How to Hire A-Players: Finding the Top People for ... - GIT home page

Our world is full of smart, accomplished women who want to have
a balance in their lives between raising a family and being engaged in
the workplace. People become extremely stressed when they try to
pull off having careers, raising kids, and still having some semblance
of a personal life. If you can provide job candidates the kind of flexibility
that allows them to do interesting work and still handle their
responsibilities at home, you will have a valuable offering that will
appeal to some very sharp people. Companies all over the world use
various strategies to tap into these underutilized employees. The key
is to hone in on a specific slice of this huge talent pool, determine
how to make contact, and then interview a constant stream of these
people. Here are three successful examples.
Spouses of Relocated Executives
I work with an incentive travel company in Houston that has had
ongoing success hiring A-player women who have moved to the
area for their husbands’ careers in the energy industry. The president
of the hiring company has made a concerted effort to cultivate contacts
in the industry, specifically with the individuals who handle
relocations for these large corporations. These people serve as resources
for the families moving in and can offer information about
which companies to contact for quality jobs with flexible hours. My
client now has a reputation as a great source for this kind of employment.
These women have strong resumes but don’t want to work full
time in the midst of a stressful and time-consuming relocation process.
They are smart, effective, get a lot done working part-time
hours, and are therefore a perfect fit for this company.
Single-Mother Waitresses
Finding New Pools of A-Player Talent 101
To fill its sales positions, Doorway Rug (mentioned in Chapter 2)
hired A-players out of the restaurant industry, many of whom were
working mothers. The demands of simultaneously raising children
and working nights and weekends were very difficult. Doorway Rug
targeted these women with its recruiting efforts, offered them a salary
equivalent to their restaurant position, but provided flexible
hours. The flexibility was worth more than a dollar or two more per