December Fast Company Article Summary by Carol A. Thesing How to Hire the Next Michael Jordan by Gina Imperato, pages 212-218.

The article suggests that there is not a shortage of people to fill jobs but there is a shortage of great people to fill them. Because these people are in demand, there is always someone willing to pay more, add incentives or change a workweek to hire the great employee. If you want to hire the next Michael Jordan, you have to recruit, evaluate, and offer the job differently.

According to John Sullivan, the head of human resource management at San Francisco State University, you have to have a continuous hiring process. This makes hiring a responsibility of each individual manager. It is essential to stay on top of whats new and whos best in that particular area. Even if you cannot hire the person immediately, remember how important it is to stay in touch with the potential candidate. This can be done by sending email messages, inviting them to seminars and open houses, paying them to work on mini-projects or offering feedback on or about their web pages.

Scouting for talent is the next step. Create a database of names of impressive people you meet at conferences. Stay in touch. When it comes time for the hire, you have a depth of their knowledge. This would give you much more information than you would get in an hour interview.

Once people have been hired, retention becomes the focus. Other companies will be trying to lure your find away from you. Money and/or stock options are important. Talented people get paid a lot of money and are worth it according to the article. But money isnt the only factor. A critical employee must have opportunities for growth, for freedom and for impact.

Future View is another way to look at hiring. Many companies are doing this by using job simulations over the Internet. It not only helps the employer get to know the potential employee; it also helps the employee candidate to get a good feel for what the job is really about.

Carols Comments: I felt this article had a lot of validity but it focused on business. In education, it is rarely possible to hire before an opening becomes available. After talking with my colleagues, I realized this technique could be used to develop a resource list of people as advisors or an employee list when jobs do become available. Another discrepancy between education and business is the willingness to pay for quality. My colleagues and I both agree that many of educations best people go into business for this very reason.

-- Anonymous, January 20, 1999

Answers

Carol--Thanks for your comments. Your observations were right on the mark as far as the differences between business and education are concerned. In busines, if they want to hire someone, they do it. They do not have to go through the cumbersome process of finding the proper mix of candidates, and the length search and screen process that we in education have. In my own experience, some of the suggestions that this article gave, such as keeping in contact by e-mail and special projects,can be effective in letting a potential candidate know you are interested in them. This will help them to keep you in mind during the job search. I feel that the bottom line, is that we in education have to be able to offer competitive salaries and benefits in order to attract the best candidates. However, we are limited by our budgets and often cannot offer what it takes to get those candidates. It can be very frustrating.

Some schools are examining other ways to attract candidates. While they may not be able to offer a base salary that is competitive, they may be able to provide other job incentives that can be used to attract the best. Do you or any of your peers have some examples in education of ways that this can be done?

-- Anonymous, January 31, 1999