How can I upgrade the talent in my business?

How can you improve your hiring practices? While letting underperforming employees go in favour of new intakes may sound harsh, the fact is that your company probably has individuals or teams where results could be dramatically improved if you made some changes and hired more effective people.

If you want to upgrade your talent level but the right CVs have not just fallen into your lap, here are some additional proactive strategies that you can take to find out if you can get stronger talent for the same cost in today's job market.

Realistically assess the weak spots in your company
Every organisation has weak links, meaning people who are not performing at the level that you need or want. Who are these individuals? Have you dealt directly with their sub-par performance? What is the ideal candidate profile for these roles?

Often, companies don't deal directly with poor performance because they don't have anyone to fill the position. From this perspective, investing some time to find new talent can dramatically help you as a leader to get better results out of your team.

Get the word out
Tell your network that you are looking for one or more strong people with specific credentials. Be as clear as you can with these credentials, but don;t set them so high that you'll never find the perfect candidate.

Social media tools give you the ability to broadcast your need to a lot of people who have connections to your industry, driving people towards an online job posting. Consider using these tools to see how much interest there is in the marketplace.

Develop your team
Set a goal for yourself and others in your management team to get a certain number of appropriate candidates in for interviews every month. Let people in your company and in your network know that you are always interested in interviewing good people who have a specific kind of background.

If you and your management team are disciplined about doing this, you will develop a pool of potential employees who work for other people right now but who are interested in coming to work for you. This gives you a group of people from which to pull when you are ready to make a new hire.

Even if you can't afford to add to your payroll, take a hard look at whether you can improve your results by upgrading your talent. Get proactive about identifying the weaknesses on your team and meeting people who could boost this area of your operation. You'll make your entire company better by replacing a poor performer with an star performer.