Experts portend the next sustained wave of business failures won’t be because of a lack of innovation or poor disaster recovery practices; they will fail because they cannot attract, recruit, and retain talent. What’s your plan to not be one of them?

Linda Teaman of Shoshana Technologies is a dedicated CEO for a small SaaS company in Michigan has been, like many others, feeling the pain of attracting great talent. She’s working on ramping up her ability to attract the great talent, honing her hiring team’s skills to choose from the pool, and connecting with employees to ensure they are satisfied. What is she and her leadership team doing?

Attracting Talent

Attracting talent requires far more than a compelling job posting. Linda’s recognizing that word gets out when you are focused on changing the world and you invest in your employees so they can perform better, be more valuable to customers, and be even more satisfied in their work.  What she’s working on right now is getting crystal clear about the messages going out in their marketing. Talent wants to feel like they are helping something important happen and they want to feel capable.

Recruiting Talent

More than ever it’s important for small businesses to choose a good cultural match as well as people capable of doing the work from a skills perspective. She’s empowering her hiring team by having them hone the practice of observing candidate behavior that is consistent with culture and skills needs. That hiring team knows more about themselves and the company work for because of their learning and doing.

Retaining Talent

What do you know about your employee’s personal and professional ambitions for the future? How often do you have that conversation, really listen to them, and design your rewards programs, benefits, and company events to show them you have been listening? She’s implemented a quarterly one-on-one with each person on her team that is all about triumphant possibilities, not about performance appraisals.  

The Big Picture Talent Strategy

To compete with other businesses, your eye cannot come off the talent ball. Linda’s strategy is to declare goals and objectives annually, quarterly, monthly to get better in all three areas. With the intentionality around talent, she’ll stay connected to what matters most… winning the talent game so she can change the world.

What’s your talent strategy?

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Miche Rayment is the Founder and Chief Facilitator for The Hire Effect™. The Hire Effect’s clients learn about hiring for their culture and skills needs so they have healthy and easeful growth. TheHireEffect.com