it might be a bitter pill to swallow; for others, maybe not so much. It just depends on you, your expectations and where you are in life when you enact this reality check. However, if you do this then the outcome may just be the results you have been looking for and striving toward, but you certainly won’t ever know if you don’t take the time to do it in the first place.

Here are Canfield's fundamentals for success on the job and in life.
 
1) Take 100% responsibility for everything. The biggest myth in today’s society is that we are entitled to a great life, that somehow, somewhere, someone is responsible for filling our lives with continual happiness, exciting career options, nurturing family time and wonderful personal relationships just because we simply exist. I feel that today’s younger generation seems to fall into this category the more I interact with them. Unfortunately for them, the real truth is that you alone are the person responsible for how you live your life.
 
2) You have to give up all your excuses, blaming, and complaining. Blaming is something we all do at some point in our lives. We can’t help ourselves. We are conditioned this way even though the real problem is always ourselves. You have to stop doing this if you are going to change your life pattern to be more positive. Forget the victim stories, the reasons you can’t and won’t and your blaming of outside circumstances. Instead, you have to ask yourself “How did I create that?” or “What did I say or not say?” and “What do I have to do differently the next time to get the result I want?
 
3) If you don’t like your outcomes, change your responses. If you keep on doing things the way you have always done them, you’ll keep on getting the same responses. In one of my previous articles I quoted an old mentor of mine who used to say “there are both stupid and dumb people in life. The stupid person makes mistakes; the dumb one makes the same ones over and over again.” If you use a particular form of marketing to gain new clients, and you don’t gain any, then you have to re-examine your methodology and try something different. Otherwise, you won’t get the new clients you are targeting.
 
4) Everything you are experiencing today is a direct result of choices you made in the past. Every experience in your life is a direct result of how you responded to a previous situation. After all, you only have control over THREE (3) things in your life: your thoughts, images you visualize, and your actions. How you use these determines your experience (So much for “controlling” our candidates. This is why recruiters need to learn to manage the process)
 
5) You either “create” or “allow” everything that happens to you. Some might disagree with this statement but according to Canfield, when he says create he means directly causing something to happen by your actions or inactions. An example might be that as a Recruiter, you have an opportunity to add an alternative income stream to your business model but you decide you don’t want the extra workload at this time. A few weeks down the road, you find out your major competitor in your geographic territory added the business you decided against and now he/she is doing an extra $5,000 a month in business.
 
6) Pay attention to “yellow alerts.” These are caution signals or advance warnings; telltale signs. comments from others, gut instinct and personal intuition, These include external, an example might be, your clients dropping like flies because they tell you they no longer like the service you offer them, to internal, that gut feeling that you had when the very last client you spoke with called and you just knew it was going to be bad news as soon as you picked up the phone.
 
7) Results don’t lie. The easiest way to determine what is and isn’t working in your life, both business and personal, is to examine the results you are producing. You are getting the clients or you’re not! You are closing deals or you’re not. You’re making new friends or you can’t seem to meet anyone.  

Bottom line here! The only way to change your results is to change your behavior.

Why a Passive Candidate Should Take a Recruiter’s Call

The candidate is happy. 

They get a call from a recruiter. 

Why should they be open minded enough to have a conversation? 

Well, there are many advantages to discussing an opportunity even when they’re content where they are. Hopefully, this article gives you some insight on why it makes good career sense for the prospective candidate to be a little more open-minded when they get a recruiting call.

Yes, it’s information you already know.

