ATD Talent Management Handbook

By Association for Talent Development

What you need to know to manage a workforce.

The complex and ever-changing nature of today’s—and tomorrow’s—workforce demands that all involved in talent management rethink how to attract, engage, and grow future talent. This forward-looking handbook captures talent management’s evolution from a series of transactions to a fluid process that includes talent development.

With 20-plus chapters written by more than 30 contributors, the ATD Talent Management Handbook challenges you to think about the talent model of the future through the lens of different workforce models. It offers progressive thoughts on the current state of talent management and on how the function needs to adapt. Leaders, practitioners, and consultants alike will find useful insights and answers to relevant talent management challenges.

Edited by learning and development authority Terry Bickham, this handbook covers the entire talent management cycle, from talent acquisition and engagement to leadership development and succession planning. ATD’s first handbook on talent management, this book includes a foreword by ATD President and CEO Tony Bingham, highlighting the foundational components of talent development and its role within talent management.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Association for Talent Development
• Release date: Nov 3, 2021
• ISBN: 9781607283089

Book preview

  Introduction

As I’m writing this introduction, a quick check finds 27 devices wirelessly connected to the Internet on my home office network, streaming information in and out, eroding the boundaries of work and whatever it is we do when we are not working. I find myself constantly sampling, analyzing, and prioritizing information, and I’m not alone. According to Deloitte’s Global Human Capital Trends 2015 report, today’s hyper-connected employees are increasingly overwhelmed, distracted, and impatient. They work from multiple locations and restructure their work to meet their lifestyle needs—and they are increasingly likely to be contract or freelance workers. The world of work is changing not just for Millennials but also for older generations who are staying in the workforce longer.

So, how do we actually manage talent in this work environment? How do we convince the best talent to come work for us? Then, once we do, how do we create an environment so engaging they want to stay? As my graduate school professor, mentor, and friend Allison Rossett used to say, managers may think employees oughta want to, but the fact is they don’t, do they?

Instead, managing talent now means we must treat employees more like customers and business partners than like direct reports. We must think differently about how work is designed and provide a workplace culture that encourages both collaboration and personalization. We must balance the rise of individual expectations and their impact on organizational expectations. And making this shift in perspective successfully will be a challenge for all talent managers, at all levels, in all organizations. That same Deloitte report also shows us that current talent management is struggling to keep up with the pace of business, make connected decisions, respond to employee needs, and become more flexible. We have our work cut out for us.

With these challenges in mind, what’s the best way to structure a handbook on talent management that’s relevant to professionals today and tomorrow? First, we need to tackle how we have managed talent in the past—through the separate, traditional life-cycle processes of recruiting, managing, developing, motivating, and retaining talent. Based on my recent experience, this approach is much too linear, too siloed, and the authors’ contributions to the ATD Talent Management Handbook confirm it. Attracting, acquiring, and, then, retaining talent are no longer discreet phases, just as acculturating talent to our organization and developing talent are not. No, they are ongoing activities that merge together and run concurrently.

The process now is less about managing talent and more about continuously engaging talent through our organizations’ purpose and culture. It means empowering passionate leaders who focus on developing strengths—their employees’ and their own—instead of trying to fix innate weaknesses. It’s about leveraging robust and pervasive talent analytics to keep business leaders on the right track when measuring talent, enabling them to make smarter decisions.

To better reflect the blending of talent management phases, we’ve organized the ATD Talent Management Handbook into four broad sections:

■  Section I: Attracting Talent—how to build employer brand and purpose as a strategy to attract and keep top talent.

■  Section II: Engaging Talent—how to engage employees and connect them to an organization’s culture from day one.

■  Section III: Optimizing Talent—how to rethink performance management and leverage talent analytics in order to optimize individual and organizational performance.

■  Section IV: Growing Talent—how to incorporate leadership development and succession planning at all levels.

The chapters in each section address a talent management topic. More often than not, they integrate multiple and overlapping topics, strengthening the case that the topics are now rarely independent of each other.

Take employee engagement. A predominant theme across the talent management spectrum, employee engagement appears in 13 of the 21 chapters. In section II, Rebecca Ray and colleagues smartly identify eight critical elements for creating a highly engaging culture and demonstrate how to evaluate and apply them in your organization (chapter 7).

