How to Hire Top Talent by Ryan Renteria

Author: Ryan Renteria

All managers need a few essential skills to successfully lead and make an impact in their organization. Communication, decision-making, empathy, and adaptability are some of the capabilities most widely researched and written about in the business world. There is one skill, however, that’s often less discussed—learning how to hire top talent.

In my 22 years of experience on Wall Street, in professional sports, and most recently as an executive coach, I’ve seen the positive impact a great hiring strategy can have on a manager’s career. While you may not always have the power to choose your team, learning how to spot and appeal to high-performing candidates can fundamentally impact your trajectory.

What do I mean by top talent? Stellar hard skills—the technical skills needed to perform a specific role—are table stakes. You should also be looking for a few vital soft skills:

• Intrinsic motivation: Top talent means people who are motivated by their own desire to learn and grow. Their behavior or past experiences demonstrate curiosity, autonomy, and resourcefulness in solving problems or overcoming challenging work situations.

• Perseverance: A top job candidate should display open-mindedness and adaptability. These are people who’ve shown they can navigate uncertainty and unexpected roadblocks.

• Reliability: Top talent are reliable—people with strong organizational skills who pay attention to detail. They meet deadlines. You can trust them to get things right and deliver quality work.

A team of people who possess these qualities can be trusted to execute tasks on time and to a high standard. This allows you to delegate tasks and assign projects that are relevant to their individual areas of expertise. This creates a win-win situation for everyone. It gives your direct reports more opportunities to take on visible work that will help them grow and potentially introduce them to powerful stakeholders throughout the company. It also creates space for you to engage in bigger-picture, strategic thinking about your organization’s business goals and how your team can help them come to fruition. You’ll have more time to develop strategic team goals, improve on processes that may be slowing you down, and produce results.

Moreover, a strong and reliable team creates fewer fires for you to put out. This leaves you less susceptible to the burnout that harms leadership careers, personal lives, and mental health.

Whether you’re new to hiring or looking for a quick refresher because it’s been a while since you’ve sat on this side of the table, here are the most important steps to increase your odds of making a great hire.

Develop a Strong Hiring Process

I once worked with a client who had a meticulous hiring process and a reliable team; that is, until Brad (not his real name) joined the company. One of my client’s team members—let’s call him Christopher—slipped up during the interview process. When Christopher interviewed Brad, he fell in love with his background and qualifications. Worried that another company would snatch him up, Christopher offered Brad the job just a few days after the person he was replacing announced his retirement. In the end, Brad struggled to meet the expectations of the role. Because he wasn’t thoroughly vetted, neither Brad nor the company were set up for success.

You can avoid critical mistakes like Christopher’s by mastering three parts of a hiring process:

1.Write a strong job description

The first step to landing a talented candidate is to sell them with an incredible first impression. This starts with the job description. If you’re able to weigh in on this aspect of the application, ask yourself the following questions: Why would your company be the right one for your ideal candidate? How is your company different from the other options it may be considering?

In the description itself, focus on the following areas:

Start by describing your company’s purpose

What are you trying to achieve in the marketplace? Why should anyone care? How is your culture different from others out there? A good match for the role should read the job description and think, “Wow, this company really aligns with my values and goals.” If the values of the new company were more aligned with theirs, 87% of Gen Z would switch jobs. Moreover, if you hire people who share your organization’s values, they’ll be more likely to feel engaged in their role.

Detail their tasks and how they connect to the goals you just described

Ninety-one percent of people consider quitting a job within the first month if it doesn’t match their expectations. This is reason enough to be crystal clear about what you expect. Otherwise, you’ll waste time and money by losing a talented hire shortly after they join.

To ensure that candidates understand how their role and responsibilities contribute to the larger mission, include a few sentences that describe how every task—even potential grunt work—has meaning behind it. For example, if one task is taking notes during team meetings, you could add an explanation like “to ensure the group stays aligned and can execute projects more efficiently.”

Lay out the skills required to execute those outcomes

Don’t forget to describe the specific competencies you’re looking for. Which technical skills are you seeking? Which soft skills do you feel are critical to your group’s success? You need to be clear about these to find candidates who can meet the requirements of the role—and deliver.

2.Nail the interview process

The next step to hiring top talent is getting the interview process right. In my experience, this requires three things: an organized and unbiased evaluation process, unique questions, and sample assignments.

