Hiring Top Talent Quotes

We became the most successful advanced projects company in the world by hiring talented people, paying them top dollar, and motivating them into believing that they could produce a Mach 3 airplane like the Blackbird a generation or two ahead of anybody else.

As a young cartoonist, Walt Disney faced many rejections from newspaper editors who said he had no talent. One day a minister at a church hired him to draw some cartoons. Disney was working out of a small rodent-infested shed near the church. Seeing a small mouse inspired him to draw a new cartoon. That was the start of Mickey Mouse.

Despite all the heartaches, tears and misunderstandings, you can still attract and retain top talent.

I run Venture for America, a nonprofit organization that recruits dozens of our country’s top graduates each year and places them in startups and growth companies in Detroit, New Orleans, Las Vegas, Providence, Cincinnati, Baltimore, Cleveland, Philadelphia, and other cities around the country. Our goal is to help create 100,000 new US jobs by 2025. We supply talent to early-stage companies so that they can expand and hire more people. And we train a critical mass of our best and brightest graduates to build enterprises and create new opportunities for themselves and others.

We became the most successful advanced projects company in the world by hiring talented people, paying them top dollar, and motivating them into believing that they could produce a Mach 3 airplane like the Blackbird a generation or two ahead of anybody else. Our design engineers had the keen experience to conceive the whole airplane in their mind’s-eye, doing the trade-offs in their heads between aerodynamic needs and weapons requirements. We created a practical and open work environment for engineers and shop workers, forcing the guys behind the drawing boards onto the shop floor to see how their ideas were being translated into actual parts and to make any necessary changes on the spot. We made every shop worker who designed or handled a part responsible for quality control. Any worker—not just a supervisor or a manager—could send back a part that didn’t meet his or her standards. That way we reduced rework and scrap waste. We encouraged our people to work imaginatively, to improvise and try unconventional approaches to problem solving, and then got out of their way. By applying the most commonsense methods to develop new technologies, we saved tremendous amounts of time and money, while operating in an atmosphere of trust and cooperation both with our government customers and between our white-collar and blue-collar employees. In the end, Lockheed’s Skunk Works demonstrated the awesome capabilities of American inventiveness when free to operate under near ideal working conditions. That may be our most enduring legacy as well as our source of lasting pride.

These include: the Bar Raiser hiring process that ensures that the company continues to acquire top talent; a bias for separable teams run by leaders with a singular focus that optimizes for speed of delivery and innovation; the use of written narratives instead of slide decks to ensure that deep understanding of complex issues drives well-informed decisions; a relentless focus on input metrics to ensure that teams work on activities that propel the business. And finally there is the product development process that gives this book its name: working backwards from the desired customer experience. Many of the business problems that Amazon faces are no different from those faced by every other company, small or large. The difference is how Amazon keeps coming up with uniquely Amazonian solutions to those problems. Taken together, these elements combine to form a way of thinking, managing, and working that we refer to as being Amazonian, a term that we coined for the purposes of this book. Both of us, Colin and Bill, were “in the room,” and—along with other senior leaders—we shaped and refined what it means to be Amazonian. We both worked extensively with Jeff and were actively involved in creating a number of Amazon’s most enduring successes (not to mention some of its notable flops) in what was the most invigorating professional experience of our lives.

Dontchev was born in Bulgaria and emigrated to America as a young kid when his father, a mathematician, took a job at the University of Michigan. He got an undergraduate and graduate degree in aerospace engineering, which led to what he thought was his dream opportunity: an internship at Boeing. But he quickly became disenchanted and decided to visit a friend who was working at SpaceX. “I will never forget walking the floor that day,” he says. “All the young engineers working their asses off and wearing T-shirts and sporting tattoos and being really badass about getting things done. I thought, ‘These are my people.’ It was nothing like the buttoned-up deadly vibe at Boeing.” That summer, he made a presentation to a VP at Boeing about how SpaceX was enabling the younger engineers to innovate. “If Boeing doesn’t change,” he said, “you’re going to lose out on the top talent.” The VP replied that Boeing was not looking for disrupters. “Maybe we want the people who aren’t the best, but who will stick around longer.” Dontchev quit. At a conference in Utah, he went to a party thrown by SpaceX and, after a couple of drinks, worked up the nerve to corner Gwynne Shotwell. He pulled a crumpled résumé out of his pocket and showed her a picture of the satellite hardware he had worked on. “I can make things happen,” he told her. Shotwell was amused. “Anyone who is brave enough to come up to me with a crumpled-up résumé might be a good candidate,” she said. She invited him to SpaceX for interviews. He was scheduled to see Musk, who was still interviewing every engineer hired, at 3 p.m. As usual, Musk got backed up, and Dontchev was told he would have to come back another day. Instead, Dontchev sat outside Musk’s cubicle for five hours. When he finally got in to see Musk at 8 p.m., Dontchev took the opportunity to unload about how his gung-ho approach wasn’t valued at Boeing. When hiring or promoting, Musk made a point of prioritizing attitude over résumé skills. And his definition of a good attitude was a desire to work maniacally hard. Musk hired Dontchev on the spot.

