If you can offer flexible hours at your company, you may be able to hire from one of the best pools of talent available today: well-educated women with professional experience who are reentering the workforce or reconfiguring their careers after having children. While more men are staying home with children, this talent pool is still overwhelmingl made up of women. In 2008, the United States had approximately 5.5 million stay-at-home parents, comprised of 5.3 million mothers and 140,000 fathers.^[8]

Our world is full of smart, accomplished women who want to have a balance in their lives between raising a family and being engaged in the workplace. People become extremely stressed when they try to pull off having careers, raising kids, and still having some semblance of a personal life. If you can provide job candidates the kind of flexibility that allows them to do interesting work and still handle their responsibilities at home, you will have a valuable offering that will appeal to some very sharp people. Companies all over the world use various strategies to tap into these underutilized employees. The key is to hone in on a specific slice of this huge talent pool, determine how to make contact, and then interview a constant stream of these people. Here are three successful examples.

I work with an incentive travel company in Houston that has had ongoing success hiring A-player women who have moved to the area for their husbands' careers in the energy industry. The president of the hiring company has made a concerted effort to cultivate contacts in the industry, specifically with the individuals who handle relocations for these large corporations. These people serve as resources for the families moving in and can offer information about which companies to contact for quality jobs with flexible hours. My client now has a reputation as a great source for this kind of employment. These women have strong resumes but don't want to work full time in the midst of a stressful and time-consuming relocation process. They are smart, effective, get a lot done working part-time hours, and are therefore a perfect fit for this company.

To fill its sales positions, Doorway Rug (mentioned in Chapter 2) hired A-players out of the restaurant industry, many of whom were working mothers. The demands of simultaneously raising children and working nights and weekends were very difficult. Doorway Rug targeted these women with its recruiting efforts, offered them a salary equivalent to their restaurant position, but provided flexible hours. The flexibility was worth more than a dollar or two more per hour to these women, and the company was able to hire some terrific people using this approach.

I work with a local law firm that has done a great job of building an A-player team with women who are reentering the workforce. This firm, made up of about 10 attorneys plus support people, has created a part-time, flexible work arrangement for some of its attorneys. The program has attracted several women who graduated from elite law schools, worked for big-time firms, and then took time off to have kids. They wanted to get back into law but knew that the hours they used to work at their old firms would not fit into their current lives. They are now very happy working for this small firm, which in turn has built a staff with credentials that rival those of vastly bigger operations.

The A-player women who work for these companies want the same things most people want: challenging work, fair pay, and reasonable hours. For many people, time is worth more than money. If you can create flexible hours and work arrangements in your company, you will be able to hire talent that you may have thought was unattainable. It's not easy for A-players to find great full-time roles, much less a company for which they can do meaningful work and have flexible or part-time hours. If you offer significant work, competitive pay, and flexibility, you have a very strong value proposition for an A-player. What are the specific slices of this fantastic talent pool that would provide the best potential employees for you? Identify whom you want to recruit, then get out there and promote your opportunities to the best people you know.

Where do you go to find these A-player women who want to reenter the workforce? Here are some ideas.

Have you ever worked in a restaurant? The dining room is clean and inviting. Depending on how upscale a restaurant is, it may be beautiful, serene, or funky. But it is always a stage on which a performance is played out during breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The kitchen, however, is another story. It is hot, crowded, loud, and profane. Miraculously, out of this maelstrom emerges beautifully prepared food that is presented with a flourish to diners who have no idea of the drama that unfolded to make their plate so appealing.

Between these two worlds are the waitstaff who must build immediate rapport with customers, know their products intimately, make good recommendations, and up-sell with expertly delivered phrases. While you probably don't operate a restaurant, the requirements of this job likely sound familiar. Every business has to make its product or service and deliver it flawlessly to clients. Bridging the gap between the kitchen and the dining room are the salespeople who create enthusiastic customers who want to come back again and again.

Steve Schultz is a successful sales manager in the copier and document imaging industry. He will tell you that people who have excelled as waiters, waitresses, or restaurant managers often do well for him in entry-level sales positions. Steve likes hiring A-play-ers from the restaurant industry because they:

When you look at it this way, the best waiters and waitresses could be a great fit for a lot of businesses.