First of all, there is no better time for someone to evaluate an opportunity and company with a clear mind without any negative, outside influences or external pressures. The worst time to go to the grocery store is when you’re hungry. You’re more likely to buy food that you know is not in your best long-term interests.
It’s no different when it comes to only talking to recruiters when they’re actively looking for a new job. Opportunities will appear to be more appealing than they really are when you’re currently unsatisfied in your position or company. When an individual looks into an opportunity when they’re happy, they can vividly see how the opportunity would positively or negatively impact their career since they’re not trying to fill a void. An employee is more likely to settle for a lesser position when they’re unhappy than they would have if they were content.
Life is better as a recruited candidate as opposed to a being a job applicant. Why? Because they have the leverage when they’re being recruited and referred by a recruiter. When someone “applies” for a position, the company is screening and qualifying them since they’re the one looking for a job. When that same person is “recruited,” they are investigating and qualifying the company and opportunity to determine whether or not it will help them grow professionally. The tables are turned. Since they’re happy where they are, if the opportunity doesn’t provide career growth, they have the leverage of staying where they are. When they’re unhappy or looking, they’re running away from their current situation and more desperate to make a change so the company they are applying to has the leverage.
Even if the opportunity doesn’t entice them enough to move forward, in today’s corporate world, the only job security they have is the security they give themselves. If they don’t look out for their own career, no one else is going to do it for them. Dig the well before you’re thirsty. Having a connection with a recruiter who knows them, their background, and career aspirations is one way to do that.
If they’re happy, then they’re probably performing well in their role and hopefully their company is taking good care of them. There is no other time in their career when they’re more marketable. This is the best time in their career to take their successes and accomplishments to test what they’re worth to another organization, whether that means a more challenging role, a faster-growing company, or exposure to a new industry.
The best time for professionals to keep their options open is when they’re satisfied in their current role and company. They don’t have to consider the recruiter’s opportunity unless it meets the criteria that they set, not the other way around. There is no other way to learn as much about an opportunity without officially interviewing with a company itself other than learning about it from a recruiter on an exploratory and confidential basis. Actively looking for a job can be a full-time job itself. It can also be also be very stressful. People who get ahead don’t wait until there is something that they don’t like in their current role to have an open mind.  They are proactive and keep their options open.

Why Clients should love Recruiters!

Here are some reasons why clients should love recruiters:

Save The Clients’ Time. The time it takes to search and source can run up to 40 to 80 hours a week, for just five great candidates. Good recruiters will not just find the candidate that fits the bullet points on a job description, but instead will find a person who is going to interview well for that company’s environment. Good recruiters don’t just throw resumes at a position. I would rather throw three good ones than 10 bad ones.

Sell the company and find the Sizzle.  After a couple of placements, the trust factor kicks in, and the recruiter starts to learn more about their client’s business, they get to know the hiring managers, the HR staff, and management personnel. They may have even toured the facility. At this point, a recruiter has something to hang on to, and that is respect. As a recruiter, I know their business, and I know their people. I am confident I can find them the right people, THAT FIT IN.

Prepping Candidates For Interview.  If I prep a candidate correctly, I save everybody from embarrassment. Here are the main points that I emphasize with any candidate:

• Be extremely polite, courteous, and respectful to all you meet, no matter what their position. I can’t emphasize this enough.

• Know what your skillset is, write it all down if you need too, and take it in to the interview. Talk about your ability to lead other people, teambuilding, accomplishments, and give examples of all of these.

• The most important part is telling your story – tell it with passion. I had a young man that interviewed, and he told the story of when he was a small boy he would go the plant where his Dad worked, and learned early what hard work was, and learned about engineering from his Dad. When he was in High School he worked there after school. After High School he went to college and became an Engineer. “This is my life,” he explained. He has trained for this moment since he was a young boy. They did hire him, without experience, but just on the fact he had passion and vision for what he was to accomplish.

Recruiting is made up of a number of processes, and a good recruiter becomes very skilled with those processes as time goes along. Pick your recruiter as though you were picking your next employee. As your relationship flourishes, he will represent you, and work hard for you.

Most Sourcing Is Painfully Dull

— It’s Time to Try Some Creative Approaches

Compared to the extremely high levels of creativity and innovation that are found in marketing and product branding, the sourcing aspect of corporate recruiting would have to be given a grade of “F” when it comes to creativity and trying new sources. Using the benchmark standard, the CareerXroads annual survey of external hire sources, more than 90% of corporate hires come from traditional and well-established recruiting sources (i.e. referrals, job boards, the career site, direct sourcing, college career centers, social media, and career fairs). With the exception of possibly social media, you could hardly call any of these major sources “creative.”

