How to attract talent in the Product & Innovation Far-West

Thoughts about what makes a job attractive, in absolute terms, and what it means with the new work market model, increasingly decentralised and volatile. Another discussion that came up among colleagues some time ago (when having lunch in-person was still the norm) that is worth sharing ;-)

Let's explore why attracting the top talent is crucial (particularly for highly innovative products & services), what makes a job attractive and how the traditional model might be failing, and finally the 5 actions to stay attractive in this new context. 

1. WHY ATTRACT THE BEST TALENT

Let's start with the obvious: why is it important to attract the best? Most companies’ strategy on aggressive cost reduction is actually counterproductive: "cheaper" rarely goes with "better".

The consulting group McKinsey regularly updates its survey on the war for talent and is very active publishing around these topics (see its famous "leading organisations"). The main number I will use today to prove this point is the gap in productivity on highly complex tasks between "normal performers" and "high performers" : it goes above 800%! Now the question may be: is innovation a highly complex environment?

Let me send you back to my previous article on the role of an innovation & product department: exploring the unknown on technology, market and user acceptance, can hardly be considered an easy task and requires absolute mastery. Hence the absolute need to have top notch talent when developing new products.

Note: "Top talent" does not necessarily mean "experienced" but also "high potential / highly adaptable". There should be a mix of both, a team is also an organism meant to make its members grow, that includes experienced members training junior talent with high potential...

2. WHAT FACTORS ATTRACT PEOPLE?

While there can't be a consensus on this topic, there are several areas that make a job attractive and build up the EVP, Employee Value Proposition. The relative importance of each area depends on different factors like culture, social background, profession, nationality, personality...

We could add more criteria, but let's focus on 5 areas on professional and personal aspects. These may not be the only ones but should cover most of it (they are not necessarily ranked between each other).

From a professional standpoint:

• Career opportunities inside (potential mobility, internally and geographically)
• Economic value (salary, perks, advantages, health plan)
• Applied work value (technology & tools used, means at the employee’s disposal)
• Recognition and security (management and company recognition, promotion, job security)
• Independence at work (use of employees creativity, autonomy in decision taking, sense of worth)

And from a more personal point of view (even though these are all professional- related):

• Work / life balance (flexible hours, sustainable pace, remote work)
• Learning and developing, challenging job (career enhancing experience, innovative employer, personal growth, transferable knowledge and expertise)
• Corporate social responsibility (CSR), product or service (environmental impact, social impact, equality)
• Location advantage (reduced commute time, convenience of location)
• Relationships and atmosphere (colleague’s relationships, team culture, acceptance and belonging, working with highly skilled peers, knowing someone working or having worked there)

Broken promises, new expectation and the work marketplace Far-West

Traditionally, companies would offer permanent contracts to attract valuable resources. There was an implicit promise of stability, high salary and growth, and successive climbing of the hierarchical ladder. The drawbacks that were accepted in exchange: submission to the chain of command, small liberty or creativity, having to “play the game”...

What happens when this stability tends to generate complacency and difficult movement ? When management has no meaning (everyone is manager of something)? When progression is so slow that new generations can never reach the status of the old? When the market is so volatile that there is no safety? Basically when you lack meaning, and institutions fail on their traditional promises?

You get:

• A deadlocked work marketplace, where hiring and firing is almost impossible.
• A reactionary generation (generation "why", call it Y, Z or whatever) questioning the status quo and having a new quest for meaning

Since hiring becomes impossible, companies use traditional consultancy agencies and computing services companies (SSII in French) or agencies to fill the positions... But specially in tech domains (developers) and design domains (UX designers, facilitators), the best talents are not in agencies and do not even want long term contracts... Is the top talent world shifting towards the freelancing model (or "business of one")? From my experience it is, particularly in tech and design... A model where:

• They have complete liberty to choose their projects, clients... not sacrificing for a long term benefit or career they won't be sure to have
• They do not have the traditional management relation, rather than a client/supplier, they build partnership relationships
• They decide their price, with value much closer to market than what many companies with old-school paying grids could offer

This is the Far-West of the work marketplace... old laws and codes don’t apply and you are dead if you are not fast adapting.

3. FIVE ACTIONS TO ATTRACT TALENT

There are things you can't control like the product itself or your company's location. I have seen very good candidates refuse a position because it was not 10 minutes away from their house, or because they didn't like the "suit" atmosphere of La Defense (Paris' business district). And I myself have refused positions that were amazing but in companies that were selling products I was not aligned with (weapons, tobacco...).

There are many things that you need to build with time and have no value for a potential candidate as a promise or statement because they won’t believe you on paper.

But here are some of the things you really can do to make the fleeing top talent consider you (which is a great start already!).

PAY THE PRICE

If you look for the top talents be ready to pay a competitive market price, not what your company is used to pay using old grids, but what any other company (and here you have the market disruptors like Google & co) can pay them... It will be worth every penny to have top performers in your team. This is a complete reinvention of the current finance-first decision process of most companies…

CHOOSE YOUR STACK AND TOOLS

If you can choose the technologies you are going to use, choose wisely! Know the market and what are the languages, infrastructures, and working tools that people demand and want to expand upon. Choosing outdated technologies or legacy tools will make you drastically less attractive, no one wants to work with old school technologies that no one else is going to value for the next mission... Choosing mainstream and latest tools and stacks will grant you abundant workforce and interest among candidates.

BE FLEXIBLE AND ALLOW LIBERTY

Allow flexible schedules, remote working... these are fairly easy to implement and most companies already allow them. It will make you much more attractive, specially if your office’s location is not optimal.

OFFER STRUCTURE (AND PURPOSE) AND NOT EMPTY STATEMENTS

For example agile frameworks like scrum will most likely attract top talented developers and designers because they guarantee some structure and applied values. These frameworks guarantee some of their basic requirements in terms of autonomy, peer sharing, team spirit... Most companies claim to be agile but are purely matrix chain-of-command organisations with fancy titles borrowed from agile frameworks. Saying “we are agile” without a clear framework and organisation in place or a history of agility is usually a red flag. Add a product or service with purpose, and you have talent magnet!

LET THE TEAM SPEAK FOR THE CULTURE

Include the team members in the hiring process, they are the ones who will be believable when talking about the team’s culture and reality. And they are the ones who are eventually going to work with the candidate!

There is no use in saying to a potential candidate that your atmosphere is fun, that you are a manager that empowers, that you do not micro-manage... They won't believe you (specially if they are experienced and have been disillusioned by these promises before). Let the team speak and vouch for the culture you have really set up, they are more likely to be trusted.

We could continue indefinitely, but this is certainly a good start, a call to arms to my fellow colleagues in HR or leadership roles with hiring expectations.

Do you have more insights? Leave a comment and share it with the community!