The China hiring is a powerful example of how Rusty Rueff approaches the battle for senior-level talent. It's one thing (and quite valuable) to create a pool of thousands of in-the-trenches programmers from around the world. It's another thing to have direct access to the most-senior executives, the most-gifted directors, and the most-talented marketers. To that end, EA has created a "top 40" list -- a hit list of the most-talented people throughout the world who, EA hopes, will someday work with the company. And as EA's executives, directors, and producers travel, they make a point of meeting with people from that list. Those high-level encounters have become a normal part of the itinerary for traveling EA executives. "The challenge for companies now is not identifying talented people but persuading those people to join your company," says Jose Martin, 31, head of HR for EA's 13 studios.

In order to persuade people to change their jobs and their lives -- especially those people who are happy where they are -- EA needs to have a deep understanding of who those folks are and what they care about. So Martin and his team created detailed profiles of the people on their top-40 list. Maintaining relationships with those people makes it easier to understand the trigger points that might persuade them to make a change and sign on with EA.

That said, no amount of knowledge can take the place of dogged persistence, argues Martin, who worked at National Semiconductor as well as at Adobe before joining EA a year ago. Such persistence paid off with a recent talent win -- which pulled one more name off the top-40 list and put it onto the roster of EA employees. EA had its sights on Jay Riddle, a visual-effects guru in Hollywood who had worked on such films as Terminator 2, Starship Troopers, and several of the Star Trek movies. "I'll come up and meet with your team, but there's no way in hell I'm moving to the Bay Area," Riddle told Martin and John Riccitiello, EA's 40-year-old president and COO, in Los Angeles early last year.

Martin returned to Redwood City even more determined to hire Riddle and began to strategize with three of EA's top animators. "We realized that it was going to take a while to get Riddle. But we created a detailed plan and asked three highly respected people in the business to go to him, to check in with him, and to talk to him about the EA story," says Martin. After several more conversations, Riddle, still emphasizing that he would never permanently move north, agreed to meet with the EA team. "And that was it," says Martin. "He got so hooked on where we're going that a few weeks later he and his wife closed on a house in the Bay Area."

The power of EA's talent strategy lies in its simplicity. EA turns an ordinary act of building networks and relationships into an extraordinary method of fueling its own talent pipeline. And the real power of that method kicks in as EA's approach becomes more and more ingrained in every employee. "Ultimately, if we're going to be successful as a company," says Martin, "all of the producers, art directors, animators, and software engineers need to own this process. And they all need to strengthen their networks continually."

For just that reason, EA keeps its staffing department small -- only 7 people. When he worked at National Semiconductor, Martin says, he had 19 people working for him in domestic staffing alone. "It was a machine," he says. "And when I look ahead, I see technological advances that will undoubtedly promise even more automation of the process. But companies that will win the talent war are not those that can create fine-tuned recruiting machines in fortified HR departments, but those that can create a systematic process of relationship building throughout an entire organization -- a process that maintains a high-touch, personal feel to it."

Rusty Rueff agrees. "Just tell me who the best people are," he says. "My team will get out there. We'll sit with them. We'll talk with them. Even if someone dumps me along the way, I'll still be satisfied. Because I know that person will tell other people about Electronic Arts. And my phone will ring. And I'll just keep doing it over and over and over again."

Anna Muoio (amuoio@fastcompany.com) is a Fast Company senior writer.Contact Rusty Rueff by email (rrueff@ea.com).

Sidebar: Welcome to the Gauntlet

Rusty Rueff wants to hire great people fast. But there's one point where he slows down. Each potential hire must go through "the gauntlet" -- interviews with as many as 15 people. The gauntlet is a time-consuming process, one that creates opportunities for competitors to pry people away. But that's a risk he's willing to run. "It gives us a head start when someone does join," he says. "It's hurry up, slow down, hurry up. But that slowdown is crucial. Sometimes slower is faster. When I started my job, it felt like I already had 15 people in my corner."