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Mastering the Right People Doing the Right Things Right 19lot of people applying for each position and the general quality of thepool of people is so high that if you had to decide by throwing a dartat a list of potential employees you likely would make a great decision.And this is why a firm that has established a stellar reputationin its industry (or even in a particular town if you primarily hire locally)is able to continue to hire stellar people.So ask yourself the question: did we get a lot of high-quality peopleto apply for the last position we hired, especially if it was an executiveposition? This applies whether you used a headhunting firm (dothey have access to a large pool of quality applicants?) or you’re drivingthe process yourself. Generally speaking, you or your headhuntershould have an initial pool of 50 high-quality people tochoose from. If you’re relying on your network of contacts to findsomeone, are you reasonably sure they are in contact with a largepool of high-quality people? Remember, “A” people tend to surroundthemselves with “A” people, so go only to your “A” network offriends. I’m very serious about this last comment.A useful tool you can use to access a high-quality pool of applicants,or any source of people—for example, for funding or gettinga referral to a top executive at a potential customer—is to make asimple Top 10 list. I’ve done this with many CEOs looking to fill keypositions. Take out a piece of paper and write down at least 10 people(20 is best) you could e-mail tomorrow who have contact withthe kinds of people you want. Then put together a two-paragraphsummary describing your firm, the position, and the kind of personyou want to hire. Make it a point to call the people on your list asquickly as possible and let them know you’re sending the summaryby e-mail. Follow-up a week later to see if they know anyone or ifthey at least know someone who might know someone. This, by theway, is essentially what headhunters do, so if you’re unwilling to dothis, hire a headhunter.Another important basic for hiring, whether you’re sending out ane-mail, placing ads, using a headhunter, or utilizing several of theonline services like monster.com, is to make sure you’re truly sellingthe company and its vision. You need to market your firm to potentialemployees with the same vigor you use to attract potential customers.As shown in the following example, I had a client that simply changedtheir ad from the first one to the second one and increased the numberof applicants three-fold:Copyright 2002 © por Verne Harnish