The following is a collection of patterns I've seen at play while hiring talents. Writing about them helps organising my thoughts, tests my assumptions and might help You hire and retain talents. Feel free to comment and share your experience so I update the models below thanks to collective wisdom.

Jan 24th 2022, a Chief People Officer in Paris asked his Execs a simple yet powerful question: “What are we doing to deserve the talents we need?”. Some answers came up but none resonated as loud as the silence settling in.

I believe this question is one of the best to ponder over for leaders and companies that need to hire and retain great talents. Every company I've worked with wants to hire “A players”, “top talents”, "stunning colleagues” but is the company as great as the talents they want? What are they doing to deserve them?

Work can be many things but I see it as a never-ending series of problems (US readers think “challenges”) to be solved and what one can choose is the type of problems s/he enjoys solving. Some problems will consume your energy whilst others will give you some, making you want more. Things get even more interesting when You choose how to solve these problems and with/ for whom to solve them which both act as coefficients on your energy and satisfaction levels.

To hire (well), You need to have clarity on the type of talents you need, what they should deliver, what they want and what you can offer them in return besides employment and money. I'd also add that companies and leaders get the talents they deserve and vice versa.

With the “great resignation” - ”talent migration” or whatever you want to call it - people are more than ever open to making a move. This should create a fantastic opportunity to hire at scale, yet many companies struggle. Sure, the gap between jobs and talents available keeps widening in some industries but with the adoption of remote work, there are many great talents out there. So the question is do they want to work for You?

I've never been convinced about the "head hunting” and talent “Acquisition” naming conventions. You don't “hunt” talents like preys neither do you “acquire them". As you'll read further below, I see talents as “investors” who invest their time, energy, brains and passion in your company and expect some ROI. The ROI they seek varies based on the “currency” they value most and the level of their investment but they will invest their talents elsewhere if they don't see some ROI (SPOILER: it' often isn’t money.

Types of Talents, how they think and move?

Please, show us your talents!

Please, show us your talents!

Not all Talents are alike and what sets them apart is their mindset and expectations from work. To hire great Talents, start looking at their relation to work.

Professor A. Wrzesniewski from Yale ****wrote a paper ****on this topic concluding people either have: