Attracting and Holding Top Talent

As has been seen on Wall Street, a high salary, bonuses and perks are required in attracting and holding top talent. Top talent can be described as those with a fine resume. On that resume is of course a great college or university. Add to that, experience at top companies and corporations in positions of responsibility. They have a proven track record in helping a company expand or grow. Sometimes it can be seen that when these individuals left their employers, those employers went down in sales and market share.

You need to grow your business and possibly to expand. Top talent in your industry is necessary. A competitive salary, higher than your competitors is necessary. You must give this talent incentives through bonuses for goals they have reached or surpassed. In sales, should the salespeople exceed your quota that would force a bonus. Perks like the use of an automobile or company jets are a good way to keep talent.

The top talent must always be brought into the decision process. They must feel that their input was important in reaching a specific decision. Even though no person is irreplaceable, the feeling that top talent has that they are indeed irreplaceable must be nurtured.

It is not an easy thing attracting and holding top talent. The company must be large enough to expend this kind of money to a few individuals. Small business cannot do that, the reason why small business is not going to get these people under any circumstances. Not even in today’s economic downturn will top talent take a position they consider far below their talents. Instead they will go abroad. There are always companies around the world that will be more than happy to pay out money for such talent. Sometimes as seen by the recent AIG fiasco top talent will not workout for the company, though generally it does.