You can’t use a talent surplus approach for hiring top people in a talent scarcity situation.

Very innovative companies, such a Twitter, know how important this type of cross-pollination is to creativity in their businesses, and they make an effort to hire people with unusual skills, knowing that diversity of thinking will certainly influence the development of their products. According to Elizabeth Weil, the head of organizational culture at Twitter, a random sampling of people at the company would reveal former rock stars, a Rubik’s cube champion, a world-class cyclist, and a professional juggler. She said that the hiring practices at Twitter guarantee that all employees are bright and skilled at their jobs, but are also interested in other unrelated pursuits. Knowing this results in random conversations between employees in the elevator, at lunch, and in the hallways. Shared interests surface, and the web of people becomes even more intertwined. These unplanned conversations often lead to fascinating new ideas. Elizabeth is a great example herself; she is a top ultramarathon runner, professional designer, and former venture capitalist. Although these skills aren’t required in her day-to-day work at Twitter, they naturally influence the ideas she generates. Her artistic talents have deeply influenced the ways Elizabeth builds the culture at Twitter. For instance, whenever a new employee starts, she designs and prints a beautiful handmade welcome card on her 1923 antique letterpress.

CIOs must shift focus from internal customers to external customers. IT must shift focus from providing service to providing value. Everything is moving to the cloud; CIOs must assume a “cloud first” mentality. Innovation is more than new technology—it's also about change management, enabling new processes, and hiring the best talent. CIOs need to work closely with the business to create innovation that drives real value. CEOs expect more from their CIOs than ever before. CIOs must deliver on a higher set of expectations, or they will be replaced. CIOs must shift from a measurement mentality to a value creation mentality. CIOs must shift focus from historical data to real-time information. Today, IT is all about creating real business value. All business is digital. All business. When IT has a bad day, the business has a bad day. IT still matters. It matters to the top line and to the bottom line. IT matters more than ever because IT is everywhere in the business. Without IT, you're out of business. CIOs need to step up, raise the bar, and elevate their game to meet the challenges of the big shift. I hope you enjoy reading this book and find it a useful addition to your library. It's the fourth book I've authored on the topic of

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I felt super-frustrated. We’d hired all these talented people and were spending tons of money, but we weren’t going any faster. Things came to a head over a top-priority marketing OKR for personalized emails with targeted content. The objective was well constructed: We wanted to drive a certain minimum number of monthly active users to our blog. One important key result was to increase our click-through rate from emails. The catch was that no one in marketing had thought to inform engineering, which had already set its own priorities that quarter. Without buy-in from the engineers, the OKR was doomed before it started. Even worse, Albert and I didn’t find out it was doomed until our quarterly postmortem. (The project got done a quarter late.) That was our wake-up call, when we saw the need for more alignment between teams. Our OKRs were well crafted, but implementation fell short. When departments counted on one another for crucial support, we failed to make the dependency explicit. Coordination was hit-and-miss, with deadlines blown on a regular basis. We had no shortage of objectives, but our teams kept wandering away from one another. The following year, we tried to fix the problem with periodic integration meetings for the executive team. Each quarter our department heads presented their goals and identified dependencies. No one left the room until we’d answered some basic questions: Are we meeting everyone’s needs for buy-in? Is a team overstretched? If so, how can we make their objectives more realistic?

