Over the past few years I’ve turned a number of ideas into viable businesses. Those businesses now provide work to over 300 people worldwide, the majority of which are based here in the good ole USA!!!
Through all of this growth, the single most important lesson I’ve learned is to do whatever it takes to hire talented people. I cannot emphasize this enough, talent will either make or break your company. Talent is the single most important driver of organizational performance and individual managerial success.
The ability to hire the best talent is what distinguishes premier companies from mediocre firms and successful careers from merely ordinary ones. Unfortunately, like most organizations, I simply couldn’t seem to overcome the litany of obstacles involved in gaining and holding top-tier talent. For every 1 successful acquisition of talent, I had 4-5 misfires. With that came millions of dollars in lost opportunities, heavy internal expenses to recruit new employees, and lots of time wasted.
The talented players that we retained would go on to build out a practice that gained enormous momentum. As part of that momentum we landed ourselves a superstar operator that introduced the organization to Topgrading. Our lives would never be the same!
Topgrading is a detailed how-to manual for packing one’s team with A players (the top 10 percent of talent available at all salary levels), clearing out the Cs, and using expert coaching techniques to turn B players into As. The insights and advice provided in Topgrading has allowed our company to build out recruiting practices that generate consistent A player talent.
In a short period of time, Topgrading has had a significant positive impact on our bottom line. We’re now able to identify the B & C players and weed them out early on in the process. Good riddance 
One trick that I picked up from Topgrading was requiring the candidate to do the legwork and setup calls with his former employers or references. ’A’ players will jump at this opportunity to line up calls with their references. They won’t fear honest criticism from previous people they’ve done business with, rather they’ll invite it. Their references will include former employers and noteworthy professionals.
‘C’ players on the other hand will scoff at the idea. Their references will include family members, friends, or other non-professional individuals. The reason for this is because they are ‘C’ players and subsequently do not have a track record of success.
Remember, everyone pomps up their resumes to some extent, that’s what resumes are for. Check out the Topgrading Chronological In-Depth Structured Interview Guide, which is the most important employee assessment tool in the Topgrading process.
Asta la vista C players!
