Welcome back to Business Unfiltered with Mercer and Jeff Sauer today's topic is Hiring Top Performers 0:00: Jeff defines hiring a top performer, a 10x employee, a top 1% employee, and three other hires who are a great investment for the business and make you proud. 1:58: Top performers are born or they are molded. Top performers are born. They are either a top performer or they are not. The organization or the role that supports and nurtures their top performance is how they mold it into a way that affects the company. The Minneapolis public school district is a great example of a top-performer. It is up to the organization to really tap into that and utilize it. Hire top talent and give them a role in some kind of expectation and mold them. 6:09: What is a top performer? Top performer is someone who gives extra energy to the organization and takes you to another level. Top performer has to be someone who helps your business transcend. Three ways to hire, job description, task list and recruiting techniques, and how to confirm they are a player. Behavioral behavioral questions are the questions that people submit when they submit their job and resume. They have to answer questions and then grade them based on those questions. 10:10: The hiring funnel and job descriptions. It is up to the leadership structure to mold them into how they can harness that energy and catch that lightning in a bottle for the organization. The hiring funnel: where the job description is written with three key elements. They need someone detail-oriented. They need to be able to list out the seven mistakes that were in the job description. They are looking for someone who is a top performer, a top-performer, and would be honest about where they are right. 14:44: Are they the person already vs the potential. The biggest mistake most people do with hiring is trying to hire the potential instead of the person they want to hire. Hire the person you want, not the one that could be the person that just doesn't work out. The questions are purpose-built to make sure they are the person they say they are and the person Mercer wants in his team. The person that makes it through the interview is the person and they are an easy hire, assuming everything else makes sense. 18:48: Hiring for one role vs 10 roles. Hiring for one role is easier than hiring for 10. Hire for one position and get the A player, versus letting the market bear that, which is what big companies have to do. The biggest disqualifying factor for candidates is that they are the best paper candidate. Hiring a top performer who can be hired right away and not have to nurture them at all. Hiring the number one candidate, the number two candidate, and the number three or four candidate. Hiring an acquisition apprentice and a project. 22:58: Hiring the right candidate. We ended up having the second chance, and I never closed the door on the finalists. I don't even tell a finalist that they didn't get it for the first few weeks. We kept the conversation going and checked in with her every three to six months. Julie Brody, director of measurement, was hired as a DMA, digital marketing assistant, almost 10 years ago. They hired someone else, but they didn't have a place for both of them. Julie was shocked that she didn't get it. She was so into this thing that she was requested. 26:22: Hiring a top performer. The second candidate was a top performer. She went through the exact same hiring funnel that the other person did, and she eventually left to go start her own thing. Talent is talent and top performers are going to be top performers for the rest of their life. Surround yourself with top performers. You are the sum of the five people you spend the most time with. You want to spend some time with them and want them in your life. The first thing is to build a bench. It is so important top performers already are top performers, you cannot take someone who's not and turn them into what they already are.