In case you couldn’t make it to our latest webinar, “Planning for Growth: How and When to Add Talent” we’re recapping the 4 steps that our co-hosts shared that will help you confidently add the right talent to your team to achieve your growth goals. 

Rick Rittmaster, VP of Consulting, and Todd Johnson, COO, shared that by following these steps you’ll be able to hire top talent into your company and create people strategies to reach business goals. One thing is clear, as TJ (Todd) stated, “your most valuable asset is your people” which is why these 4 steps are crucial to making informed decisions about your talent needs. 

Step 1: Set Clear Growth Goals 

In order to know what talent you will need, you have to know where you’re going. Although this is not CorTalent’s area of focus when partnering with our clients, we can offer the following insights on setting clear growth goals. It’s important to know what your top priorities are, to be as specific as possible, and to know how you will measure and track the progress towards your goals. It is also key to identify what skills and capabilities your team will need in order to reach those goals. Setting clear and measurable growth goals will allow you to keep the big picture in mind as you are making decisions about your current and future talent needs. 

Step 2: Assess Your Accountability Chart 

What’s the difference between an org chart and accountability chart? And why choose the latter? Organizational charts are strong at documenting hierarchies within a company. However, employees within an organization may ‘wear many hats’ or have responsibilities that align with different roles. An accountability chart reflects this reality by allowing people to “sit” in multiple seats and clarifies who is responsible for each function of your business. 

Now that you have your goals set and know what capabilities your team will need to reach those goals, you can start to identify current and future gaps in your accountability chart. This is an important step, because you are starting to translate what needs to happen into who will actually fill that role. Here are a few tips to help leadership teams think about filling current and future gaps: 

Start small- begin by adding responsibilities to current employees 

Be creative- don’t be afraid to break the standard job description and “smush” together accountabilities 

Practice smart development- connect additional responsibilities to career aspirations 

Use data- consider ROI’s of new positions and the cost of vacant roles 

Step 3: Assess Your Talent 

One of the first questions an organization should consider when assessing internal talent is “Do you know what your employee’s aspirations are?” Rick posed a great hypothetical wherein the leadership team wants to promote someone, but that employee is content in their role and doesn’t want additional responsibilities. Assessing talent is about reviewing current performance, future potential, and career aspirations. Someone’s performance and potential may suggest that they would be a great candidate to take on more responsibility, but their lack of interest in moving up or taking on more can hinder your growth goals if you aren’t aware of their aspirations before adjusting your accountability chart. 

In summary, things to think about when assessing your current talent are: 

Current performance: How are they performing in their role over the past 12 months? 

Future potential: How ready and able is the employee to take on more responsibility? 

Passions and interests (aspirations): What are the employees short- and long-term career goals? 

A great way to navigate this third step is with the help of CorTalent’s Talent Review Assessment. You can find more information on that here. This 5-Box system is used in our Talent Review Assessment process to define employee performance and potential: 

Something else to keep in mind during this stage is the ‘Build vs. Buy’ concept discussed by Rick and TJ, which is the final piece of assessing your talent where you will either decide to elevate an internal employee or hire for a role externally. There will be some gaps that you can fill by adding responsibilities to an existing employee’s role, but some gaps will require filling with a new full-time seat within your company. So, to fill those roles, do you build or buy? To know which decision is best, Rick suggested you ask yourself these three questions: 

“What role(s) will be most important to help us grow?” 

“How hard will it be to develop these skills internally?” 

“How soon will we need this role?” 

Step 4: Add To Your Team 

When it finally comes to adding to your team, it’s best to refocus on top priorities and revisit your growth goals to keep them top of mind. Before you can start the recruiting process, TJ posed an important question to consider once you’ve reached this stage: “What does success of this hire look like in the first 6-12 months?” 

If you can outline what success looks like in terms of KPIs and metrics and pair that with the accountability chart gaps you are looking to fill, this is a recipe for success in defining the role(s) that you need to hire. 

The next crucial piece of adding to your team is knowing when you need someone to be sitting in that seat, and when they need to be fully operational. This information is important for taking a proactive approach to hiring. Coupling your ideal timeline with the knowledge that it takes 90-120 days on average to hire for most roles in this market can help you determine when you need to start the recruiting process. Add on roughly 30 days for onboarding and training, and you’ll need to account for about 120-150 days from the day you open the role to the day that role is hired and fully operational. 

When adding to your team there are several other factors to consider aside from the timeline but taking a proactive approach to knowing when you need to hire will allow you to more effectively determine the details of how. 

So, what’s next? 

As you digest the information in this blog, we’d like to leave you with the following questions: 

“If you had all the talent and skills needed to grow, what would your company be capable of?” 

“What could you do then, that you can’t do now?” 

If you know what you want but aren’t sure exactly what it will take to get there, we can help! Schedule an introductory call with our VP of Consulting today. 

*Included in the webinar but not in this blog are a few client case studies that applied these four steps to real world scenarios. If you’d like to hear this process in action, check out the webinar recording here.