SME & StartUps: Identifying & Hiring High Achievers, Creative & Gifted

Most of the large organisations who have the empowered Human Resources and Talent Management group are able to identify and keep "Game Changer" talents. The issue crops up with SME & Startups. Now, how do they keep inducting the young who will be from these three groups has been the pointed question to me from most of the readers from my previous post.

In a SME and start up identifying talents solely rests on the leadership team and more so specially the CEO. Mostly, I get the raised eyebrow look and why's written in the faces of leadership team. The culture of an organisation is set up on the basis of the pre-dominant view of leadership team or more appropriately of the CEO of the organisation. Isn't building the organisation is the most critical role of the Leaders that sets their company apart from the others. Precisely, the reason why it is important for them to look forward to such individuals and retain them.

High Achiever Identifying, Hiring and Retention: These can be spotted very easily by the nature of their competitiveness, high scores and most of it by their stress on their "I" quotient. Most suited for target led roles like sales, delivery, quality, recruitment and finance etc. Now, the challenge lies in retaining them as they are the lot who will deliver on numbers but at the same time will be driven by their urge for personal goals of compensation and lateral growth. Most, of these employees can be retained through structured target salary and hierarchal growth. Organisation need to work out multiple aspirational levels and you will be able to retain them for around three years.

Acquiring Creative ones and Retaining: These are talents that needs to be explored they will walk in with disinterested looks and in the evaluative mode with average grades in most of the subjects but in one-two they would have excelled (That is why, it is important to look at their complete scores). Also, keep an eye on their other interest area, they will open up like nobody's business. This is done mainly through open ended discussion and as soon as you get the clue of their interest area go deep into it, you have your creative gem. Most, suited for product development, marketing, content writing, web initiatives, human resources etc. Organisations, need to work out the cross discipline challenges for this set of employees. They are much less focussed on compensation but are lot more focused on diversity of roles and what you put on their plate. If you play it right then you have the talent that will last you good 5 years plus.

Most interesting the Gifted Hiring and Retention: The first question that you really need to ask your self "Do you really need to hire them ?" . They are the most difficult to groom can be identified through lack of social skills, high pitched tones, extremely focused in specific works in short an interpersonal nightmare for an organisation in the begining. Having, said that these are also the people who are extremely intelligent and have the ability to see beyond the curve. Perfect guys put in a pack for extreme result areas. Give them a Mentor to channelise their energies and they will do extremely well in research and development, analytics, advertising, product development practically in every area depending upon their focus area and more so they are the ones who will be your future leaders if trained well.

Now, that you have figured out most of your critical set of hires and how can we retain them. Go, and make your organisation a world class ready to compete with big boys.

The thoughts expressed in this post are purely my personal and based upon my experiences, you are most welcome to write to me with your comments and views to [email protected].