How do you Recruit the Team of your Dreams?

Before we get into how to recruit the team of your dreams, we should probably start by clarifying what your dream team looks like. At SoftSkilz, we have a pretty good idea of what that team looks like. It’s very simple: everyone in the team has the Skilz to do their job, and most importantly, they have a massive amount of energy to do the job within the team. When everybody has high Skilz and high energy, you will have the very definition of a high-performing team. These teams are fun, innovative, creative, imaginative, and challenging. They also outperform others in every measure you can imagine; they make more revenue, make more profit, are safer, and create more new products while making life great to be around.

Now that you know what a dream team looks like, building one of these teams sounds easy, right? All you need to do is find people who are highly skilled and highly energised and drop them into your team. Your job is done, right? Unfortunately, in practice, it is a little more involved.

If you think about it, somewhere out there is that highly skilled, highly energised person who would fit right into your team. The problem is they are not interested in coming to your team at the moment. I am sure you are wondering why. Even if your company is the best place on the planet to work, that highly skilled and highly energised person is not leaving where they are. That’s because wherever they are, they have everything that they would want. They are enjoying being part of a high-performing, highly skilled team. They will be working in a job that pays them enough to satisfy the way they want to live, they are learning new things, and they feel on purpose with everything they do. So this person is not coming to work for you today. Sorry. They are good just where they are, and they are not even looking for you.

Hire for potential energy, just not Skilz

The person who you will be able to recruit is missing something in their life. They might not be feeling purposeful in the work that they’re doing anymore. They might just not be learning anything anymore. They may have changed the way they want to live and need more money or are looking for more flexibility in the way they go about doing their work every day. What we know for certain is one of those things is likely to be empty in their life and it is stopping them from being the most energetic person they can be. This is your opening. You can recruit that person by offering a place that will pay them enough to enable them to live the way they want to live, learn things they are interested in, and feel purposeful in the work they do with you. When they see this opportunity, they will have an unbelievable amount of energy to come and work with you. Here’s another interesting thing, the person that will be the most energetic may not be the most experienced person you interview. In fact, you are better off with someone who has just enough Skilz for the job so they can learn the rest. If you find the right person, you will tap into the potential energy that is released when we learn new things. That new teammate will be energised to learn Skilz from you that they might not yet have.

So when you are looking for someone to join your team, you’re looking for someone that you can help fill that missing energy gap in their life. They will, in return, trade their energy for any new Skilz they might need to acquire. The trick is to hire for potential energy and not for Skilz. Yes, they need to have just enough Skilz to do the tasks you need to get done, but that’s usually the easy bit to sort out. Someone with high energy will always outperform someone with just high Skilz.

How do you find them?

But how do you find them? The trick to finding someone is to uncover where potential hires might be hiding today, and understand why they lost their energy. Imagine if you can, the story of someone that has led them to a juncture in their life where they have the Skilz but have lost their energy. For instance, if you’re looking for a marketing director, they will need to have enough of a background in marketing to be a marketing director, but have lost their energy for their current work. Where are they working today? Perhaps, they have been home taking care of the kids, and are ready to restart their career. Maybe, they have been working in a big company and are bored with the repetition of stale projects and are ready for the new challenges your company can offer them. Are they wanting more autonomy and are looking for the opportunity to learn because they are stuck? Do they want to be in a completely different area of the business? By thinking about the potential stories and recruiting for energy and not just Skilz, you will find those people of your dreams. When you recruit a full team like that, you’ll have the high-performing team of your dreams.