How to understand that you are dealing with a talented employee

Finding professionals today is a challenge with an asterisk. In an era of staff shortages, it is not easy to find even an ordinary employee for a line position, especially, talented and narrow-profile specialists. Nevertheless, there are such people, and the task of business is not to miss them.

Who is a talented employee?

The definition of talent may differ among HR-specialists depending on the sphere and requirements to the candidate. Some will consider a talented employee to be someone who can increase sales, while others will consider someone who can establish communication in a team.

But in the management environment there are still two types of talent:

• HiPo ("high potential") - employees who learn quickly, they are proactive and energetic, show leadership qualities. They are a kind of valuable asset for the company, because they have high potential, are eager to develop, and in the future they may occupy a senior management position. They may even be a junior-level specialist: a sales manager, a marketer or a lawyer, but in the long view, these people may highly increase your profits, attract new clients, launch a project or head a branch.
• HiPro ("high professional") - employees who have already demonstrated high performance. They achieve outstanding results in their professional field and are often among the best performers in the team. What distinguishes them from HiPo is that they no longer seek career advancement, but are content with their current position and the credibility they have earned.

Are talents in a team always a good thing?

Both HiPo and HiPro are valuable to a company because of their unique knowledge, skills and traits. However, hiring talents is not easy and sometimes even risky. Here's what you need to be prepared for if you're hiring a real talent to join your team:

• Talented people can't exist in a rigid framework. They are creative, proactive, idea-driven, but everything about systematisation and bureaucracy hardly fits into their picture of the world. If your company has a strict dress code or micromanagement, your talents will definitely not stay with you. Be prepared to have to reconsider some processes if you want to keep an employee.
• A new employee in a team is an event, and talent in a team is an even bigger event. If the process of adaptation in the team is not established, then very soon such an employee will feel like a " black sheep", which, of course, will affect not only communication in the team, but also the entire work.
• The same applies to talent in a managerial position. It can also happen that the team is not ready to be managed by a new person, especially if his or her approach to work differs from what they are used to: employees' involvement and motivation decrease, and disputes and conflicts arise more often among them. You can also prepare for such a turn of events by holding training sessions with the team in advance, as well as telling them about the process of selecting a new manager (what criteria you use to select him/her, what you want for the team, etc.).

But despite all the challenges, talented employees are still needed. The truth is that the question is not about the department in which talent is needed or for which team, but when the talent can benefit the company and solve its pain. There are several such situations:

1. The business is just in the start-up phase. Talent can help find a creative solution to develop the project and look at the market from a completely different angle. In addition, at this stage, the company will not yet have any regulations or frameworks, which means that a talented employee will feel particularly comfortable and can be most productive in his or her role.
2. The company is losing money and needs to replace top management. Talent among managers helps to look at a problem from a different angle. Their fresh and unconventional outlook often helps the business in difficult situations.
3. The team is being reformed. A series of recruitments and dismissals is definitely not something that can benefit a business. To build a sustainable team, you need someone with ideas at its centre or at the helm. That's exactly what hiring talent can help with.

How to identify talent

Contrary to popular belief, neither IQ, nor psychological tests, nor quizzes will help you find a talented employee. A good performer - quite well, but a "star" - definitely not.

A lot depends on HR itself, its experience, expertise, ability to "feel" people, as well as on the approach to the interview. There are a number of questions and loopholes that will help you learn a little more about the candidate and identify his or her talents.

"Tell me about a major fakap and how you managed to deal with it?"

This is a trick question, and here's why. If a candidate answers that he or she has had no failures at all, that is definitely a person with rose-coloured glasses, or a narcissist who cannot admit mistakes and work on them. A talented employee, on the other hand, will probably be eager to talk about the solution he or she came up with to get out of a situation.

"How do you see the result of your work in a year/5 years/10 years?"

There is no task here to predict the future or to understand how the candidate is able to make plans. It is much more important to pay attention to the wording. For example, if all the verbs used by the specialist are in the perfect form, it is more likely to reveal a result-oriented person. And if the verbs in the present tense are of the imperfect form, this is a sign of a process-oriented person. Which type you need depends on the company's objectives, because they are both good in their own way.

"What are your hobbies outside of work?"

The hobby question is a classic, and for good reason. A good HR can surely draw useful conclusions from this information, because our hobbies say a lot about us. For example, if a person is into collecting, he or she is likely to have a talent for systematisation and analytics. And if the candidate is more focused on sports and any extreme activities, he or she will certainly be able to become a driver in a team and a source of the most unobvious ideas.

Also, don't forget that talented people may already be within your team. To understand who that might be, use different tools: questionnaires, typing, one-to-one, team building, and look at performance metrics and gather feedback.

How to develop talent

Finding a talented employee is half the battle, you still have to keep them. The difficulty is that, as a rule, such people know their worth, which means that they have rather high requirements for the workplace. There are a few rules that will help you in retaining talent, as well as increasing the engagement of the team as a whole:

1. Create a non-material motivation system. A salary in market or above is great, but that alone is not enough. Take care of the benefits package and company culture. Training, gym, team outings, masterminds all help work with motivation.
2. Be flexible in the way you organise your workflow. The market is constantly changing, and what was the norm a year ago is no longer the norm today. For example, many employees simply refuse to work full time in the office. To avoid missing out on a cool specialist, negotiate a hybrid schedule with him or her.
3. Organise a culture of communication and feedback. People around you are a major deterrent for employees. When everyone on the team treats each other with respect, it significantly reduces staff turnover and has a positive impact on productivity.
4. Provide professional development. Talent, especially young talent, needs constant development. Once they hit a ceiling, they lose interest. So think about how you can develop professionals within the company. It doesn't necessarily have to be vertical growth. Think about mentoring, training and external training, as well as horizontal careers.