How to Find Good Employees Before You Need Them

By Don Georgevich

Finding good employees

The best time to find a strong employee is before you are under pressure to hire one.

Business owners often say good employees are hard to find. Usually, what they mean is that good employees are hard to find during the few weeks when the business suddenly needs one.

Someone resigns. Growth creates more work than the team can handle. A manager is stretched too thin. The company posts a job and hopes the right person happens to be looking at the same moment.

That is not really a talent problem. It is a timing problem caused by starting from zero.

Stop treating every opening like a surprise

You may not know exactly when someone will leave or when growth will create another position. You can still predict which roles would be difficult or expensive to fill under pressure.

Look at the work the owner still controls, the people carrying too much responsibility, positions with a history of turnover, skills that exist in only one employee, and roles the company expects to add during the next year.

Those are the positions worth recruiting for before they are vacant.

The U.S. Office of Personnel Management connects recruiting with ongoing workforce planning and notes that strategic recruiting should begin before the immediate hiring phase. The scale is different in a small company, but the operating principle is useful: recruiting works better when it is tied to future business needs rather than activated only by a vacancy. See OPM’s Hiring Reform guidance.

Know what “good” means for the role

You cannot find a good employee until you define good performance. The best candidate is not always the person with the longest résumé, the most recognizable company names, or the easiest personality to like.

Begin with the results the role must produce. Ask what should improve because the person is there, what evidence would show progress, and which capabilities the person needs on the first day.

For an Operations Manager, success may mean creating clearer ownership, reducing recurring handoff failures, and giving the owner a reliable view of priorities and risks. For a salesperson, it may mean building qualified opportunities, moving deals with sound judgment, and maintaining a forecast the business can trust.

Once those outcomes are clear, the search becomes wider and more accurate. You can look for people who have produced comparable results even when their title, industry, or career path differs from what you expected.

Look beyond people who are applying today

Job boards reach people who are actively looking. Some of the strongest possible candidates may not be looking at all, or they may be quietly willing to consider the right opportunity.

Promising people may already be visible through customers, vendors, industry groups, professional communities, local schools, training programs, former candidates, former employees, introductions, and people doing related work in adjacent industries.

You do not need to recruit every person immediately. Pay attention to people whose work, judgment, or reputation stands out. Learn what they are good at and what kind of opportunity might interest them later.

Use several paths instead of one

No single recruiting source works equally well for every role. The right mix depends on the work, the level of experience, geography, urgency, compensation, and how difficult the capability is to find.

The Department of Labor notes that American Job Centers can help employers recruit, match job-seeker experience with requirements, analyze difficult-to-fill positions, and arrange recruiting events. Local workforce programs and training providers can be useful additions to a broader search, especially for roles where the company can develop capability. See the Department of Labor’s American Job Center guidance.

Build relationships without pretending you have an opening

It is reasonable to contact someone when no position is currently available as long as you are honest about it.

You might say that the company expects to need more operational leadership in the future, that the person’s background stood out, and that you would like to learn more about their work. That is different from implying a formal job exists when it does not.

The first conversation does not need to become an interview. Learn what the person enjoys, where they do their best work, what they might want next, and what would make an opportunity worth considering.

Then stay in touch occasionally. Share something useful. Ask for an opinion. Congratulate them when they do meaningful work. Let them know when the company’s direction changes in a way that may matter to them.

A relationship built over time is stronger than a cold message sent during a hiring emergency.

Give people a real reason to respond

“We have an exciting opportunity” is not a reason.

A strong candidate wants to know why the role exists, what they would have the chance to build or improve, what authority they would have, and why the opportunity may be better than remaining where they are.

Be specific about the problem. For example, explain that the business has grown beyond the owner’s ability to coordinate every handoff and needs someone who can create a practical operating rhythm. That makes the work visible and helps the wrong person rule themselves out.

Keep a simple candidate pipeline

A pipeline can begin as a spreadsheet. Record the person’s name, the kind of role they may fit, why they stood out, where you met them, when you last spoke, what might interest them, and the next reasonable contact.

Do not turn the list into a collection of forgotten names. Review it regularly. Remove stale or inaccurate information. Respect requests not to be contacted and avoid storing personal information that has no legitimate recruiting purpose.

The purpose of the pipeline is not to accumulate people. It is to preserve enough context to continue real relationships.

Treat every candidate well

People you do not hire may still become future candidates, customers, referral sources, or employees in another role.

Tell candidates what the process involves and when they should expect an answer. Do not disappear after several interviews. Do not exaggerate the position and reveal its limitations only after the person is invested.

When someone is not selected, close the conversation respectfully. A candidate who was treated well may answer the phone two years later. A candidate who was ignored probably will not.

Do not let referrals become the entire search

Referrals can be valuable, but they should supplement broader recruiting. The EEOC warns that heavy reliance on word-of-mouth recruiting can create discriminatory results when the same narrow networks repeatedly shape the applicant pool. See the EEOC’s recruitment guidance.

Ask for introductions, but also use public postings, direct outreach, workforce programs, schools, professional communities, and other sources suited to the role. Apply the same job-related criteria no matter where a candidate came from.

Measure whether you are finding the right people

Do not judge a source only by how many applications it produces. Track how many people meet the initial standard, move through interviews, receive offers, accept, and perform successfully after hire.

A source that produces twelve applicants and four strong candidates may be more valuable than a source that produces three hundred applicants and two strong candidates.

Also measure the work created for your team. Large volumes of weak applications consume time and can make good candidates harder to notice.

A practical place to begin

• List the three roles that would be hardest to fill quickly.
• Write the outcomes and capabilities that define a strong employee in each role.
• Identify at least three places where people with that capability may be found.
• Ask employees and trusted professional contacts for specific introductions.
• Add promising former candidates, employees, vendors, customers, and community contacts to a simple pipeline.
• Reach out honestly even when no immediate position exists.
• Record enough context to make future contact personal and relevant.
• Review the pipeline once each month.
• Track which sources produce qualified candidates rather than the most names.
• Keep relationships with good people even when the timing is not right.

Legal and fairness note: Recruiting methods, referrals, outreach, and hiring decisions should be nondiscriminatory and based on job-related criteria. Use multiple recruiting sources and apply the same standards consistently. This page is educational and is not legal advice.

Build the system behind the search

The complete process is explained in Candidate Pipeline: Build Relationships Before Roles Open. It shows how to decide who belongs in the pipeline, what to record, how often to stay in touch, and how to move people into an active search without starting over.

For the broader Phase Two approach, visit Attract Better Candidates and How to Build a Recruiting Strategy That Does Not Depend on Job Boards.

Continue with Passive Candidates and the Employee Referral Program. Both are part of the Attraction phase in the Scientific Hiring Method.