By Aaron Dodd, Operations Director at the Mindset Group

On the weekend I watched the AFL Grand Final and witnessed probably two of the greatest AFL teams in history battle out an exciting tight contested game. Neither team deserved to lose, Geelong prevailed in the end. St Kilda’s leaders will use the loss as a motivator for next and subsequent years.

Many parallels can be drawn between successful sports teams and businesses (teams of people as well). A quick review of the two teams leads to some interesting (though not unexpected) conclusions.

Both clubs have recruited and selected well. Without the raw talent, no amount of excellent coaching will transform it. This is a fundamental precondition for any successful organisation. In the business world, there has been much criticism of recruiters of late. In my opinion, much of it is justified. However, specialist, consultative recruiters have continued to do well and be in demand throughout the financial crisis. This is because they create genuine value for their clients. In the AFL football world, most clubs recognise that sourcing talent is a critical skill that they may not have in-house. These clubs routinely use external talent scouts (the code’s equivalent of recruiters) to spot talent in the junior leagues, remote leagues (e.g. the NTFL and even Gaelic Football in Ireland). Not only do these scouts (recruiters) identify the talent, they then facilitate bringing the individual to the respective club. All AFL clubs will acknowledge that good talent scouts can make the difference to their clubs’ successes. It is no different in the business world, and let’s face it, AFL clubs are big business.

Once the talent is sourced, success is then determined by club leadership and coaching. St Kilda is arguably one of the least successful clubs in the competition’s history having famously only ever won one premiership (by a single point) in 1966. Although I’m a Kangaroos supporter, most of my local family are passionate St Kilda tragics so I have some insight into the club. It is a club renowned for management instability and dubious Machiavellian internal politics. For decades, club members have watched their beloved club tear itself apart from the inside. Lack of success on-field has inevitably followed. Only in the last few years has management/leadership stability finally come to the club and with that success has followed. A key lesson to be learned therefore is strong, stable, consistent focused leadership. The club has devised a strategic plan and the management team, functioning as a team, has delivered it. Success has followed. Geelong similarly has had a stable successful leadership team that has now delivered them two premierships in three years. For success therefore, businesses must have stable, consistent and proactive leadership with a defined plan for success.

And finally, one of the keys for delivering on-field success for all AFL clubs is performance management. Every player is meticulously measured and tracked. Many wear miniature GPS units on the field to track how far they run, where they run etc. Each player is constantly measured on dozens of KPIs; fitness, skin-fold tests, handling-errors, teamwork, skills, time-keeping, tackle-counts, goals, to name but a few. Each player knows their individual KPIs and also recognises that if they don’t meet them they could be dropped. Equally, if they do meet them, they will be rewarded with more game time, better contracts etc.

In summary therefore, like football, your business will be successful if you recruit and select well (don’t hesitate to use outside advice from competent consultative recruiters if it helps to get even a marginally better result). Ensure your business has a stable cohesive and focused leadership team and make sure you scrupulously measure what you actually do (both company and individuals).

The Mindset Group, can assist with all three areas; recruitment and selection, leadership development and performance management. Contact us for a confidential discussion on how we can help your organisation win a premiership.

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Atlassian are a Sydney-based, enterprise software company. They provide products to over 15,000 customers in 113 countries. They are currently recruiting 32 engineers for their Sydney office.

Atlassian have set specific rules for recruiters who want to work with them. Calling them Bounty Hunters and they've set the following recruiting rules:

Rule 1: You can't empty your candidate database into our inbox.
The first time you send us candidates, you can only submit a maximum of 4 candidates (across a 5 month period).

Rule 2: Great candidate, means a great relationship
Make sure that these candidates are awesome. If one (or more) of these 4 candidates is hired, you are eligible to submit more candidates and become our recruitment partner.

Rule 3: Unsuitable candidates, sorry mate!
If none of these candidates you put forward is good enough, then we must unfortunately part ways.

More information can be found on the atlassian website.  

Our response to this is:

Mindset's talent division operates with a different process and methodology to most. Mindset takes a long term consultative partnership approach with its clients to ensure that the role is scoped in its entirety using our High Performance Role Clarity (HPRC) Definition process.

This takes in not just skills, qualifications and experiences but also maps out the ideal personality profile for that particular role at that point in time. The HPRC takes into account the multiple and often conflicting requirements of the role’s various stakeholders.

Once the role is scoped Mindset then goes through a comprehensive talent sourcing exercise so that we then have a pool of candidates to select from. Mindset then works with its clients through a structured screening interview, assessment, debrief and reference checking process to be able to make a final recommendation to our clients.

The HPRC, our process, the assessment etc all create significant value for our clients, not least of which is that they end up with a candidate who will deliver the required results in a shorter ramp-up time and with an excellent fit for the company culture, and a much longer “guarantee” period. However to deliver this result, a Mindset consultant must also do significantly more than a conventional “flick & stick” recruiter and as a result we have to charge more for our services, and only a retained basis.

Throughout the GFC our recruitment volumes have increased as a result of this focus on creating client value. Mindset has been recruiting new consultants to keep up with the volume of work while others have been shedding staff.

Our take on Atlassian is that it is an approach that will work to screen out the vast bulk of contingency recruiters who add little value to their clients’ businesses. However, the Atlassian approach also takes little account of innovative more-value added recruitment and selection approaches. It tars the whole industry with the same brush.

Mindset won’t participate as 1) the fees aren’t worth our efforts and 2) Atlassian probably wouldn’t appreciate the value of our approach and therefore be prepared to pay what our service is worth....and hey, we’re cool with that! Some companies just aren’t ready for us.

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