Hire to Win in Cannabis
One of my recent posts on the cannabis Brain Drain elicited many good comments and one poignant question:
How does a company identify, recruit and retain 'best in class' leadership?
All businesses rise and fall on the strength of its leadership. This begins with talent acquisition. I won’t belabour the obvious; those in cannabis firms see the missteps, recognize the bias and know the gaps.
Getting the best talent is part science and part art. The 'science' is well understood, though not necessarily well executed.
Elements of the 'science' include properly defining the role; articulating an employer value proposition; running a systematic & objective evaluation process and; attracting worthy applicants.
The 'art' is where the talent acquisition process often breaks down - or uncovers hidden gems.
The evaluative 'art' looks to identify 2 organizational prerequisites: 1) culture fit and; 2) the presence of critical soft skills and competencies around professionalism, management, problem solving, and communications.
Companies can drill deep using unstructured and reality-based techniques such as role plays and business case analysis. These are rare in cannabis but are quite common in other dynamic industries such as tech, consulting and finance.
Success also hinges on who is doing the recruiting and how they operate. One leading cannabis recruiter we can learn from is Bryan Passman of Hunter + Esquire.
Three examples of his 'super power' stand out to me:
1) A ‘Big Tent’ philosophy around talent
The firm has a holistic evaluation process that begins with bringing in an over-abundance of quality applicants, from a variety of sources. Their appraisal goes beyond the CV. During the initial interview, the candidate is assessed equally on their off-paper qualifications as well as their hard/technical qualifications. Importantly, H+E will never put forth an applicant to the client when the person's soft skills or ethics are called into question.
2) A rigorous but respectful evaluation process
H+E’s process features lots of conversational interviews utilizing similar questions. Best in class talent appreciates this as it helps ensure a better fit. Lesser talent often gets frustrated with this approach - and inevitably gets filtered out. Near-term candidate pain often leads to long-term retention gain. H+E also addresses early on sensitive but vital questions around compensation, timing, and interest level.
3) Finding the diamonds in the rough
Their assessment is oriented towards their client’s values plus what they know is de rigueur for strong, servant-based leadership in the cannabis sector. H + E routinely interview and filter for important soft skills & traits such as courage, humility, adaptability, empathy, courtesy, and communications.
#recruiting #leadership #talentacquisition #HR