The best potential employees aren’t looking for a job because they’ve already got one. That’s why you have to poach them.
In close to thirty years of my professional life, I’ve only had two job interviews. The rest of the time I was poached by one company while working for another.
I always advise the CEOs that I mentor that there are lots of reasons why finding the right people is hard, but if you want your business to be exceptional, your staff must be exceptional people. It takes work but it’s worth the investment of time.
I had to remind someone of this while on a multi-city speaking engagement. At a talk in Sydney, Australia, a member of the audience commented, “What you don’t realize is we have a really tight economy in Sydney right now, and there are just no employees out there. We have the lowest unemployment in forty years.” I replied that I felt her pain—in Vancouver, we were at the lowest in fifty years! But honestly, I asked, what difference does it make? Even in tight job markets the great employees still exist, they’re just working somewhere else.
Poach them! Show them why working for you is WAY better!
For information on this topic, check out: Leadership at 100MPH.
