Finding top talent in practice

The best way to confront this challenge is to work through it step-by-step. Our talent team can give its perspective on a structured approach to talent acquisition strategy working with investee companies to:  

• Assess current skills. We’ve equipped our investees with a range of tools including psychometric testing and interviews with an occupational psychologist, with the aim of understanding leadership capabilities.
• Map skills to the growth strategy. Based on your growth strategy, you can build a template of the skills required for successful executions; benchmarking larger and successful businesses in the sector can be useful here. 
• Build new role profiles. Comparing existing capabilities against what is required will identify the gaps that need to be filled. Focus on skills rather than people – what is it your business needs to achieve its vision?
• Identify and assess candidates who fit the bill. This is the process of closing those gaps. It might mean training and developing your in–house talent or going to market to bring new people in (or both). Those new hires might be new members of the management team with specific skills or non-executive directors who can act as mentors and a sounding board to management, as well as providing relevant experience and contacts.
• Recruit successfully. Making the right senior hires is critical. How will you assess whether candidates are suitable? How will you approach them and attract them?
• Onboard candidates and assess board effectiveness. It’s important that new hires are able to make an impact right from their first day as this can really accelerate the pace of change. Having completed the talent recruitment process, it’s important to continue to assess its effectiveness; is the resulting leadership and board structure achieving what is required? 

The value of talent recruitment strategies

This whole process won’t happen overnight, particularly if your business is expanding its top talent significantly. But the objective for the end of the process is to ensure you have a leadership team in place that understands exactly which levers to pull to really drive the value your business is aiming for. 

Talent recruitment doesn’t end with the leadership team. Growth strategies will rely on capabilities needed throughout the business, so the leadership team will need to roll out talent acquisition and retention strategies across all parts of the business.  

The right talent recruitment strategy will have a dramatic effect on your business. At the live events specialist, disguise, our talent experts guided management through  a series of high-profile hires to support growth, including a new chairman, chief sales officer, CFO/COO, and a head of human resources. The head of HR is now helping the company to develop a fitting employee value proposition for the business’s rapidly growing and millennial workforce – all the more important as the group grows further into China and the United States.  

Mobysoft is another good example. Since we invested in the business in 2017, we’ve helped the company hire a CIO, a CFO, a chief data officer and a customer success director. We’ve supported the founder to build an outstanding leadership team, attracting exceptional candidates given the size of the business. The business is now exploring exciting plans to commercialise their customer data and build new products. 

In both cases – and many more examples throughout Livingbridge’s investees – finding top talent is proving to be a catalyst for accelerated growth. Inspiring and engaging people who can put your growth strategy into practice can be exactly what your business needs to fulfil your potential.