As the war for talent doesn't seem to get any easier nowadays, how would you get ahead of your competitors and make the best hires? Not an easy task, if you are asking anybody in the talent management business. These 3 things would help:

Create a great culture. Did you ever wonder why you don't see billboards or online advertisements for open positions at Google, Apple or Facebook? Because they don't need any. Why? Everybody heard about these guys and many people would do anything to get a gig over there. Because these companies are awesome. What makes them awesome? A great company culture. Now, not everybody can be Google, but starting with little things goes a long way. Let's say that you are expecting a new employee to start today. What is the typical first day on the job for new hires? Does stuck in a room filling out paperwork and reading company policies sounds like it? But it doesn't have to be that way, does it? Here how you can make the first day on the job different for your new hire. Let your front desk person that you are expecting a new team member. Ask them to greet the person by name and take them to the room where you are holding your daily staff meetings. Buy breakfast and introduce the new member to the team. Make them feel special. Buy a $50 gift card and make sure it gets delivered to their home that evening on their first day of work. Send a note with the card: "Hey John, I just wanted to tell you how excited we are to have you as part of our team. Dinner's on us. Enjoy!". Imagine how great would that be. John will enjoy a great dinner and will tell his friends about this. Then, maybe his friends would like to work in a cool place like yours.

Learn from the top sales people. There are statistics showing that top 25% sales people are responsible for 60% of the total sales in any company. How are they able to achieve that? Making more sales calls? Wrong! They are making less calls to the right people. Where do most recruiters get their candidates from? Job boards. The problem is that an overwhelming percentage of the candidates you are getting from the job boards are second tier candidates, because the good ones always have a job. When ready to change jobs, a few phone calls to their contacts help them cut in line and send them on the way to their next gig. Here is how you can became the person they will call when they are ready to change jobs. Let's say that you have 10 employees. Ask them to share with you the contacts for the top 5 people they ever work with. Offer to pay a significant referral fee if any of their contacts is ending up being hired by your company. Now, you have a list of 50 great candidates to work with. None of them may be ready to make a move immediately, and that's ok. Call them and leave them your contact info so they can reach out to you in case that they are changing their mind. Ask them for permission to call again within a few months. Sooner or later, they will be ready for that change and you may be making just the right phone call at the right time.

Hire from outside your industry. An apprenticeship program can be a great way to bring new talent to your team. Your apprentices can learn a new trade while getting paid at the same time and you don't have to worry about breaking bad habits since you will train them the right way from the get-go.  This is a win-win situation. For apprenticeship programs, I would mainly look in two places: military veterans and related industries.

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