5 Thumb Rules to Follow for Outsourcing 3D Character. Outsourcing has become one of the basic requirements of the digital industry. Be it software, websites, architecture rendering or 3D character modelling, companies look forward to outsource these tasks to reliable names. Reason is simple. When it comes to value for money, 3D Art Outsourcing Service stands to be the most viable option as setting up in-house production often isn’t considered a wise ROI choice. But, this necessity has also given rise to possible frauds. There are countless companies waiting to gulp your money in the blink of an eye. There are many more who are ready to lure you with lucrative offers when it comes to 3D character modelling concept. Since not everyone is familiar with the technicalities of this field, companies can easily get trapped with fake promises of giving top notch services well within their reach, only to find out that the whole thing was neither worth their time nor money. However, all the sham can be avoided if companies follow the six thumb rules while Game outsourcing character modelling tasks to animation studios as these will lead them to the right names. 1) Take a Tour of the Website Although you will find expert comments on not to judge a company by its cover, there is no denying the fact that website plays a decisive role in company’s credibility, especially when it comes to art and animation studios. A studio that claims to offer you state-of-art results must first focus on its own. A clean, crisp website with appropriate content can actually say a lot about the studio’s work. A poor design and inappropriate content often indicate the following things: - Outdated and poorly maintained - Negligence towards its virtual presentation - Unprofessionalism - Poor marketing A sincere design and animation studio will indeed feature a vibrant website with all its details properly included. 2) Location Matters Location has a huge impact on hiring charges as it largely decides the price range one can expect. If you are looking forward to countries like India, you expect the range to be well within your budget chiefly because such countries have immense talent, but because of the increasing demand and competition in the field of outsourcing, hiring charges are relatively cheaper than countries like UK or USA. This means that once can get desired expertise without spending a fortune. 3) Know Your Team Inside Out Since you will be spending your hard earned money, you have every right to know the ins and outs of your team. Getting to know the team can assist you in your decision. Do your part of homework and be ready with your queries. Starting from their names to their works, check everything you can, and if need be, go for one-to-one conversation. This will not only help you to know them better, but will also give you an idea of their communication, their knowledge about their work and their sincerity. A dedicated one will always answer you up to the point while a confused one with fidget with words or beat around the bush. 4) Don’t Miss Out on the Portfolio While the website of a studio is its virtual representative, it’s the portfolio which speaks about its execution. Reputed names of 3D modelling and design companies house excellent projects ranging from simple to complex ones. A solid portfolio indicates: - commitment of the studio towards its projects - competency of its team - execution and precision - status of its expertise Apart from the portfolio, some animation studios even feature case studies and white papers in their websites which indicate their level of transparency. Make sure to go through all of them.

Candidates will remember how they were treated during the interview process, and this will impact your reputation, your company’s reputation, and your ability to hire top talent in the future.

Dating and hiring have a lot in common.

About 30 percent of founding CEOs in the billion-dollar group had not worked for anyone other than themselves before. Of those who had, about 60 percent had worked at companies with very well-known brands, like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Goldman Sachs, or McKinsey. Those “tier-one companies” are famous for their rigorous hiring processes and their tendency to employ the best. Another 28 percent worked at “tier-two companies,” which I define as large and well-known companies that were less sought-after by top talent. Only 14 percent of founders of billion-dollar companies had worked solely at companies that were not well-known brand names.

Recruiting top talent is like finding a needle in a haystack; it takes careful searching and a magnetizing company culture.

Recruitment is not a one-time event; it's an ongoing strategy to attract and retain top talent.

A strong employer brand attracts top talent like a magnet, creating a pipeline of exceptional candidates.

In 2002, with a new understanding of what makes a great place to work, Patty and I made a commitment. Our number one goal, moving forward, would be to do everything we could to retain the post-layoff talent density and all the great things that came with it. We would hire the very best employees and pay at the top of the market. We would coach our managers to have the courage and discipline to get rid of any employees who were displaying undesirable behaviors or weren’t performing at exemplary levels. I became laser-focused on making sure Netflix was staffed, from the receptionist to the top executive team, with the highest-performing, most collaborative employees on the market.

Rich Lesser, the CEO of The Boston Consulting Group, calls this building an “opt-in” culture. “The reality of being an employer is not that you make people feel an obligation to stay,” Lesser told us. “You hire the best people you can possibly find. Then it’s up to you to create an environment where great people decide to stay and invest their time. Since we made this an emphasis, our employee satisfaction scores have been better than ever, and our retention of top talent is substantially higher than a decade ago.

