To Hire the Best in a Weak Economy, Focus on Active Recruitment and Culture Fit

To Hire the Best in a Weak Economy, Focus on Active Recruitment and Culture Fit


One of the top recruiters of executive and leadership talent in the tech industry, Pat Fitzgerald brings deep and valuable perspectives on today’s battles for talent. In monthly episodes, Pat shares his unique insights on the new types of skills that businesses are seeking, and the opportunities that talented professionals are looking for. Today, Pat and Bob talk about the evolution of talent acquisition, some of its missteps, and two strategies that Pat says companies need to win the war for talent today: active recruitment and a renewed emphasis on culture fit as equally important to diversity.

To Hire the Best in a Weak Economy, Focus on Active Recruitment and Culture Fit
Sponsored by BMC Software.
Episode 10 | Active Recruitment and Culture Fit

The Big Themes:

  • Three priorities for hiring: Pat says that the best hires (1) are able to do the job well, (2) help diversify the organization in terms of background, ethnicity, etc., and (3) are a good fit culturally for the company and the role.
  • Recruiting today is too passive and too focused on ops: To find the best possible person for the role they need to fill, companies need to embrace active recruitment done by a true talent attraction leader.
  • The most successful companies combine recruiting ops with talent attraction: Hard data about candidates is important to help HR managers make their assessments, but you also need a talent attraction leader who understands soft skills, culture, and other factors like that in order to find the right hire.

The Big Quote: “You’ve got a brilliant sales leader focused on customers, customer success, big-deal strategy, how to develop account executives, how to attract them… If you take that person out and put in their sales ops person, that’s the same analogy as what’s happened to recruiting to talent acquisition leadership over the last several years.”

Stream this episode in audio-only format:

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