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

Right under Your Nose: Leveraging People You Already Know 65
and other products. An employee can learn a lot about a customer
during those 45 minutes.
If a salesperson has a good feeling about a customer based on the
company’s A-Player Profile, the employee is trained to say: ‘‘We
have a fast-growing business here at Fleet Feet Sports and are always
looking for good people. If you know someone who may be
interested in talking with us about the opportunities here, please let
us know.’’ Then the employee provides the customer with the staff
manager’s business card. In response to this low-key approach, customers
often express personal interest right away or get back in
touch within a few days of their visit to the store. From there, they
fill out an application to determine if an interview should be
scheduled.
Fleet Feet Syracuse provides another example of the tie between
marketing and recruiting. The customer acquisition engine at this
store is always running, and it fuels the store’s recruiting efforts as
well. The store acquires 140 to 160 new customers per week on average,
more than half of whom subscribe to the newsletter. Many of
these recently acquired customers are the ones who respond to the
company’s career opportunities. Sometimes the excitement that
new customers feel when they find a high-quality running store
makes them want to apply to be a part of it. In other situations,
people are new transplants to the area, have a passion for running
and fitness, and need a job. Either way, the company is able to make
their existing customer acquisition infrastructure serve double
duty as a recruiting system. Fleet Feet Syracuse therefore spends
very little additional money to build its farm team and find more
A-player employees.
A-Player Principle: Use your existing customer acquisition
tools to attract more A-player employees. This requires
minimal out-of-pocket expense and puts the return on investment
of your recruiting efforts through the roof.