In order to fortify the talent density in your workforce, for all creative roles hire one exceptional employee instead of ten or more average ones. Hire this amazing person at the top of whatever range they are worth on the market. Adjust their salary at least annually in order to continue to offer them more than competitors would. If you can’t afford to pay your best employees top of market, then let go of some of the less fabulous people in order to do so. That way, the talent will become even denser.

The methods used by most companies to compensate employees are not ideal for a creative, high-talent-density workforce. Divide your workforce into creative and operational employees. Pay the creative workers top of market. This may mean hiring one exceptional individual instead of ten or more adequate people. Don’t pay performance-based bonuses. Put these resources into salary instead. Teach employees to develop their networks and to invest time in getting to know their own—and their teams’—market value on an ongoing basis. This might mean taking calls from recruiters or even going to interviews at other companies. Adjust salaries accordingly.

Recruiting Simple: Streamlining Your Hiring Process In the fast-paced world of recruitment, finding the right talent efficiently is crucial for the success of any organization. That's where Recruiting Simple comes in – a cutting-edge platform designed to simplify and optimize your hiring process. Whether you're a small business or a large enterprise, our intuitive and user-friendly interface ensures that recruiting top talent is not only effective but also hassle-free.

Key learnings You can boost your brand and get more people to trust you by doing interviews with top industry leaders. By spending time with them asking questions, you get associated with their image and people will perceive you as an expert as well. Processes are key. If you want to get people from the top of the ladder on your podcast/interviews you need to start small and then keep leveling up. Communities die, families prosper. Your team will be the most important success factor of your company as you grow. The key source of talented people is actually the people you’ve already hired. Your team reflects your company culture. That’s why they need to be 100% involved. Making people’s lives easier is one of the most underrated skills in business. Transparency leads to trust. Don’t beat around the bush, tell it like it is and people will see they can trust you.

Typical comments from younger and “top talent” employees:   “I want to know immediately if I need to change what I’m doing. I prefer managers who just walk in and tell what I need to do differently.” “I can’t believe that some managers wait for performance review to let people know they aren’t good in a particular area. What’s the holdup?” “Just lay it on me. I don’t want to wait for feedback. And I want a manager who’s open to my feedback, too.” “I was hired in as a manager, a role I’d never had before. I’m lucky my boss pushes us to give more feedback to everyone—I get feedback on my feedback. My team is like a hungry beast. I feed them and they keep asking for more!

Needing a second opinion This one. I think this is the one women in the workplace are scared of. I know I am. Broad City is a very collaborative environment, and I trust everyone we’ve hired to work with us, so I naturally ask people’s opinions. But when you get a new job, a new assignment, or a promotion, the fear of not being good enough, of not knowing everything can seep in. In the last season of Broad City (4), I directed two episodes. This was a new experience for me, and one I took very seriously. But I found, during the process, that a big insecurity for me is the fear that if I need a second opinion, that means I don’t know what I’m doing. This is false, I do know what I’m doing, but it’s that vulnerability, that want for another set of eyes on my decision that can make me shaky. I ultimately made all the decisions I needed to—after using my resources aka asking questions—but in order to do that, I had to continually let go of this unease that someone from a dark, back corner would pop out, pointing directly at me, yelling about how I’m a fraud for asking for help while in charge. That I’d be plucked up by a huge claw and dropped outside on the sidewalk, banished from taking on this new role. This fear is mindless. Understandable, but stupid. Crews are a team. Any business is a team, and the whole point of having people do different jobs and be experts in their specific department is for them to help in any way they know how. The director isn’t there to bark out orders. They are the conductor bringing everyone’s talents together to execute their own artistic vision. Asking and bouncing ideas off people, and even changing your mind, is allowed. It’s so hard to ever show any sort of weakness, especially when you’re a woman at the top of the project, in a business you never thought you’d actually be able to break into. But going through all the possibilities and asking for help is not weak, it’s smart. I’m going to go ahead and dog-ear this paragraph so even I can come back and remind myself.

Hiring is a race against time, and every moment lost is a step closer to losing the race for top talent. The brutal reality demands swift decisions.