10 Practices Of Highly Successful Leaders Who Can Recruit Top Talent

Whether you lead a church, business, nonprofit or athletic organization, the ability to recruit top talent is vital to your success.  Smart leaders know talent matters and go to great lengths to acquire as many quality individuals as possible.
Today is National Signing Day.  It is when college football teams restock their rosters with top talent from high schools across the country.  Today is the day championships are won and lost.
Whether you can acquire top talent or not largely determines your level of success as well.  
Not everyone can recruit top talent.  When we look at the Ohio State Buckeyes (rated by Yahoo Sports as the nation’s top rated recruiting class) and the Alabama Crimson Tide (rate by Rivals.com as the top class), we learn 10 Practices Of Highly Successful Leaders Who Can Recruit Top Talent.  Regardless of what type of team or organization you lead, these lessons, if applied, will make you more successful.

1. Highly Successful Leaders Who Can Recruit Top Talent Have Built Relationships With Top Talent – Relationships are the track success runs on.  Successful recruiting at the college level involves building relationships with the players, their families, their high school coaches, their pastors and their mentors.  Defensive end Nick Bosa was really not an option to go anywhere but Ohio State because his big brother Joey had such a great experience there.
2. Highly Successful Leaders Who Can Recruit Top Talent Have Created A Culture Of Success – You do not build culture.  You hire culture.  Ohio State has been the dominant program in the Big 10 for over a decade.  Therefore, it makes sense for them to have the conference’s best class this year.
3. Highly Successful Leaders Who Can Recruit Top Talent Offer Them Opportunity – With an exodus of nine players leaving early for the NFL, Ohio State recruited a number of players who will play early and have an immediate impact.
4. Highly Successful Leaders Who Can Recruit Top Talent Position Them For Success – No one wants to fail.  Seven of the Buckeyes’s 25 recruits are already on campus and early-enrolled in classes.  This also affords them the opportunity to participate in this year’s spring practice.
5. Highly Successful Leaders Who Can Recruit Top Talent Created Systems For Acquiring Talent – Smart leaders implement systems over silver bullets.  Do you have a talent acquisition system?  Ohio State head coach Urban Meyer has a recruiting system which is carried out quietly but effectively.
6. Highly Successful Leaders Who Can Recruit Top Talent Take Care Of Home First – 10 of Ohio State’s recruits are from the state of Ohio.
7. Highly Successful Leaders Who Can Recruit Top Talent Prioritize Acquiring Top Talent Above All Else – The answer to every problem is a person.  And every organization gets better when it acquires better leaders.  Alabama signed five 5-Star players this year.  For more on Nick Saban’s recruiting techniques read 7 Practices Of Leaders Who Recruit Top Talent.
8. Highly Successful Leaders Who Can Recruit Top Talent Close Well – Acquiring talent is a sales process. Talent has options.  Therefore, you must convince them to join your organization.  Rivals.com National Recruiting Director Mike Farrell said, “They didn’t get everybody they wanted, which people think Alabama always does, but they closed very strong.”
9. Highly Successful Leaders Who Can Recruit Top Talent Have The Margin Needed To Acquire Top Talent – Do you have the financial margin in your budget to acquire top talent?  Do you have space on your team to assimilate top talent if they become available?  Andrew Bone of TideSports.com said, “They cleared some space at the end to ensure they were able to get those guys in the class and that’s what happened.”
10. Highly Successful Leaders Who Can Recruit Top Talent Are The Most Successful – Alabama has won seven of the last nine recruiting championships as graded by Rivals.  Coincidently, they have won four of the last seven national championships.  Farrell concludes, “People think being No. 1 (in recruiting) doesn’t matter. They should go back and look at Texas in 2002, LSU in 2003, USC, Florida, the Alabama dynasty. Recruiting team rankings equal national championships, bottom line.”

Look for Ohio State and Alabama to be fixtures college football’s playoff system for the foreseeable future.  This is what acquiring top talent does for you.

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