When organizations hire employees for key positions, they want superstars.  They want rainmakers and movers-and-shakers.  Basically, they want A Players.  They certainly don’t set out to hire 10 % A Players, 80% B Players and 10% C Players.  But that’s what most companies have.  Still, it is fair to say that no recruiter ever hired someone knowing he would be a C Player, nor could he have known with certainty who was an A Player and who was a B Player.   If only 10% of the employees at most companies are A Players, then clearly HR departments are hiring lots of B and C Players.   That implies that it must be hard (or should we say nearly impossible) to distinguish between A, B and C Players. Continue reading →

Employees are the most valuable resource of any company.  From Apple to DeBeers to Walmart, employees are the ones who lead, manage, create, innovate, implement, interact and engage with others on behalf of the company.  Only in the smallest companies do the owners perform the majority of the work.  In most other companies, employees do most of the work that generates profit.  For that reason, recruiting and hiring individuals with the skills and qualities to fit specific openings is the hardest thing any company does… even in the most successful organizations.  And it doesn’t matter if the position is an entry-level receptionist, a seasoned salesperson, a highly-technical professional position, or C-Suite executive.  Each opening has an ideal set of skills and qualities that would be the best fit for that job at that company.   But the more remarkable the skills and qualities needed in an employee, the harder it is to find the right person to fill that job. Continue reading →