And what about analytics? The massive wave of data collection and mining has meant that talent managers must rely on analytics at all stages; talent analytics appears in 10 of the 21 chapters. In section III, John Boudreau and Ed Lawler take a survey approach to tackle how talent managers can turn talent analytics and reporting into decision science (chapter 14), while Kevin Oakes and Cliff Stevenson look at seven trends influencing the need for workforce analytics and talent measurement (chapter 15).

You may notice that except for the leadership development and succession planning chapters we don’t address learning and development, talent development, capability development, or competency management separately. This conscious decision for topics and chapters is meant to highlight that talent development is integrated into all components of talent management.

We’ve endeavored to include both best practices and forward-looking, progressive thinking on each topic. Some authors incorporated both in their chapters; others approached it from one of the two perspectives. In each case, the authors have included next steps with clear recommendations about what you, the reader, should be thinking about or putting into action now. Each author has considered how best to address the fact that new and complex talent models, inclusive of contingent workers, are rapidly becoming the norm.

This Handbook benefits greatly from its collection of contributors, all leaders in the profession and experts on the topics they’ve shared. Many of the names you’ll recognize instantly—Marcus Buckingham, Jenny Dearborn, Julie Clow, and Kevin Oakes. Others may be new to some of you; their ideas fresh and intriguing. They were a joy to work with and very patient when we pressed them to tease out some point or expand on a concept we thought readers would want to know more about. My sincere thanks to them for the time they invested in researching and writing their contributions. I also want to profusely thank Ann Parker and Jack Harlow at ATD for their exceptional professionalism in helping me pull this Handbook together. You are amazing!

I trust you will find this Handbook a go-to reference when you need either a good grounding or some fresh ideas on a talent management topic. No need to read it front to back if you don’t want to; just dive into the section or chapter most relevant to your current challenge. You’ll find that once you start pulling that thread, you’ll be led to chapters in other sections and see how they are inextricably linked. Seek me out on LinkedIn and let me know what you think.

—Terry Bickham

November 2015

  Section I

Attracting Talent

The Great Recession hammered home the fact that a long traditional career with a single employer is no longer a realistic expectation for most job seekers. In fact, that’s not even something many of them want. Instead, they prefer to spend their time with an organization whose purpose and culture align with their own and then remain there for as long as the organization and the work remain interesting. They also value flexibility in where and how work gets done. Fundamentally, an employer’s brand in the marketplace is essential to attracting top talent.

In chapter 1 John Sullivan discusses the very real business impact of attracting and hiring top talent. He then recommends some common-sense tools—which will work in any organization—to find and convince prospects to come on board.

In chapter 2 Jenny Dearborn builds on that theme with her seven maxims for talent attraction, including linkage to business needs, the importance of employer brand, and effective use of social media.

Finally, in chapter 3 Roberta Matuson shows you how to create a magnetic workplace that draws top talent to your organization. She provides several relatable examples of how companies showcase their brand, culture, and purpose to create an irresistible place to work for job seekers.

  Chapter 1

Easy-to-Use Approaches to Attract Top Talent

John Sullivan

Many managers treat recruiting as an inconvenience, as something they have to do but not a high priority. But in industries where the impact of hiring a single top performer is easy to see and measure—for example, professional sports, entertainment, airlines, and medical research—whom you hire is the critical success factor for exceptional organizational performance.

Almost without exception, the most valuable and successful organizations emphasize attracting and hiring top talent. In fact, by market cap, three of the top four most valuable companies in the world (Apple, Google, and Microsoft) have calculated the performance differential resulting from hiring a top performer to be at least 25 times more than the value from hiring an average performer. Unfortunately, many think the recruiting functions at these powerhouse organizations use secret, expensive, and extremely complex attraction approaches that are unavailable to the average hiring manager. But the reality is by using the same recruiting approaches and tools the average manager can hire employees with the same quality and performance level.

This chapter begins by first looking at the business impact of talent acquisition. As a component within talent acquisition, talent attraction is the starting point, and thus it is critical to understand the outcomes of strong and weak processes. And to ensure you are successful, you will have the opportunity to learn the mistakes hiring managers have made so you can avoid some common pitfalls.

