How to stack the odds in your favour in the lottery for talent

We announced this week that we are looking to hire a CEO for our new start-up WE❤NUMBERS. We have made this decision as we have learnt from our experiences in our other businesses.

Sarah (my partner) and my biggest strengths are focusing on our vision and coming up with ideas on how to get closer to fulfilling it without having to get caught up in the execution of it.

To hand over our baby so early is obviously a very big (and terrifying) decision so it is vital that we get the right person for the job. This is the process that we have taken to come up with our decision and what will occur to find this amazing person.

We discussed with our mentors on where we think we should fit in the company structure and where we would add the most value. Once we agreed that hiring a CEO would be a good fit, we then needed to work out how we would go working with that CEO to ensure they had the greatest opportunity for success.

We then identified what are the key traits that we want to find in this person and what would the role entail. From this we created a scorecard which defines success for the role. This will be used throughout the recruitment process to ensure that we find a great person who is right for the role, not just a great person.

We are big believers in the law of attraction and we have been manifesting each morning our future CEO. We know that the person is out there already, they just aren’t aware of their calling yet! In order to alert that person we need to ensure that as many people as possible know that we are looking for this person. We started by announcing it at our launch party on Friday night, we have posted it across social media, we have reached out to people we know who have great connections and we’re even publishing it in blogs like this one. A recommendation from a trusted source is invaluable so we are enjoying receiving many.

Once we have our pool of candidates we will then kick off the most important part of the process. To help us make recruitment decisions we use a proven American method known as Topgrading. This is a structured set of interviews that helps you uncover whether the person is suitable for your role. It is very detailed and time consuming but considering the average cost of a wrong hire is 15 times their annual salary it is definitely worth the investment.

During this process we will utilise people we trust to help with the decision and ensure that we don’t hire anyone who is not an A-Player. We would rather have no one than someone who won’t be a massive success.

If anyone is interested please reach out to me directly and give me a quick insight on why you are interested and how you believe you can help to fulfil our vision. I look forward to hearing from you.

I will share our progress throughout the process as I believe it will be a very valuable experience that every entrepreneur could benefit from.

Finn Kelly is the CEO and co-founder of award-winning Gen Y financial advisory firm,Wealth Enhancers, along with the parent company, premier private wealth management firm WE Private.