Do You Need to Recruit A-Players and Unicorns? A Simple Guide to Finding Great Employees

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<h2>Key Takeaways</h2>
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<li>Recruit the top 10% when you can, but don’t be obsessed with this.</li>
<li>Instead look for people who meet the Minimum Acceptable Standards that are relevant to your job.</li>
<li>When searching for staff, you’ll be looking for people that satisfy your key requirements, typically those to do with location, competencies, experience, affordability and motivation.</li>
<li>If you’re having trouble finding people, you may need to lower your requirements, increase your advertising budget or pay more.</li>
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Don’t Look for A-Players, Unicorns or the “Perfect” Applicant

When you’re recruiting it’s really tempting to want to find that perfect applicant who ticks every box. But the more you ask of applicants, the fewer you’ll have to choose from and you might end up chasing unicorns!

Businesses often want to recruit the “top 10%” – perhaps those who’ve graduated from top universities or worked for Silicon Valley start-ups. But fixating on this select group is time-consuming and expensive. Most importantly, it ignores the other 90% who could contain great employees.

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Look for Great Performers

A much more realistic approach is to look for people who meet Minimum Acceptable Standards. Great Performers regularly meet them, and these people aren’t necessarily drawn from that group of elite applicants (though if you can get one of those “top 10%” without too much sweat, then great!). In our guide Ditch Job Descriptions: How to Write Great Performance Profiles, I explain how to create a Great Performance Profile, which defines the standards needed for someone to be a Great Performer. 

Great Performers are individuals who consistently meet or exceed the Minimum Acceptable Standards defined in your Great Performance Profiles. They demonstrate Key Competencies and align well with your company’s culture and values.

There will also be plenty of applicants that I like to categorise as Good Performers and Poor Performers.

Good Performers sometimes meet Minimum Acceptable Standards and are a good cultural fit. You could try developing them into a Great Performer with training or by improving processes. It’s perfectly acceptable to hire and keep Good Performers. These employees are conscientious, don’t require much management, positively contribute to the culture and are a real asset to an organisation.

Poor Performers regularly fall below Minimum Acceptable Standards or are a poor cultural fit, and don’t improve even with training and coaching. You should decline these applicants at the outset.

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Be Realistic

You’ll need to make sure that you’re not asking for too many competencies given the available applicants. Common requirements that you’ll need to keep in mind:

• Location: Are there enough applicants within commuting distance (or in the right time zone in the case of remote working)?
• Competencies: Do enough people in the right locations have the Key Competencies you need?
• Sector experience: Do enough local, competent people have the right experience?
• Affordability: Can you offer qualified applicants a competitive salary?
• Motivation: Are well-qualified applicants likely to accept your offer or go to a competitor?
• Availability: As business sectors are sensitive to the ups and downs of the economy are there enough qualified applicants out there right now?

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The recruitment problem can be pictured as trying to find people in the area where all the circles overlap in the diagram. A greater number of requirements makes that area of overlap smaller. 

If you’re having trouble finding qualified people you might want to loosen or remove requirements to give yourself more choice. You could try doing the following:

• Not asking for sector experience. People have transferable skills and sector specific knowledge can be picked up on the job.
• Removing certain Key Competencies and giving training instead.
• Adapting the job so that you don’t need really hard to find competencies.
• Using remote staff if practical.

You could also enlarge your pool of applicants by:

• Increasing your job advertising budget to attract a greater number of applicants.
• Offering a better remuneration package (while being aware that offering more to a new recruit may have implications for existing pay grades).

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<span class="purple-callout"><p>Just to mention – if you need practical help, I'm available. Please get your free consultation.</p><p>I'd recommend looking at my best-selling recruiting book as well.</p><p>Also, for only £199, I can post a job on all the UK's top job sites.</p></span>

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Additional Resources

• Talent Acquisition Book; The Secrets of Great Recruitment: How to Recruit Great Employees.
• Downloadable PDF guide; Realistic Recruitment: The "Perfect" Employee Doesn't Exist.
• Downloadable PDF guide; Ditch Job Descrptions: How to Write Great Performance Profiles.
• Article; Writing a Job Description: The Game-Changing Template Your Need Now.
• Article; How to Write a Job Description: Crafting a Practical Document.
• Article; Recruitment Strategies: The Secret to Faster, Cheaper, and More Effective Hiring.