The Human Resource professional (and if that’s the Health and Safety person as well)  plays an integral role in selecting talent.  A company is only as good as its people. So as Alan Kay, computer pioneer, says become a “connoisseur of talent”.

Tom Peters, in his book, “ The Professional Service Company” addresses this in the form of 16 essential steps:

1. Spend lots of time hiring…finding talent takes time and dedication.

2. Become a student of hiring….Tom Peters recommends Pierre Mornell’s 45 Effective Ways for Hiring Smart!  There are lots of books on effective hiring…read them!

3. Talk up talent: speak, think, and breathe talent.  It is like Health and Safety…you cannot be neutral on the subject of Health and Safety unless you want a poor corporate culture.  You cannot be neutral on the subject of talent….encourage it!

4. Review your help wanted ads…are they dreary, tired, dull?  Rewrite them… energize them!

5. Use plain English in the want ads and ask for what you want: want someone with a good attitude, sunny disposition, or a leader…just ask!  Ask in terms a 12 year old can understand so there is no misunderstanding.

6. Create a formal plan for the recruitment effort: look in offbeat places for talent.  It flowers in strange environments.

7. Use the rainbow approach: diversity works wonders…young, old, middle-aged, people of all colours, women, men of many diverse backgrounds.

8. Think multi-spectrum when recruiting.  Intelligence comes in many forms: linguistic, written, artistic, musical, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal-others.

9. Get the best folks involved in recruitment: make talent everybody’s business.  Everyone of your employees should be in the business of searching for talent for your company and recommendations from good employees have weight. Talent hangs together.

10. Pay accordingly:  Talent is worth its weight in gold.  Don’t underpay or you will lose your talent.  Pay them what they are worth.

11. Promote the fact that you are a cool place to work for cool people.  Brand your company in this fashion.

12. Promote continual learning and measure it on the Performance Appraisal…continual renewal is essential for any talented individual to remain so and a company has to foster this environment.

13. Develop the Individual very carefully…the projects they work on should emphasize their strengths and stretch them so that they contribute the most to the Company.

14. Measure your managers on how they develop their talent.  If a connoisseurship of Talent is your goal then this had better be the top trait of every manager.

15. Promote only those Managers that have this trait since this should be as part of your Mission Statement as your Values and Health and Safety Policy. Add the selection, and nuture of talented people as one of your core values as a company.

16. Make talent selection part of your daily, weekly, or monthly operating review meetings.  Be obsessive. As Tom Peters states: “once you start talking about “it” obsessively…you’ll start doing something about “it”.  Which is the whole point”.

 Read the list carefully…does this describe your organization?  If not…why not?  Put together a 30 day dead-line for an action plan to implement two or three items from the list.  Your big hairy audacious goal is to find, keep, and nurture talent and, in mirror image: your company and yourself.