How to hire A-players? Where to find Great people?

What is a company? The wikipedia-like definition is “A company is a legal entity formed by a group of individuals to engage in and operate a business—commercial or industrial—enterprise.” In short, it’s a group of people. The group has a market they operate on, their duties, goals to achieve both personal and individual, and all effort they put in are aimed at making more revenue and profit.

The better each member of the team is, the better overall performance of the team should be, it’s pretty logical, isn’t it? This is exactly what Jim Collins claims after his research on Great and just Good companies (According to his book, “Good to Great”). The great companies in the study all had leaders with characteristics described as “level 5 leadership”. They were humble, attributing success to luck or their teams, but accepting responsibility for failures. At the same time, they were resolved to do whatever was needed to become great. Great companies “get the right people on the bus, in the right seats”. They hire the best people, then figure out what to do with them (and with the company). This is one of the key concepts the author reveals to us.

According to these facts, recruitment process is an extremely important process for every company, but the truth is almost no one wants to spend time on recruitment. Another great author of one of the best-sellers “How to hire A-Players?” Eric Herrenkohl supports this idea. One of the main ideas of his book is nothing has a bigger impact on the results of your business and the quality of your life than hiring—and keeping—A-players. The difference between a business that fizzles and one that takes off is often whether the CEO knows how to hire and lead A-players. What is his definition of A-Player? An A-player is an employee who creates superior results compared to the vast majority of other people who hold the same position in your industry.

Another argument on why investing enough time on recruitment is it simply saves you a lot of time in the future and honestly, this is the only way of building a Great team. Here is a quote from Eric ” You can’t be a great leader if you are not a great recruiter. ” If you want to build an A-player team, you need to stop trying to turn poor performers into top performers and commit more time to finding and hiring A-players. Such talents have an exponential, not incremental, impact on your business.

Microsoft has more than 80,000 employees, but Bill Gates claims that the entire company was really built around fewer than 20 people. It doesn’t mean there are only 20 great talents in this company, no, probably all the people at Microsoft are great and are at the right seats. It means the founder needs such amount of top talents to create and maintain the culture of such a big and successful company. If he needs less than 20 people to become the wealthiest man in the world, just imagine what impact could just two or three true A-players can have on your company. As Barney Kister, senior vice president of sales and operations for Supplies Network, says, ‘‘You should never hire just to fill a position. You should always be looking for good people to add to your team.’’ If you start to think about recruiting only after a position has opened up, you have already lost. Don’t just fill empty roles. Define the team you need to achieve your goals. Then work constantly to put that team in place.

Just hiring top talents, could be not enough. As Jim Collins says about his research, you need to make sure, you have the right people at the right seats and don’t have the wrong people on the board. Simply having the best people is not enough. For sure, you need to create a proper culture, where they can fulfill their potential and grow. In such a company, A-players will beget more and more A-players. This is how great companies are built.

To sum up, to achieve great results, you definitely need great people. Otherwise, it’s not gonna work out. To build a great team you should keep these facts in mind:
1. Great leaders are great recruiters.
2. Time spent on recruitment of top talents will have the highest ROI for your business.
3. You need the right culture of growth, the right people in the right seats.
4. A-players have an exponential impact on your business, not just incremental.
5. Great talents beget great talents.

This is what we are about at Mindecs – we provide companies with top talents in tech to build great things. Products we build are used by big names. We are proud of our team. Feel free to get in touch with us, to get free advice on how to hire great software developers.