Use Your Fantasy Football Techniques To Hire The Best Talent For Your Team At Work

One of my good mates and I are football nuts who are late on the EPL Fantasy Football scene. We are going well in our first season of co-managing a fantasy team and are learning about what makes a good team and how to manage it.  In the course of the season it has also been evident that there are lessons that we can learn when looking to hire top talent for our clients and ourselves in the ‘real’ world.

Here are five approaches to adopt:

1. Expand your pool of potential talent

In the real world we sometimes have limited horizons on who is available to hire.  In Fantasy Football every player is available and so every player is a potential hire …at a price. We know who they are, where they are and how they are preforming.

We can replicate this to a point in the real world by adopting the premise that everyone is available and through using systems such as LinkedIn we can ‘talent map” the market(s) we want to recruit from.  Obviously it takes an investment of time and money but with this simple change in mindset we can increase the potential supply of top talent through knowing the identity of everyone in our potential market.

2. Rate your potential hires

In Fantasy Football this is the easy bit as every player is rated every week in over thirty categories so you know at any point in time whether a player is capable and on form.  This information isn’t readily available in the real world (yet anyway) but so you have to improvise by developing your own rating system.

Identify what is important to your team at work and then apply this rating to the general population you have mapped. This rating could include qualifications, perceived quality of employers’ size sector and maturity, the individual’s experience, potential cultural fit, value of job titles and achievements, and so on. It is all subjective but using the premise that you want ‘A’ grade players not ‘C’ grade players gives you somewhere to start.

3. The best performers aren’t always the highest profile or highest paid

One of the major learning’s from this season’s Fantasy Football has been that the best players are not the highest earners nor are the highest earners the best and most consistent players.

In the EPL Fantasy Football two sets of comparisons illustrate this.  At the time of writing, the top midfielder is Mahrez from Leicester with 187 points awarded for his overall performances so far this season. His fantasy ‘value’ is $7.3m pounds whereas Sanchez from Arsenal is valued at $11m but has amassed only 85 points (admittedly injury has played a part) Up front, in attack Vardy from Leicester has amassed 168 points for his performances so far at a value of $7.7m, whereas Rooney from Man United has 94 points but with a fantasy value of $10m.

These discrepancies exist even more in the real world due to a myriad of reasons but the challenge is that they are more difficult to identify at first glance. However different sectors eg investment banking or technology pay more than others eg retail or media.  Also different organisations also have different approaches to remuneration. Patterns emerge over time and assumptions can be applied and added to your ratings.

This is then helpful when you want to hire a modestly paid  ‘A’ grade player for your team within certain financial constraints.

4. You can access the best people for your business

In Fantasy Football hiring the best, assuming you have the available funds, can be achieved through a simple flick of your finger. In the real world, whilst is more time consuming, if you know where to look to find the people you think can be A grade talent for your team then it is achievable. LinkedIn emails, phone calls and coffees and/or recruiters with a network backed by a top hiring strategy, give you the chance to hire the best people.

5. Fail fast

This is another key learning. In Fantasy Football you can make quick decisions on players that are inconsistent or injured. In real life you have to learn to replicate this through being observant and very conscious of how your new recruit is fitting in and adapting to the company’s culture and the job in hand. If, in your opinion, they are not going to perform to the level required then you should learn to “fail fast” and make that decision early.

Paul Lyons is an experienced chief executive, leadership coach and mental toughness professional and you can reach him via [email protected] or via his website at www.paullyons.com