How to Hire the Best Agency Talent

Do you hire staff at the bottom of your organizational chart and promote up? Alternatively, do you hire at the top and stretch out responsibility to create a new division?

It’s important to have the right number of people on staff to meet workflow demands. But it’s even more important to have the right people in the right job to work at maximum efficiency. The challenge is to place everyone in a position to work at their competence level and pay grade. Here’s how.

1) Inside or outside? When making a hiring decision, determine the need in your organization: technical, advisory, management or support. Then, determine if it would be best to promote internally and fill a lower-level position, or if it would be best to hire from the outside.

2) Prep the employee. If you decide that hiring internally is the way to go, use a personality or cognitive test before placement to make certain the person is equipped with the right skill sets for the new challenge.

3) Recruit smart. If it is best to hire from the outside, where and how you advertise for the position will determine the quality of candidate you receive. Instead of advertising for an entry-level position, aim for people who want management or higher-level responsibility.

For example, we advertise for an individual to manage customer relations and client services and we list the responsibilities of a manager. The wording in the ad determines the caliber of the people who apply. Our experience shows that people will apply up who are management potential, but you will rarely find a quality candidate who applies down.

I don’t look for just employees—I look for the brightest people. And I expect everybody in my firm to be able to run the company at some point in time.

Brian D. Heckert, president of the Million Dollar Round Table, is a 27-year member with seven Court of the Table and eight Top of the Table honors.