Toward the end of the chapter is more detailed information on two effective and inexpensive tools used in the talent attraction process. Employee referrals are undeniably the most effective tool in the acquisition of top talent. It is also true that top prospects that you already know, such as former employees, are the easiest and cheapest tool to finding prospects. Lastly, once you have been successful at finding top talent the difficult task of convincing reluctant prospects begins, so I conclude with a tool to help you along in the next phase of talent acquisition.

The series of lists in this chapter will help you scan the information easily and allow you to quickly return for future reference. So if you want to learn how to hire like Google, read on.

Talent Attraction Defined

Talent attraction is the process of making your targets aware of the features of your organization, finding individual recruiting targets, and convincing them to apply. Once candidates apply to your organization, talent acquisition begins, which is the process of sorting applicants, assessing their capabilities, and selling the top candidate on accepting your job offer.

The talent attraction component has three major areas:

1.  employer branding: building your external image as a desirable place to work

2.  sourcing: identifying top prospects by name

3.  convincing those prospects to apply: during any contact, getting them to make a formal application to the organization.

Great talent attraction is difficult, because in addition to active job seekers that will seek out any visible job, there are an even larger number of qualified not-looking prospects, who are passive about looking for a new job. Because of their low interest level (when they already have a good job), even after you find a qualified not-looking prospect, you will still need to convince her that she wants a new job. And only then can you try to sell her on applying to your organization from among all available jobs and organizations.

Recruiting Has the Highest Business Impact of Talent Management Functions

In business, recruiting has a higher impact than other talent functions, including retention, employee engagement, performance management, and leadership development. Whether you call it recruiting, hiring, or talent acquisition, it has such a large impact because when you hire top-performing talent, they often need little training, performance management, or external motivation in order to perform well.

When you examine the overall recruiting function, you quickly find that the three major components are not equal. The first component of recruiting, talent attraction has the highest impact on overall hiring success because if top talent doesn’t know about and apply to your organization, no matter how effective you screen and sell this talent (the second and third components) you won’t end up with a top-performing hire. Excelling in attraction is also critical because a large percentage of hiring managers simply don’t know how to find and attract top talent. However, most managers are pretty good at screening candidates and convincing a candidate to accept an offer.

Before you redesign an old talent attraction process or create a new one, you need to fully understand both the positive and negative consequences of the talent attraction process.

Benefits of an Effective Attraction Process—and Costs of a Weak One

A weak prospect pool is problematic. If your prospect pool includes a large percentage of individuals with weak qualifications, you unfortunately increase your chances of hiring a weak candidate. And a weak hire can cost you thousands of dollars resulting from higher error rates, which may drive away customers. But if you only have highly qualified candidates apply, even a weak selection process will end up with a quality hire. Remember, finding highly qualified prospects means nothing if you can’t successfully convince them to apply. If the highly qualified prospects don’t even apply to your organization, you have no chance to hire one of them.

Time negatively affects hire quality. The process of finding and convincing top prospects to apply can be time-consuming. And if your process takes too long, most of the highly qualified individuals will be in and out of the job market long before you even begin screening and interviewing those that applied. In many cases, the very best are gone within 10 days.

Delays will cost you revenue. In revenue-generating or other critical jobs, each day that a position goes unfilled means lost revenue. That means if your attraction process takes too long, you will lose your organization a great deal of revenue, even if you do end up hiring a top candidate.

Top-quality hires innovate. An effective attraction process will target highly sought-after innovators and convince them to apply. The more innovators that you have in your candidate pool, the better chance that your new hire will have a greater impact on the organization, compared with the average hire.

With these costs and benefits in mind, let’s look at the six basic steps of the talent attraction process.

The Talent Attraction Process

The major steps in the talent attraction process include determining the characteristics of your target hire, spreading your employer brand image and job features, identifying where active job seekers see a job posting, identify where not-looking prospects read about organizations, searching for additional prospects using direct sourcing, and contacting and convincing top prospects to apply.

1. Determine the characteristics of your target hire. Prospects are qualified individuals whom you would like to apply for an open position, but who have shown no interest in your organization before they are contacted. Before you can seek out top prospects, you must clearly define the characteristics and qualifications that a top hire must have to succeed. Identify the education, experience, and skills that the top performers in that job have and weak performers do not. Determine the performance level (innovator, top performer, above average performer, or average performer) that you require and you are willing to pay for.

