The best are better than the rest

I know my audience and I think everyone who ends up clicking on a blog post like this will agree on one thing: becoming great at hiring is the most important thing you’ll ever do to build your team.

I don’t want to preach to the choir but I thought I'd share a few persuasive ideas for those who clicked the link but are not fully convinced yet, or for those who probably won’t ever read something like this. 

Let me start by saying this;

Regardless of how much the world changes, and regardless of how dramatically AI reshapes how we work, there is one fact that isn’t going to change at all: exceptional talent is the number one asset of an organization. This has always been true, but maybe it is more important now than ever before. 

There are some days when the AI conversation takes a darker turn and makes everyone feel a little pessimistic, because nobody likes to imagine a future where everyone is replaced by AI or humanoids. On other days, the conversation is much more positive than that.

AI showing up in our lives is actually very stimulating! As AI multiplies the productivity and quality of work of a single talented individual, it also forces everyone to raise the bar on hiring to levels never seen before. In a post-AI world, organizations and hiring leaders face even more pressure to find individuals who can truly add value on top of this marvelous, kind-hearted technology...😉

The need to become great at hiring extraordinary people under brutal competitive pressure is what the new AI economy is really all about. The need to find exceptional people is more real than ever if you want to compete.

What I’m trying to say is that the whole talent acquisition game is moving to a higher level. If it’s true that you don’t need as many people as before, you’d better make sure that those few people are really, really good.

The best are better than the rest. Organizations and hiring leaders feel this pressure, and the proof is the growing premium that they pay on people who can work smarter, better, and faster at all experience and skill levels. Human talent and judgement are more precious than ever before. 

Here is my macroeconomic prediction...

The demand for great people is going to outpace supply for the foreseeable future and maybe forever, ceteris paribus.

This Latin slang basically means that, with other conditions remaining the same, we are in for an eternal perpetual competition for talent and struggle to capture that invaluable human capital. 

If this is true…

How do you go about identifying the best people? How do you prepare yourself to compete under these conditions?

Here is another prediction...

Organizations and hiring leaders who fail to take a strategic approach to hiring, and who can’t intelligently identify the right people for the right roles at the right time, will live in a constant talent crisis, swinging between being understaffed and overstaffed, until they eventually perish. 

If you don’t want to end up like this, you need to make hiring your competitive advantage and intentionally join the pursuit of hiring excellence. 

What does that actually mean? What are the strategic areas to start with and focus on? In the next post, I will go into detail on three key areas that I consider not only a great starting point, but so fundamental that I recommend you focus on them and not move to the next thing until you master them. 

Thank you for reading, and don’t forget to subscribe if you want to know when the next post is out.