Cameron Herold explains why companies can't attract top talent: they ignore the people systems that make them magnetic. He uses a hunting metaphor about deploying "decoys"—compelling websites, leadership bios, awards, and strong culture—to pull A-players away from competitors. Most companies also fail to remove underperforming C-players fast enough.
Chapters
I was on an internet company's leadership team page one day and all the photos were amazing. One of them was this woman surrounded by shoes, all of her shoes, like, and she's like, hi, my name's Elaine. I love shoes. My shoes take me all over the world. I have shoes for tango. I have shoes for rock climbing. I have shoes for kayaking. And I'm reading through her bio, kind of like reading through like a Facebook or Tinder profile. I'm like, this is incredible. And then at the end it says, oh, by the way, I have my undergraduate degree from Stanford and I have my PhD from MIT, but you don't really care about that. If you want to know where my shoes are taking me next, here's my profile. You know what I did after I read Elaine's bio? I read Tom's, and then I read Bob's, and then I read Kevin's, and then I was like 16 profiles in going, fuck, I don't even need to know this stuff. But they sucked me into their business. The people side of your business is critical. And when I talk about people, I talk about the recruiting, interviewing, hiring, onboarding. It's the full lifecycle of people are the people systems you need to have inside of your company. Who's here has heard of the saying in the book Good to Great, get the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and everybody in the right seats. This is the bus. The reason their mantra was so important was you're either part of the scene or you're not. You either get it or you don't. You're either on the bus or off the bus. And they knew that if they had the wrong people on the bus, it would ruin the trip. Literally. That's where the mantra came from. But I have never found a company yet in all the companies I've worked with in 29 countries around the world where I've coached companies I've never found a single company that puts enough time and systems in place to get rid of the toxic underperformers fast enough. We talk about recruiting, we talk about onboarding, we talk about culture, but we don't talk about getting rid of the toxic underperforming C players inside of your organization. I learned a little bit about recruiting from one of my grandfathers. He owned a hunting resort up in Northern Ontario on the French River, and he had about 60 employees back in the '60s and '70s. So whenever we would go duck hunting together, the conversation somehow always turned to running businesses. It's all I ever knew growing up was my dad ran a company. Both grandfathers were entrepreneurs. My whole world was, was entrepreneurship. Well, one of the things I learned from duck hunting was you put a bunch of decoys out, these wooden or plastic ducks to attract ducks into your blind. What are the decoys from your company? What are you using to attract people into your business? Vision, wages, your brand. Purpose, people, culture. If the outside world doesn't know these things, they're not decoys. You need to put your decoys out into the market. So your website is a decoy. If your website looks like something the government built, you're not attracting anybody. It needs to be something that is more like Apple or more like Virgin that Richard Branson would have. You need to model the dot-coms, the internet-based companies. Your website needs to look and feel fresh and modern and clean. If you have a leadership team page and your leadership team photos have people in ties, you're pushing people away. You're not pulling them towards you. If the bios from your leadership teams are freaking boring, you're pushing people away. You're not attracting. Your leadership team bios need to read more like a Tinder profile than a business bio. I was on a government or on an internet company's leadership team page one day, and all the photos were amazing. One of them was this woman surrounded by shoes, all of her shoes, like 50 pairs of shoes, all different types of shoes. And it starts off and it's like she's like the vice president of engineering from a $100 million company, by the way. And she's like, hi, my name is Elaine. I love shoes. My shoes take me all over the world. I have shoes for tango. I have shoes for rock climbing. I have shoes for kayaking. And I'm reading through her bio, kind of like reading through like a Facebook or Tinder profile. I'm like, this is incredible. And then at the end it says, oh, by the way, I have my undergraduate degree from Stanford and I have my PhD from MIT, but you don't really care about that. If you want to know where my shoes are taking me next, here's my profile. You know what I did after I read Elaine's bio? I read Tom's, and then I read Bob's, and then I read Kevin's, and then I was like 16 profiles in going, fuck, I don't even need to know this stuff. But they sucked me into their business. If you haven't already signed up for my online training where I cover the 12 essential leadership skills for anyone who manages people, go check out investinyourleaders.com/ch. Close to 5,000 leaders are already going through my content. Who here knows the name of Tommy Mello or A1 Garage Doors? So I coach Tommy, I coach his COO Luke. I've been coaching them for a year. His COO Luke Martin is a member of our COO Alliance. They've got about a dozen of their managers going through my Invest in Your Leaders course. I was down at their head office in Scottsdale, Arizona, about 3 months ago. I walked in the front door and I paused. It felt just like 1-800-GOT-JUNK. It was branded. It was vibrating. Every time an employee walked past me, they're like, hey, have you been helped yet? Can I get you a water? Like, I'm talking everybody. It was culty by design. They taught that. They indoctrinated that. They lived that. Those are the decoys that you have to put out there to bring people into your company. If you're putting job ads up on LinkedIn, no A-players are ever on those sites looking for a job. A-players are working for one of your strongest competitors. A-players are working for other companies that are even outside of your industry, but doing the job you need them to do for you. A-players are already working for really good companies and you have to entice them in, which means your website has to look amazing. You've got to have press coverage about your business that shows you as the best company to work for. You've got to be winning awards in your city or state or province or country as a best place to work. You've gotta have like that kind of culty feel. You've gotta have a really good social media profile. These are recruiting tools as well as customer tools, but no great employee is gonna come to work for an average company.
