Hi, this is Jerry Scher from Peak Focus. I’ve been working for many years within the print industry and working in lots of different capacities. But one area that I’ve really focused on the past few years is assisting companies acquire the appropriate talent that they need to move their organizations forward.

You know, it’s possible to develop a great strategy but if you can’t execute it, it’s not a great strategy. And in order to execute great strategy you need talented people. And in the last video clip that we did we talked a little bit about where the industry was going and how this is working.

I’d like to give you a little bit more information about what you as a senior executive really need to do going forward. And, of course, these are my suggestions.

To begin with, I commented on the fact that the sales position is crucial to the execution of a great cross media marketing strategy. In order to find the right people you have to redefine the role of the salesperson. The salesperson’s role is very different from what it was, and still is, for folks who are just purely selling printed material.
?We need a much more sophisticated salesperson with a set of skills around being consultative, challenging clients to look at new and innovative ways of marketing their businesses and this requires a much different kind of individual.

So I’d like to propose to you an approach to assessing and evaluating talent. To begin with there are three components that I recommend.

The first one has to do with defining eligibility. Let me explain what eligibility is. Eligibility is looking at a candidate from the standpoint of their education, their past experience, any certifications that you require – anything about this individual that would prepare them to do the job. In other words, when we talk about eligibility we’re actually suggesting or determining whether or not they can do the work. So that is the first component and it’s important that you spend more time than you’re accustomed to doing by defining the jobs first before you go looking for somebody.

The second component we call suitability. Now this is one where everyone has – anyone who’s ever hired anybody has experienced a problem with suitability. Typically it’s the lack of suitability. Suitability is will they do the work. Suitability deals with behavioral competencies, work preferences, personality. All of those things that after you hire somebody you experience about them and then you decide that you made a mistake. The idea in the whole process of recruiting is not to make those mistakes. So determining suitability of a candidate is crucial and there are a lot of different ways it can be done which we can talk about in the future.

The third component of this process is the interview. And as I mentioned in a previous video clip, most executives struggle with the interview. This is a process that needs to be developed through skills and training, not only at the most senior level but also anyone who’s involved in actual interviewing candidates. Too frequently you’ll find that the person doing the interviewing spends more time talking than listening. When, in fact, the role of the interviewer is to get all of the information that they can from the candidate.

These three components are critical if you’re going to build a great team. It requires you putting systems in place similar to that what you do with your manufacturing, your marketing and any other part of your business where you put systematic procedures in place so you have repeatable processes.

Recruiting is one of those areas that really needs to be developed within most organizations.

I look forward to talking with you again very shortly.