What Can You Do (Besides Money) To Attract Top Talent? By Brett Fox
I was talking with the CEO of a company I am working with. “Jacob’s” company is growing at leaps and bounds, so our discussion centered around attracting top talent.
Jacob asked me, “Should I have to pay at the top of the pay scale to get the best people, or is that a red flag?”
I told Jacob that having to pay people at the top of the pay scale was a red flag.
Then Jacob answered his own question, “We’ll get mercenaries, won’t we?”
“You will,” I said.
“So what’s the solution?”
“You have a great company that’s doing well. Do you know how rare that is?”
Great people want to work with other great people in a great company.
I thought about my own experiences, and all the CEOs, bosses and companies I worked at during my career.
I’ve worked for eleven people over a twenty year career (I’m not counting my time as a CEO working for investors and a board of directors). Take a guess how many of the people I’ve worked for that were great bosses?
Two.
Just two out of eleven people were great. The other nine people I worked for were mediocre or bad.
82% of the people I worked for weren’t helpful to my career.
I continued my experiment by asking Blossom the same question. Blossom’s numbers were three out of fourteen bosses. 78% of the time, my wife has had a mediocre or bad boss.
I asked some of my friends, and they gave me similar answers. The pareto principle works again.
Four out five companies your employees work at will be mediocre or bad. So give your employees the gift of working at a great company with great teammates and a great culture.
The older I get the more I realize just how rare the experience is of working at a great company.
I’ve experienced working at a great company, and the best analogy I can give you is it’s like driving a Porsche (tip of the hat to Stan Hanks ). Once you drive a Porsche, you’ll never want to drive anything else.
The same holds for companies. Once you work at a great company, you’ll never want to leave.
For more, read: Why Your Startup Culture Is The Key To Your Company’s Success
