How to Hire the Next Michael Jordan

From HR Bureaucracy to Instant Hiring

Once you find great people, you have to create a relationship with them in order to get them even to consider you. These people are not looking to leave their company. You have to communicate just how interested in them you are -- even if they never join your company. Create a database of the talented people you'd love to have on board, and send them a monthly newsletter by email. Or send them product samples and marketing brochures from time to time. Ask if you can hire them as a consultant for a weekend or during a week when they're away from their company.

To create these kinds of ties, Cisco has established several programs, including one called Make Friends @ Cisco, which works over the Web and via email. The program matches Cisco employees with people who have expressed an interest in Cisco. It's designed to create a learning relationship: "We're going to be friends with you because you're smart. Whether we hire you or not, we'll learn from each other. And if we do wind up working together, so much the better." That is the right attitude.

Now, here's the important part. Once you have a relationship with a great person, you don't need to be heavy-handed about getting that person on board. Anybody can BS anybody in a one-hour interview. But if you've been emailing with people and participating in online discussions with them, then you can really understand the depth of their knowledge and the way their mind works. If you're impressed and if they're ready to make a move, then you can make a move too.

Great people usually won't leave their current job unless there is an external triggering event: Maybe they've turned 40; maybe they've gotten divorced; maybe their company has been bought. So companies that are serious about hiring will keep track of great people and will be on the lookout for such triggering events. And when such an event happens, they'll make their move -- fast.

The formal assessment-and-offer process has to be quick and easy. Assume that talented people who decide to leave their job will be on the market for one day. So you have just a day to make them a firm offer and to persuade them to join your company. If you delay -- "Sorry, but you have to meet with two people in HR" -- you lose.

That's why some companies -- the smart ones -- have moved to what I call "instant hiring." You don't do this for everyone, but you might do it for 10% of the people you hire. Essentially, you "prequalify" people for jobs. One company that I work with literally gives coupons to great people whom its managers have gotten to know but who aren't ready to make a move. The coupon sends this message: "The day you want to come work for us, you're hired. You don't have to go through our HR bureaucracy. We will hire you instantly."

Instant hiring takes organizational confidence -- because it may seem as if you're taking a big risk. But most of the time spent on the "hiring process" involves delays and paperwork, not evaluation. You know the problem: All hiring decisions have to go through a particular VP, and he's on the road for a week. By the time he gets back, Michael Jordan has signed on with another team.

Besides, having a long-term relationship with a candidate gives you confidence. Let's say that you've gotten to know someone who's at Intel. This person is a great programmer. And she's a woman. At best, there are maybe a hundred people like her in the world. Why should you spend three weeks formally evaluating her -- when you know that you're going to make the hire anyway? Don't subject great people to empty formalities.

From More Money to "Wow!"

These days, talented people get paid a lot of money -- no matter where they work. But most talented people are still underpaid. What was Michael Jordan's last contract with the Chicago Bulls -- $33 million per year? Jordan is worth much more than that. Add up the ticket revenue, the TV money, the merchandise sales. In that sense, he is underpaid, even at $33 million a year.

You can apply the same logic to business talent. I recently worked with a big semiconductor company that was worried about losing one of its most-gifted engineers. The company asked me to come in and talk about a retention strategy. I learned how important the chip that this guy worked on was -- and how important he was to the chip. Then I asked a few questions: "How would losing this engineer affect time-to-market for the next generation of that chip? How badly would his leaving disrupt the team? What if he left and went to your main competitor?"

I did a few calculations and then took my final figure to a top executive at the company. This one engineer, I estimated, was worth $29 million to this company. Do you know what that executive did? He wrote the engineer a check for $1 million. That was exactly the right reaction. Most great people don't appreciate how valuable they really are. If they did, then lots more of them would be getting million-dollar bonuses.