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9
Workforce Strategies
4
Hire doers
Polished resumes and a command of business
jargon don’t reveal much about candidates.
Cosmetic and superficial characteristics are just
that. You want people with demonstrated track
records of success, who can illustrate their
accomplishments. During a business dinner, we
met a woman who created a charity that helps
build scalable, replicable schools across the
Dominican Republic. As she explained her work,
she revealed a keen ability to organize, engage
people and tackle difficult projects with aplomb
— indicators of her superior functional skills.
And in doing so, she also illuminated her crucial
soft skills: she’s compassionate, invests in her
talent, cares about her work and contributes to
her community. While these traits are not easy
to quantify on a resume, they shine through; it’s
obvious, based on a single conversation, that this
woman knows how to get things done.
Hire leaders if you need
5
them — otherwise, don’t
Though you need champions in key roles or
leadership positions, you need exceptional
workers to execute daily tasks. Look carefully at
the organization you’re trying to design. If you’re
spearheading a new function, division or platform,
find a worthy leader to manage the team. Every other
part of your business, however, requires solid talent
who produce results. Leaders, while experienced
and qualified, have a natural tendency to oversee
and delegate. Although they bring impressive
credentials, it doesn’t mean they’ll be comfortable
— or effective — slogging it out in the trenches.
6
Avoid interview biases
We naturally gravitate toward like-minded
individuals. Familiarity breeds comfort, and we
often seek out peers, friends and colleagues who
share similar qualities with us. And that creates
an unintentional bias. If you really think about it,
your friends and loved ones may not be ideal co-
workers. Love and admiration aside, they might
not fit your business culture or the job at hand.
Soft skills help you relate to candidates, yet hard
skills are necessary to succeed.
To avoid interviewer bias, try this exercise. Sit as a
group with the decision making committee or hiring
team, and then work out a series of questions (no
more than 10) that you would all ask candidates.
This gives you the opportunity to identify and
weed out biases within the group, standardize the
questions and create relevant evaluation criteria.
Think of it as a proactive assessment, because
you’re also defining the answers you’re looking
for in optimal hires. This process ensures that
interviewers are on the same page in determining
what an ideal candidate looks like. We’ve found
this process to be instrumental in quickly identifying
the right talent — professionals who will thrive in
our culture and evangelize our brand.
7
Try before you buy
This is a philosophy that infuses so many aspects
of our lives — and not just when car shopping.
Think about dating. We “date” all the time, and
that reaches beyond romantic relationships.
Even before we solidify a friendship and draw
that person into our confidence, we “date” them.
Employment, like friendship and romance, is a
relationship. It requires some level of dating. When
any degree of intimacy is at stake, trust needs to
be developed and compatibility tested.
Fortunately, contingent work has made the
process easier. Employers can invite freelancers
or contractors to join tours of duty, creating
an opportunity to assess each person’s work
ethic, output, cultural fit, impact and likeability.
Meanwhile, talent gets to try out prospective
employers. In our experience, these tours of duty
have led to meaningful, lasting relationships.
8
Less is more
Throwing people at a problem is about as
effective as throwing money at a problem.
Increasing headcounts without a defined strategy
or documented need means more babysitting.
You risk spending too much energy managing
large teams that aren’t producing at high levels.
Perceptible wastes of time and resources
frustrate managers and staff alike. The trick is to
run lean and smart: find fewer key people who
will have a significant impact on the business.
This approach also enhances scalability. By
monitoring performance and encouraging an
ongoing dialog with key talent, you’ll gain a
better sense of when to augment headcounts,
and the move will be justified.
9
Foster a great micro-culture
Every organization has a culture, defined at top for
the business. However, different micro-cultures
exist at the team level. Finance and customer
service are distinct teams with unique drivers,
skills and roles. A successful enterprise seeks out
talent who will fit the macro-culture as well as the
micro-culture with their closest colleagues and
work groups.
10
Invest in talent
Leading employers don’t hinge their hiring
strategies on simply getting talent through the door.
They concentrate on attracting the right people and
then developing them for ongoing success. There’s
no shortage of talent — the test is creating an
alluring and authentic brand that draws “top talent”
to your organization. That involves promoting a
vision and mission they want to share based on
values, culture, work-life balance, supportive
management, career growth and more.
HR
Sunil Bagai is a Silicon Valley
entrepreneur who is transforming
the way world-class companies
think about and acquire talent.
Blending vision, technology and
business skills honed in the most
innovative corporate environments
(including IBM, EMC, and
Symantec), he has created a
new model for recruitment,
which is being tapped successfully by large companies such
as Google, MasterCard, TSYS and SpaceX. In 2000, Sunil
founded Indosys Corporation (now part of Zenith Talent),
a company offering software and staffing solutions to the
world’s most successful businesses. In 2012, Sunil founded
Zenith Talent, introducing a new Crowdstaffing model with
profit sharing for recruiters, which delivers measurable value
to large MSP/VMS clients. These offerings bring powerful
innovation to the way talent is identified and hired globally.
Zenith Talent was recently named to the GameChangers
500; a distinction given to the world’s top for-benefit
companies that maximize benefit to people and the planet.
Other GameChangers companies include: Google, Patagonia,
Zappos, Reflexology, and Seventh Generation.