Before the interviews, create a straightforward evaluation system

I recommend having a rubric that clearly defines each qualification you’re looking for and a scoring system the hiring committee can use to measure the candidates in each area (See the article “A Scorecard for Making Better Hiring Decisions” for a sample). You will likely be measuring candidates on a combination of soft skills like intrinsic motivation, problem-solving, adaptability, organization, and attention to detail as well as the technical skills needed to carry out the responsibilities of the role.

Assign a weight of importance to each qualification. This will help you calculate the total score for each ­candidate after every round of interviews. That score won’t be the sole determinant of who you hire. But it will give you a process to quantify their strengths and weaknesses as seen by several teammates and help you counter the biases that show up during typical hiring decision discussions.

During the interview, ask unique questions to get authentic, unplanned responses

Here are a few favorites I’ve developed or learned from smart interviewers and used over the years.

• “I’ll be asking candidates who advance to future rounds to provide several references, like former bosses and other people who can speak to their performance. Is that OK with you?” This revealing question can save you from a bad hire. Pay attention to body language and see who gets uncomfortable. Top talent with nothing to hide will be thrilled you’re doing this diligence.

• “What are the biggest mistakes you think our company is currently making? What would you do differently?” You’re testing their critical thinking, level of detailed research on your company, and confidence to speak up and challenge you.

• “Tell me about a time you disagreed with the majority of your team members. Which counterarguments altered your thinking? What would it have taken for you to have completely changed your view?” You’re analyzing how open-minded they are and how willing they are to adapt or engage in high-candor debate.

• “What do you read in your spare time to sharpen your knowledge?” You’re looking for signals of intellectual curiosity, a growth mindset, and the motivation to become more well-rounded.

• “If you join our team and it doesn’t work out, what is the most likely reason why?” This is a creative way to tease out a potential deal breaker or weakness.

Give them a sample assignment to complete by a deadline

Choose an assignment related to the tasks they would be tackling or the problems they would be solving in the actual role, and provide them with clear, specific instructions. The assignment shouldn’t be too large of an ask, and it should be ethical—this is not an opportunity to get free work. Allow them to work on the assignment on their own time (not during the actual interview).

For example, when I was an institutional investor, I interviewed many analysts for my team. I would assign them a stock and ask them to conduct a full research process on the company. They had to build a financial forecast, assess the upsides and downsides of investing, and communicate their recommendation succinctly.

Sample assignments like these help you see if the candidate has the hard skills needed to succeed in the role and give you a sneak peek into the quality of their work. The result doesn’t need to be perfect—you’re really ­testing for attention to detail, punctuality, and high potential for learning and improvement.

3.Make the most of reference checks

Don’t underestimate the value of reference checks—it’s an opportunity to dig deeper and get the whole picture of a candidate. At the same time, because this step is ­often carried out by human resources, you may have to be a bit more proactive about being involved. For example, you can email your HR representative to let them know you want to gather more information on your top candidates and that speaking to their references will be essential to your final decision. If you receive any pushback, ask if you can submit a few specific questions you’d like them to ask while vetting your candidates.

Here are two strategies that can help you (or your HR team) make the most of this final step.

Put references at ease

Assure references that they have 100% confidentiality, and no comments will ever be traceable back to them. Emphasize that this reference call is one of dozens of reasons the candidate may or may not get the job. These assurances should make references more open.

Ask questions that ensure you don’t get boilerplate responses

Below are the most effective reference questions I’ve developed or acquired from great hirers and used over time.

• “I want to balance the strengths and weaknesses of my team members. What are [name’s] strengths and weaknesses, and in your experience, what kind of qualities help balance them out?” Or “What kind of teammates do they collaborate best with?”

• “How reliable and organized is [name] when it comes to getting their work done on time and accurately?”

• “When [name] disagrees with you or another person, how open-minded are they about considering another viewpoint, compromising, or adapting their view?”

• “On a scale of 1 to 10, what is your level of endorsement and why?”

When the time comes for you to make your next hire, a quick review of these essentials will position you for success.

Ryan Renteria is a CEO coach, diverse board director, author of Lead without Burnout: Growth with Less Stress for You and Your Team, and the founder of Stretch Five, a leading executive coaching firm where he guides leaders on their journey to executing bold visions, hiring and developing top talent, achieving outstanding results, and becoming better leaders.