2. Spread your employer brand image and job features. Your employer brand is your long-term attraction strategy. Employer branding is an image-building process that makes it easy for all prospects to find out about what makes your organization a desirable place to work. If information about your brand is easy to find and also mostly positive, more of your targeted prospects will be willing to talk to you about a potential job opportunity.

At most large organizations, centralized HR controls the employer branding work. HR can build a strong employer brand by getting your organization placed on Best Place to Work lists, having a compelling and authentic corporate careers webpage, and ensuring that the features that make your company a great place to work are easy to find on social media and on the Internet.

Individual hiring managers and recruiters can supplement corporate efforts to ensure that potential applicants are aware of your organization’s best features. They can:

■  Identify the attraction features that your targets care about. You should focus your employer branding and selling efforts on the factors that will cause your targets to first notice and then to apply for your jobs. Most organizations simply survey a sample of applicants. But you can also ask each finalist specifically, Please list the factors that you will use to decide whether to accept a job offer. Once you know what finalists care about, you should obviously tailor your interviews and your offer process, so that you convincingly demonstrate to them that you meet their important acceptance criteria.

■  Make a list of your brand pillars. Once you know what features your targets care about, you need to determine which features your organization and its jobs have (brand pillars). Start by talking to current employees, recent hires, and even some applicants to identify the positive features that make your organization and its jobs exciting. Typical brand pillars include great products, growth opportunities, exciting work, job impact, job flexibility and freedom, great managers, opportunities to innovate, and advanced tools and technologies. Continue to identify your brand pillars after you hire candidates, such as during onboarding by asking new hires which of the features that you presented during the hiring process really excited them and which ones made little difference. To make sure that your targets know about these features, compare your performance on these key features with your direct recruiting competitors. Then use this information during interviews and in the offer process.

■  Do your part in spreading the word externally. Many organizations are enlisting their employees to actively brag about what makes their company and their jobs superior. As a result, you need to, at the very least, boast about the features that make working in your job exciting. To increase the exposure of your features, contribute on blogs and social media and speak at events that your potential targets might attend.

■  Be able to counter any negatives. You can’t be naïve when you’re recruiting, so you should make a list of the negative factors that your targets may be concerned about. Survey applicants to see what negative features they have heard about but also look at employer comment websites (like Glassdoor) to identify what current and former employees are anonymously but publicly saying about you. This research will enable you to effectively answer applicant questions related to these negative factors.

■  Identify and share stories. Virally spread authentic stories and best practices are more powerful selling tools than advertisements or information provided by corporate public relations. And because your employees are likely to be already connected with many of your recruiting targets, supply employees with a variety of stories that they can share to highlight your organization and job features. Also consider creating YouTube videos to show your best features and take advantage of any opportunities to talk about them on social media and in press interviews.

■  Make exciting job features easy for jobseekers to find. Features of the job and the team may be equally as important to targets as the employer brand. Make sure that the features of your jobs are available publicly by writing job descriptions and postings that highlight the exciting elements of the work. Next make sure that during conversations and interviews with candidates that they know about the positive aspects of your management style and be prepared to show your top interviewees short profiles of team members, so that they know they will be working with and learning from a group of powerful teammates.

3. Identify where active job seekers would see a job posting. Survey some recent hires in your target job family and simply ask them where they would look for postings of currently open jobs if they were looking for a new one. In many cases, the best places to post open jobs would include large Internet job boards like Indeed, social media websites like Facebook and Twitter, localized message boards like Craigslist, and even newspaper want ads.

4. Identify where not-looking prospects read about organizations. Survey some top performers and ask them where specifically they would find and read information about what it’s like to work at a company. Then, make sure to place your employer branding and company information in the places where top prospects may see it, despite not actively searching for a new job. Because many of your top employees also hang out at the same places, encouraging your employees to seek out new referrals at events and on social media is also effective.

5. Search for additional prospects using direct sourcing. Even if your targeted top prospects read about your employment brand or see your job postings, most of them will still not take the time to contact your organization. So if you want to find the very best, you must expand your applicant pool by identifying and contacting top prospects that have yet to apply—through direct sourcing. Direct sourcing relies on recruiters to reach out to and eventually contact the most qualified prospects. Some of the most effective direct sourcing approaches include leveraging employee referrals, conducting LinkedIn searches, rehiring former employees, and seeking out work samples or ideas online.