In fact, because everyone uses them by definition, they can’t be creative — they are simply common. In order to be labeled as creative, sources have to be unique and infrequently used, as well as effective. For example, creative sourcing might include the use of contests, video games, radio, movie theater ads, billboards, and TV ads. Being creative in sourcing is essential for three basic reasons:

1. No competitive advantage – if everyone else uses the same sources as you do, your firm simply cannot gain a competitive advantage over your talent competitors. Being a unique user of an effective source does provide a competitive advantage.
2. Lost in the volume – when literally every corporation uses the same source, your message cannot easily stand out and get noticed, simply because of the volume of recruiting messages.
3. Active only sources – when you focus so much of your sourcing on active sources (i.e. job boards, print ads, and career fairs), you are failing to reach the 80% of employed individuals who are not actively looking for a job (i.e. the so-called passives). Most creative sources reach both non-lookers and active job seekers.

A List of 20 Proven “Creative Recruiting Sources” That Most Are Not Using

Below you’ll find a list of sourcing approaches that would have to be classified as “creative” simply because so many corporations don’t have the courage to try them. A few of the firms that have tried these approaches are listed in parentheses.

1. YouTube videos — using employee-produced videos to show the excitement within the firm can allow you to cheaply provide authentic recruiting and employer branding messages (Deloitte, Zynga, and Hyatt)
2. Your own contest – offering your own online technical contest allows you to assess and attract individuals who are not looking for a job, as well as to get answers to your current problems (Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Quixey, and Whirlpool)
3. Contests sponsored by others – recruiting at externally sponsored contests like cooking competitions and poker competitions can allow you to assess the work of top professionals (Harrah’s, and Microsoft, Dell, and MGM Grand)
4. Video games – using video games to attract and excite candidates can impress individuals who love video games (U.S. Army, MITRE, and Marriott)
5. TV/Radio – using both cable and Internet TV shows to show what it’s like to work at the firm can get a powerful message across. Targeting the specific radio stations that your prospect audience listens to can also be effective, especially for diversity prospects (Southwest Air and Zappos)
6. Movie theater ads – placing ads between movies at movie theaters in order to attract can be effective if members of your target audience are frequent moviegoers (Southwest Air and TSA)
7. Billboards – using highway billboards to recruit and build your employer brand can make your message visible to commuters (Google, EA and MGM Grand)
8. Employee referral cards – providing employees with employee referral cards to give to people who impress them during their course of their day can be an inexpensive and effect sourcing tool (Apple and Southwest Airlines)
9. “Show your work” sites – sourcing on Internet sites like Dribble and Pinterest where individuals post their actual work can allow you to assess and complement on the work of individuals who are not actively looking for a job. Recruiting on Slideshare can also be effective because you can view the presentations of the individuals that you are considering (Southwest Airlines and Work Club).
10. Location sourcing – physically placing recruiters and recruiting signs close to competitors or where potential hires “hang out” can easily and quickly get the attention of many prospects (EA, zscaler, Google, Cake, Tokbox, TSA, and Fingg.com).
11. Recruiting at non-recruiting events – recruiting at events that are regularly attended by your targets including charity events, sporting events, and wine festivals can allow you to reach employed individuals who are not expecting to be recruited at these types of events. Recruiting at events held by clubs and professional associations that many prospects join can also be effective. (Google, Cisco, IBM, the U.S. Navy, and UPS).
12. Direct mail – because almost everyone uses the Internet, sending candidate messages directly to their home can make your message stand out (FirstMerit Bank and Starr Tincup).
13. Consumer products — placing recruiting ads or brand messaging on consumer products like pizza boxes, coffee sleeves, and gas pumps can be a subtle but effective recruiting tool (TSA and Sun).
14. Question sites/forums – recruit individuals who continually give high quality answers on Internet questions sites like Quora and Focus and on functional forums.
15. Use the mobile platform for messaging – the smart phone is the most powerful communications medium, simply because prospects are constantly on it and carry it with them at all times. Make sure that your corporate website is compatible with smart phones and use text, voice, and videos to communicate your message to prospects (Sodexo, the U.S. Army, and AT&T).
16. Talent communities –  for large companies, you can develop online talent communities where you build relationships over time with a group of prospects based on learning and professional issues. Only after the professional relationship is solidified do you pursue recruiting possibilities (Microsoft and UPS).
17. Assigned referrals – rather than waiting for employees to find a referral, when a top candidate has already been identified, the firm can use software to identify which employee has the strongest social media relationship with the target. The employee (or employees) is then given the assignment to use their connections to contact and to build a recruiting relationship with the target. (Zynga)
18. Blogs – having your employees write blogs can send an authentic message to individuals who are not actively seeking a job (Google and Microsoft).
19. Creating a story book – compiling and publishing a book highlighting key employee’s stories about the firm’s culture and environment is a form of authentic messaging (Zappos).
20. Community organizations and churches – if you’re looking for entry level and hourly workers, an often overlooked source or community organizations and churches. These organizations are likely to be among the first contacted by individuals who have recently joined the community. 

