In one of our recent episodes of Talent & Growth, we sat down with Lou Adler, CEO and Founder of the Adler Group – whom you may know as an influential voice on LinkedIn!  

With his extensive experience in recruiting, thought leadership, and helping brands build world-class teams, we were so excited to host him and pick his brains about hiring leaders (as well as a ton of other valuable content which we know you’ll love!). 

We’ve highlighted some of our key takeaways in the blog below. 

Do you think that often we treat the hiring of leaders the same as we do other talent, when really, it’s different? 

Well, here’s the issue… Let me define what I perceive to be a leader first. A leader can be an entry-level person, somebody in a call centre, who goes out of his or her way to do a better job to learn more, to help to mentor others etc.  

But, it’s harder to find a leader at entry-level. After two or three years, a good person demonstrates they’re in the top 25% because of their leadership skills.  

Now, when you talk to these people, you discover that their aspirations of why they’ll switch jobs are not just to avoid pain, not just to get more money, not just to have a shorter drive; it’s to become better long term.  

So, these people are much more discriminating. And, if you don’t tailor your marketing to that customer, and let’s say marketing and recruiting, interviewing, every step of the way, they’re going to opt out of your process very, very quickly.  

Most companies focus on what’s in it for them a company, they don’t focus on what it’s in for the person. I don’t think companies build processes around the top 25%, I think they build processes around “hey, we’ve got to fill the job with someone who’s got all these skills, and supposedly has the competencies listed on our job description”. But that’s not the way to do it – and I think that’s where the big disconnect is. 

So, how do we attract the best? And how is the process different than other hires? 

“Let’s just take the three or four ideas of getting candidates… Number one is a job posting. Number two could be an email that you send to somebody you found on LinkedIn. It could be a voicemail or text or message (so many, but it’s all marketing).  

So, in my mind, how do you attract someone using those three means and maybe habits, maybe social media? I mean, it’s all of these things combined, but I call it a marketing campaign overall.”  

What should our metrics of success be when we’re hiring for leaders? 

“I think that’s a great one. So, let me give you the minor one and the major one. The minor one is when I had a recruiting team of about 15 or 20 recruiters, we use send outs per hire or interviews per hire, or candidates delivered to the hiring manager per hire. And we always felt that three or four was the correct number.  

But, a sub metric of that was the first two candidates who we’d present to the hiring manager. If one of those isn’t considered a serious finalist, there’s something wrong. 

The bigger metric would be something I call “quality of hire”. How do you actually measure the quality of a hire? Nobody really knows how to do that. It’s always a subjective metric after the hire. But, I actually do measure it. We know the 10 factors that define the job success and do a very good job of predicting it to 80 to 90%, accuracy!” 

To listen to the full episode, click here.  

On Talent & Growth we speak to talent leaders about the challenges they face and their solutions for attraction and retention. If you’re interested in hearing about how companies are building a more diverse talent pool, how you can attract top people from the big players, ways to create a more inclusive interview process or learn about the latest and greatest automation software to make your life easier, then this is the podcast for you.