I’ve been extremely fortunate over the years to find great talent. I don’t mean to brag, but we have one of the best teams in the business, some of whom I’ve been working with for close to 12 years. Truthfully, I consider these individuals to be part of my family. I’m often asked by clients, partners and colleagues how we built this close family of HR professionals, and what were the traits or characteristics I looked for when building our team.
While there’s no one size fits all approach to building good teams, we’ve tried for the most part to remain consistent in finding the right talent by emphasizing client needs in tandem with personality intangibles.
I first look at our clients’ needs and evaluate what we already have in place. What skill sets do we already have? Where do we need greater experience and diversity? In addition, we often try and anticipate future client needs when evaluating candidates’ experiences. Sometimes you have to take a risk and not let the right candidate slip away who might have a skill set you’ll need down the road.
It’s also very important to evaluate the personalities of the individuals making up the team. As HR consultants, we need to know if they have the drive and passion for HR, the flexibility to be available for different types of projects, or the willingness to drop everything at the last minute when a client has an immediate need.
Maintaining this team dynamic hasn’t been easy. Over the years, we’ve had our ups and downs in the consulting business and our team’s attitude has been impacted by this economic volatility. Many organizations, ours included, had a real concern about losing talent when the economy picked back up. However, by taking great care of our team during the downturn, we lessened the risk of losing talent when the economy improved. This is an important piece of advice that we give to all of our clients. If you want to keep your talent, take care of them during downturns even if it means reduced profits for your organization.
Now granted, over the years, some of our team members have left for other opportunities, which happens to everyone. While we certainly don’t want to impede their professional opportunities, whenever we lose a team member we ask ourselves if there was anything that we could have done differently that would have possibly resulted in a different outcome. That’s a really important point, you must constantly reevaluate how you’re sourcing, hiring and retaining your talent, there’s always room for improvement.
Ultimately, these factors have allowed us to build a really wonderful team of dedicated HR professionals. I wouldn’t necessarily say that our process is unique, because many of our clients and partners have taken similar steps and assembled fantastic teams with tremendous dedication, abilities and skill sets. But although our processes work for us, ultimately you have to build a process that works for you.
For me, the truest barometer that I place when evaluating a team member is feeling confident that I know they will represent our brand well and provide our clients with the right tools to meet their HR challenges. I think that’s a pretty great formula for a fantastic team.