Final Thoughts

If your idea of sourcing is limited to putting together a Boolean search and posting your job on a job board, your overuse of these “tired approaches” may be hurting your firm. Seventy-five percent of all hires come from the same five sources. It may be time to get a fresh perspective, so why not make a commitment to build a relationship with your product marketing and branding teams in order to identify the breath of creative approaches that they use to reach their potential customers?
If you’re not sure whether a new creative approach will work, simply survey a sample of your top employees and best hires to see if using a new source would’ve been effective in reaching and selling them? And remember to ask new hires what approaches attracted them so that you can tell if your new sources actually had a positive impact.

The Strategic Recruiting of Purple Squirrels, Innovators, and Gamechangers

There is no more valuable recruit than a “Purple Squirrel.” 

In fact, a single Purple Squirrel recruit may be more impactful than all of your other hires combined during a single year. If you’re not familiar with the term, a Purple Squirrel is the moniker that denotes an extremely rare and talented recruiting target. Purple Squirrels are valuable because they are extreme innovators. Once hired, they can change your firm’s capabilities, direction, and marketplace success almost instantly.

 

 

The benchmark Purple Squirrel was Tony Fadell, who conceived of the concept of the MP3 player while he was at Philips. But Apple recruited him away, allowing them to dominate and make billions in a product area (the iPod) where they had little expertise before recruiting him. This single Purple Squirrel acquisition made Apple billions and set the expectation for future market dominating innovations at Apple!

The most stunning thing, however, about Purple Squirrel recruiting is the fact that there is literally a zero chance that these valuable game-changers and pioneers can be recruited using the existing recruiting process at 99.5% of the world’s major corporations. For example, everyone would agree that Steve Jobs, even in his youth, was a Purple Squirrel, but the fact is that he was rejected by the recruiting process at HP, despite all his talent, simply because he had no college degree.

These purple squirrels are true pioneers with the capability of not only coming up with original ideas but also in successfully implementing them. Purple Squirrels are generally not senior executives, but instead, they are often mid-level employees in product development, technology, mathematics, social media, or the monetization of products and services. Each of these areas are essential for market domination.

Why You Should Develop a Process for Recruiting Purple Squirrels

There are numerous reasons why firms are beginning to realize why they need to focus their recruiting effort on Purple Squirrels. Some of those reasons and benefits include:

• Their incredible economic impact – the tremendous value of these purple squirrels is not idle speculation, because Apple has calculated their performance at 25 times and Google 300 times the performance level of an average hire. Think of the tremendous economic value that recruiting could bring if your firm had the capability of recruiting early-career pioneers like Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Larry Page (Google), Jeff Bezos (Amazon), or a Tony Hsieh (Zappos).
• Innovation is replacing productivity — the tremendous economic success of Apple has convinced many CEOs that continuous market-leading innovation has a higher economic impact than the more traditional HR goal of increasing workforce productivity. Average employees simply don’t come up with pioneering, game-changing solutions, so if you need them, you need to recruit a few Purple Squirrels.
• Technology superiority is becoming essential everywhere – most executives have also learned that every firm in every industry now must maintain superiority in technology and many Purple Squirrels are technologists who can provide that technical superiority.
• Impact on employer brand image – adding Purple Squirrels to your workforce will instantly improve your employer brand image and the likelihood of attracting other top talent.
• They can be the driver of a culture of innovation — recruiting even a handful of Purple Squirrels may shift your culture (like it did at Apple), so that it becomes an “innovation culture” where serial innovation becomes the norm.
• The recruiting competition is weak – because only a handful of large corporations (e.g. Google, Facebook, and Apple) have the capability of recruiting these individuals, your main competition will be limited to executive search and startup firms.

