A business says it needs to hire great people. Yada, yada, yada. No problem, go for it, some might say. But an Ask The Headhunter reader insists on more specifics:

Q: Hiring great people is a noble goal but it raises two challenges: how to attract candidates with those rare, valuable qualities into your pipeline, and how to identify them in the interviewing process when everyone is telling you how talented, motivated, curious, and ethical they are. Thoughts on that?

Let's talk about two fatal flaws in the entire recruiting/hiring process. First, we try to attract people when we need them. That limits us to cold, calculated, rushed recruiting methods that don't work well. Worse, these methods stimulate rote responses from candidates to trigger our interest in them.

We've all seen it--candidates with the "I'm your (wo)man" smile on their faces. To recruit effectively, we need to attract good people long before we need them, so our relationships will be based on common interests, not common desperation.

Second, we can try to "attract people into our pipeline" all day long. But the ones we want aren't out looking for pipelines. We must find and enter their pipelines, their career tracks, the critical points in their work lives. People make career changes only at certain points. We can be there waiting for the best when they are ready, or we can be out chasing people who are chasing jobs.

My suggestion: The people we want are all around us on discussion threads throughout FastCompany.com and other work-related forums, talking shop. Talk shop with them, get to know them, establish your own cred and you'll always have someone to turn to when you need help. The Zen of it is this: You can't really identify the people you want in the interview process. At that point, it's too late, and it's all too scripted. You identify them on the street, on the job, and in the throes of dialogue they're engaged in with their peers. Then you follow them and get to know them. Talk to them about a job when you know them well enough. Not when the pipeline needs to be filled.

Yada, yada, yada, the pipeline needs to be filled. Do it long before you need to hire anyone.

Nick Corcodilos is the author of How to Work with Headhunters. He also writes the free weekly Ask The Headhunter Newsletter. Ask The Headhunter is a registered trademark.