6. Contact and convince top prospects to apply. Effective employer branding messaging might be enough to convince top prospects to apply, but in most cases you will need additional methods. The most effective convincing approaches start with identifying the factors your top prospects will use to select or reject a new job, which will differ significantly from what an average worker expects. By compiling a story inventory, you can make it easier for recruiters, hiring managers, and employees to learn about and repeat compelling stories and illustrations about the company’s success. Employee referrals are often the most effective convincing approach—your employees are simply more authentic and believable than most recruiters and in addition, they actually know more about the job, the manager, and the team than any recruiter could.

To succeed in attracting top talent, hiring managers must follow the basic steps to a successful talent attraction process. But they must also avoid the common errors that all too often restrict both the quality and the volume of the prospects that they can attract.

Common Errors When Attracting Top Talent

Assuming that active approaches will also attract not-looking prospects. Active jobseekers will likely find your open jobs without any extraordinary effort on your part. Typical active sourcing approaches like job boards, newspaper ads, We’re Hiring signs, and career fairs will successfully attract and get them to apply. But sometimes the most valuable—and by far the hardest to recruit—prospects are those top performers who are currently employed. These prospects are often employed at one of your competitors. And because they are top performers and innovators, they are likely already treated well, so they may not even look at a position announcement. Some call them passives but a more accurate name would be not-looking prospects.

Not-looking prospects only make up the top 10 percent of the workforce, but, despite their small numbers, they are the most valuable ones to target. And if you want to be successful, you must design your approaches specifically for them. Traditional efforts will not work. Some of the best not-looking approaches don’t involve recruiters, including employee referrals, technical discussions at conferences, and online and social media posts that focus on learning and becoming a better professional. And it almost always takes building a nonrecruiting relationship first before you can ever mention an open job at your organization to them.

Using dull position descriptions. Even iconic recruiting functions like the one at Google have realized that dull job descriptions will drive away top prospects that you like but that are not interested in this particular job. Get someone in marketing to help you rewrite the job descriptions so that the exciting aspects of the job are featured prominently. Be aware that you may actually have to improve the job itself, in order to attract top prospects.

Not knowing the advantages you have to offer. To maximize your effectiveness in convincing top prospects to apply, compile a complete list of the positive things that your job and team possess. As a result, it’s important to survey your current and past employees and ask them to identify the most outstanding features. Since stories are the best way to convince, encourage your recruiters, managers, and employees to know and repeat compelling stories that can help sell your job.

Requiring an up-to-date resume to apply. Most not-looking prospects will be reluctant to update their resume, so requiring an up-to-date resume may dramatically reduce both the number and the quality of your applicants. Instead, consider accepting a LinkedIn profile for at least the initial application.

Not asking managers to call prospects. At many organizations, hiring managers avoid getting involved in the hiring process until the interviews begin. That reluctance can cost you because the most effective convincing approach is having the actual team manager directly call the top prospects to discuss the position.

Failing to fully use LinkedIn to find names. Many hiring managers who haven’t kept up with social media fail to grasp the value of LinkedIn for finding top talent. Top organizations like Google use it, and so should all good recruiters and hiring managers. LinkedIn is full of top performers who are not actively looking, and their profiles make it easy to assess their capabilities and identify anniversary dates and the organizations they have worked at previously.

Underleveraging employee referrals. As mentioned earlier in this chapter, employee referrals routinely produce the highest quality hires—those who perform the best on the job and stay the longest—of any talent attraction approach. Organizations with modern referral programs generate nearly half of their hires from employee referrals. Referrals excel at convincing because employees providing stories about the organization are the most effective salespeople.

Referral Approaches Are the Most Effective at Finding and Convincing

Here are eight of the best referral approaches:

Give me five proactive referrals. The give me five approach works when you ask your own top performers (usually during a break at their team meeting) for five referral names under specific target categories. This approach is effective because employees often draw a blank when asked the general question do you know anyone? Instead, if you prompt them with specific categories, you will get superior names. Try asking top performers at your organization to identify the top five people that they know in their field in these five categories:

■  The best performer you ever worked with?

■  The most innovative idea person?

■  The best technologist?

■  The best manager?

■  The best at working under pressure?

Because these identified individuals are already known by your employee, ask them to contact them and try to convince them to apply.

Reference referrals. On the anniversary date of new hires who turn out to be exceptional employees, contact their references again to thank them and ask if they know anyone else who is equally good. Because these individuals have given good references once, it is highly likely that the new names they provide will also be of high quality. If appropriate, consider hiring the references themselves.

