A New Business Imperative: the AFZ
Managing the quality of relationships at work is critical to employee engagement. You can't afford managers who act like talent repellents.
![]() |
Myth #3: Finding the right person is a numbers game. To improve my odds of finding the right person, I need to broadcast my opening using the big recruitment boards, the niche boards, and selected papers and publications. |
The odds that candidates who post their résumé online or who respond to an ad will be the right candidates for you to invest time in are pretty slim. At any given point, only about 20% of the workforce has an up-to-date résumé… and they have and up to date résumé because they are actively looking for work. When you think about it from that angle, these folks are typically are not the top performers you want to speak to.
There’s a huge difference between quantity of candidates and quality of candidates. The best quality candidates are usually not actively looking for work. They don’t hang out on the job boards or read the ads, and they don’t have an up-to-date résumé. You want to target the 60% of the workforce who aren’t actively looking for work but who also aren’t in love with their current job.
Most of us don’t realise that requiring people to give you a résumé is actually a barrier to
finding the right talent for our business. When you do away with that requirement, and set up a process where better people can apply without that inconvenience, you win. That’s the Fit First Philosophy… it will power your business to better results and a stronger P&L.
Managing the quality of relationships at work is critical to employee engagement. You can't afford managers who act like talent repellents.
How there can be such a fundamental disconnect between the story we tell ourselves at corporate and the reality in the field - and what will it take to repair it?
You most likely spend a lot of time and effort to hire the best and the brightest you can afford. You may be looking for people who were in the top 20% of their class, or those who had success working...