Jamie shared how his company evaluates talent which can be categorized from two perspectives: Talent and Experience. He summarized the concept of three letters – DNA when evaluating people from a talent perspective.
- Drive – Goal-oriented and resilient.
- Nature – emotional intelligence. How well candidates can fit into the existing environment.
- Acumen – business acumen. i.e. whether a sales candidate can make a profitable sale. Rather than sell a product directly. Candidates can sell a valued solution to customers from which they will earn a higher gross margin. This is the so-called “solution selling”.
From an experience perspective, Jamie utilized the acronym “PRO”
to select the right people.
- Performance history – whether the candidates had a proven track record in the past.
- Relevancy – Whether the candidates have similar work experience.
- Opportunity – opportunity management.
As for opportunity management, Jamie gave a 3-year talent
benchmark that an employee should stay with a company for at least three
consecutive years. In the first year, an employee needs to adapt to the new
environment, learn the corporate culture and build positive relationships with
colleagues. In the second year, they become familiar with the company processes
and start to make a profit. In general, people make reasonably good profits in
the third year. If an employee leaves a company within 3 years, the company is
at a loss, given the training and resources that allocated to the employee.
On the other hand, how a company can attract talented
people? In my opinion, a company should create an open environment and offer
the following:
- Executive support.
- Allow mistakes – trial and experiment to identify the optimal methods for a chosen project.
- Buy-in/positive reinforcement from key stakeholders.