Why Traditional Corporate Recruiting Approaches Fail on Purple Squirrels

Applying traditional corporate recruiting approaches guarantee failure because Purple Squirrels really are different. Here is an example to illustrate the difficulty. Let’s assume that you are trying to recruit Tiger Woods to your local golf team. He certainly wouldn’t return your messages and you would not be allowed to approach him personally. If you did get a brief 30 seconds with him, he would simply say that he is happy where he is. In fact, it would take a recommendation from a trusted colleague or reading about a “WOW” aspect of your golf team even to get his attention. And even then, it might take months to get him to agree to an interview. There are at least 10 ways that Purple Squirrels differ as prospects and candidates. They include:

1. Finding them is easy – even though they are rare individuals (less than 1% of the workforce), they can easily be identified because of their track record of high-impact work. They are likely to be award winners, speakers at conferences, they may hold patents, and a simple Google search will identify their great work.
2. Direct sourcing is required – these are “super passive” prospects who will literally never again apply for an open job. They cannot be successfully recruited or even contacted using traditional methods. The recruiting may need to be done by an executive or a peer Purple Squirrel.
3. Their primary motivator is “the work” – you can’t impress them with perks or even money. You must realize that their primary motivator is “the work” and the opportunity to do the best and most challenging and impactful work of their life. If you don’t offer compelling work, you have zero chance of recruiting them.
4. They must be fought for – because Purple Squirrels already have a good job and are highly valued, their current boss will fight ferociously to keep them. Because they continually receive “anytime you’re ready” job opportunities from colleagues, they will not even see, no less respond, to a job posting.
5. They expect a personalized job – they undoubtedly already have a flexible job, so they expect that any new “dream job” will of course be designed around their interests and needs. Their expectations may include remote work options, a choice of projects, and even an opportunity to select their own team. If you show them a standard job description, they will simply walk away.
6. They will not discuss job opportunities with strangers – they will not ever return recruiter calls and a longer-term relationship with a peer may be required before you can even approach the topic of a career opportunity.
7. You must know their “job acceptance criteria” – they will not even consider an opportunity unless it meets each and every one of their “job-acceptance criteria.” As a result, you must tailor the opportunity and the offer around their decision criteria. You must also identify any potential deal breakers and then find a way to avoid each of them. On the positive side, at least one “WOW” will likely be required before they will even consider an opportunity.
8. Their decision will be influenced by others — they don’t make major decisions without consultation, so you must identify and attempt to influence those who will be involved in any major decision (i.e. spouses, other Purple Squirrel colleagues, former bosses, references, mentors, etc.).
9. Hiring managers may be resistant – hiring managers are certainly accustomed to holding all of the power over their recruits. Unfortunately, because of their past success, Purple Squirrels often have an ego and they expect to be treated as at least equals. If your hiring managers are not trained to accept a little arrogance and extremely high “demands,” they will likely reject these Purple Squirrels because of their own ego issues.
10. They expect to see innovation in the recruiting process – they understand their value and their power in the recruiting equation, so they will expect a great candidate experience. If your recruiting process doesn’t also include some dramatic innovation, Purple Squirrels will simply assume that innovation doesn’t exist at your firm and they will immediately drop out of your recruiting process.
11. Skill assessment becomes secondary – because they have a successful track record of implementing innovation, you won’t need to do a lot of formal skills assessment. Because these individuals know their tremendous value, requiring more than one interview or even an updated resume might be a dealbreaker. Selling them needs to be the primary recruiting focus.

Approaches for Successfully Recruiting Purple Squirrels

Space limitations prevent me from providing a complete recruiting process for successfully hiring Purple Squirrels, but I can provide you with a handful of approaches that have been successful in the past. These recruiting approaches include:

• CEO recruiting – having the CEO act as your chief recruiter can make all the difference, provided that you guide the CEO throughout the process. The CEOs of Apple, Facebook, Zynga, Starbucks, and Google have all been directly involved in recruiting.
• Use proactive key employee referrals — proactively approaching one or more of your high-powered employees and asking them to take the lead on contacting and building the relationship is a wise beginning. Be sure and educate them on the do’s and don’ts of Purple Squirrel referrals. You might also assign a senior executive to help throughout the process.
• Develop a talent community – this approach was pioneered by Microsoft, and its basic premise is that the only way to have conversations and build relationships with Purple Squirrels is through non-recruiting topics. That means building online social media based talent communities containing hundreds of participants that are based 100% on learning and best practice sharing.
• Involve them in your work – the basic premise of this approach is that you must get Purple Squirrels involved with the important work that you do. That means periodically asking them questions, asking them to serve as an advisor, or making them a beta tester. Over time, they will learn to understand what you’re trying to accomplish and appreciate the capabilities of your team. Also consider invited open houses where your team shares its work and plans with top prospects. These can be held at night in the functional department.
• Prioritize your jobs – you only need a handful of Purple Squirrels in order to impact your firm, so you must put together a process to identify the handful of jobs and business units where a purple squirrel could have a dramatic impact.
• Comment on their work – one of the most effective approaches for building relationship with a purple squirrel is to initially positively comment on their writing and their work. Eventually proceed to occasionally criticizing it and offering suggestions. Finally, ask them to review your own best work.
• Build a behavioral profile of your target – use your own purple squirrel employees to get an idea about how to best contact and understand them. Use Internet searches and Google Alerts to find out what events they attend, what organizations they join, where they write, what they read, and what their favorite communications channels are. Use that information to fully understand them, to make your first initial contact, and to build a long-term relationship with them.
• Identify the “right day” to discuss an opportunity – because Purple Squirrels are likely to be well treated at their current job, on any given day a recruiting opportunity with almost always be responded to with a “hard no.” However, there are a handful of “right days” where they would be more likely to consider a new opportunity. Those “right days” might include days immediately after their boss, the CEO, or a close colleague left. Right days might also include days surrounding when their current project is coming to an end, after they’ve been denied a promotion, or when the company is experiencing a significant difficulty (i.e. a merger, a layoff, or a scandal). Their own and their friends’ Facebook postings and Twitter comments can provide you with an effective heads-up on when a “right day” is occurring.
• One-day hiring capability — you must have the capability of moving extremely fast once a Purple Squirrel does become available. In order to make an offer in one day, you will need to have previously opened up a” corporate resource” position for them and have already put together their dream job offer which meets each of their job acceptance criteria. You also need to be prepared with a counteroffer strategy, because their boss will undoubtedly make one or more counter offers.
• Include something that WOWs them – in order to improve your chances of success, you need to do something that dramatically impresses them on “offer day.” Some possibilities include “hire them both” (hire them with a close colleague), let them pick their own (boss/team/project/location), or offering them a huge bonus if they accept immediately. Other possibilities include having your CEO make the offer in person or allowing them to design their own dream job.

Final Thoughts

Although recruiting Purple Squirrels may seem unusual to you, the practice is actually quite common in the sports and the entertainment industries. Everyone there already knows the tremendous advantage of adding a single player like LeBron, Kobe, Tiger, A-Rod, or Lionel Messi to a team or Angelina Jolie, Jack Nicholson, or Matt Damon to your movie.
If you want to pursue the approach in the corporate world, the first step is to identify a few “Purple Squirrels” and ask senior leaders to estimate their impact if they were successfully brought on board. When you get a resounding “yes,” you need to be prepared with a complete plan on how you have the capability to contact, build a relationship, and eventually recruit them. After bringing one successfully on board, the rest will be easy.