Ask for names during the hiring and the onboarding processes. Directly challenge the industry knowledge of your best candidates by asking them (as part of the interview) to list the names of the outstanding individuals that they know. If you ask enough interviewees, you will get a pretty good list of the top names in any field. In addition, make it a standard practice to ask all top new hires during onboarding who else at their former firm would be a great candidate. Next, ask the new hire to help you recruit any desirable individuals they know.

Referral cards. Provide your top employees with referral cards that sell your firm. They can be similar to business cards or electronic cards. Make sure that the card both praises the work of the person and mentions that it appears that they would be a perfect fit for your company. Electronic referral cards are also available.

Take advantage of your employees’ social profiles for referrals. Having recruiters spend hours building profiles on social networks can be expensive. Instead, shift some of the responsibility to your employees because they likely already use one or more social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter) both on and off the job. Encourage your employees to include in their profiles compelling facts and stories about the organization. Next, encourage them to make group connections and convert the best into referrals.

Nonemployee referrals. Individuals who know and care about your firm (former employees and retirees, vendors, and customers) should be approached periodically for referrals. In many cases, rewards are not required. Some of best nonemployee referrals come from the mentors and mentees of your employees and managers who developed strong relationships. So take advantage of this resource by asking your employees, managers, and executives if they have a mentor or mentee at other organizations. Ask your employees to refer them and then consider using their mentors as permanent referral sources.

Professional association officer referrals. Because association officers select speakers and recognize industry leaders, they can be a prime referral source. Ask the officers of professional and industry associations to be referral sources and to help you identify any up and coming professionals.

Assigned referrals based on social network relationships. At larger organizations, when a top candidate has already been identified, company recruiters can use network connections identification software (similar to what you experience on LinkedIn when you are prompted with possible people to connect with) in order to find out which of your employees have the strongest social media relationship with the candidate. You can then assign the most strongly connected employee (along with some coaching) to use her connections to contact and to build a relationship with the target.

In addition to employee referrals, finding and leveraging people you already know is an easy and cheap tool to attract top talent.

Attraction Approaches Relate to People You Already Know

Sometimes the best way to find the names of top prospects involves revisiting people whom you have already evaluated and know. The best three approaches in this area include:

Boomerangs (rehiring previous employees). The best way to ensure a high-quality hire with a clear record of performance is to re-recruit performers who previously worked at your firm (boomerangs). Many of these individuals may regret their decision to leave but may be hesitant to reapply. A simple note as employees are leaving your organization or a phone call from an employee in their former department reassuring them that they would be welcomed back might be all it takes to re-land proven talent.

Revisit previous top candidates (silver medalists). Often, you can save resources by simply revisiting the star candidates who voluntarily dropped out of the hiring process or turned down an offer. Times change, and it’s not uncommon for candidates to regret their decisions, too. Also look at candidates from a year ago who were almost qualified and, now with another year of experience, may be fully qualified.

Hire and convert college interns. Hiring students right out of college can be a hit or miss proposition, but you improve your odds of making a great hire when you bring them in first as interns and use their internship to assess their capabilities and interests. Because you already know them and their work, your interns are likely to make high-quality permanent hires. You can find the best interns quickly by contacting student clubs or professional associations at your local university. Also ask your current top interns to help you recruit new ones to replace them as they move up.

Even after going through the steps in the talent attraction process and relying on employee referrals and former employees, you still need to convince top prospects to apply, some of whom may be reluctant. Here are some tactics for the next phase in recruiting—talent acquisition.

Tactics to Convince Reluctant Prospects to Apply

If you’re having difficulty convincing top prospects whom you have contacted already to apply, here are some effective approaches to consider.

Recruit on the right day. When recruiters contact top prospects who already have a good job, the prospects often respond with a resounding no. However, these same individuals may change their perspective after they experience a negative triggering event at their current organization. This negative event could be the departure of a friend or favorite boss, the slashing of their budget, or the rejection of their major project proposal. By keeping an eye out on social media, you may be able to identify the right moment to re-engage with the prospect. In the same light, when a competitor is undergoing stock price reductions, staff reductions, mergers, or other turmoil, it makes sense to increase your recruiting efforts and to target your competitor’s best people.

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