If it sounds like many of these characteristics fit your A-player profile, then you'll want to figure out how to connect with them. Here are some specific steps you can take.

For years, life insurance companies and stock brokerage firms have had special programs set up specifically to recruit teachers. A senior executive in the brokerage industry told me that he loves to hire teachers because they are great communicators, know a lot of people, have strong interpersonal skills, and are vastly underpaid. His company enrolled teachers in special programs that allowed them to begin their financial services careers during the summers while teaching during the school year. Without fail, some got a taste of financial success and moved into a full-time financial service career.

Beyond the financial services industry, I know companies involved in everything from home remodeling to retail that have successfully turned teachers into A-player employees. The key is to create a program in which teachers work full time during the summers when they are not teaching and then have a scaled-down schedule during the school year. They get a feel for your business during this program, and you get a feel for their drive and abilities. Over the course of a couple of summers, you discover which individuals could be full-time A-players for your business.

We, of course, need A-player teachers. But not every sharp person who begins a career in the classroom will stay for the duration. Some of those who leave could be great for your team. If you think former teachers fit your A-player profile, establish a program that gets them on your farm team and working in your business.

Start asking around your community for contacts in the world of teaching. Many teachers are looking for additional ways to make money. If your program for them is strong, you should have no trouble coming up with contacts. Consider running a "Teachers' Night" where you introduce them to the opportunities at your business. If you are successful at tapping into this network, people will refer their friends, and you will begin filling your recruiting pipeline with educators who could turn into your next A-players.

Your next A-player may well be the guy who makes your latte every morning at Starbucks. Companies like Starbucks have very well-developed hiring and training systems. They offer relatively strong benefits, which helps them to attract good people. You, in turn, get to see their employees in action on every visit and observe how they handle the demands of serving multiple customers simultaneously. Over time, you can build relationships here that turn into great hires.

Realize that you are on a recruiting trip every time you visit any business establishment. Pay attention to the receptionist, the secretaries, the staff, the managers, and the executives; any one of them could be your next hire. When you spot people doing a great job, strike up conversations. Learn their names. Tell them how well they are doing—and leave it at that. On subsequent visits, carry on the conversation and continue to build rapport. You can say to them at some point—perhaps a few weeks down the road: "My company is growing, and we are hiring some more people. Do you know anyone who would be interested in a position doing X?" This is also a natural time to give them your business card. Your approach is soft, not pushy; friendly, not creepy.

You might not get much of a response the first time you take this approach. However, you have planted a seed. Over the course of the coming weeks and months, if you plant enough seeds with enough good people, something will grow.

Clients of mine who run a franchise frequented their neighborhood Starbucks and were impressed with a young man who worked behind the counter. They followed the steps just described and found out that they all had some common friends and interests. After that, when my clients visited the store, this Starbucks employee greeted them like old friends. Several months later, he interviewed with them for a job. He wanted to work for them and my clients wanted to hire him, but in a strange twist of events, he moved cities and subsequently went to work for a different franchise in the same chain. Today this man is a true A-player for this second franchise. He has strong leadership as well as sales skills. He is already playing a management role just a few months after taking the job. All because my clients paid attention to their barista.

An increasing number of companies in professional services and other fields know that they have to develop their own talent in order to stay competitive. Milhouse & Neal, just such a company, is a leading local CPA firm in St. Louis. This firm, like many others, has difficulty hiring experienced senior accountants, particularly when the economy is strong. It decided that part of the solution was to develop its own talent. (Recall the importance of incubating your own talent, discussed in Chapter 3). One step it took to recruit A-players was to build strong relationships with several of the local universities.

Shirley Ann Rizi oversees marketing for the firm and took on some of the recruiting responsibilities as well (another great example of leveraging your current marketing resources to find A-players). Shirley Ann decided to establish connections with colleges in the area that had strong accounting departments. She went beyond just introducing herself to the career placement offices. She cultivated relationships directly with key professors in these accounting programs. She let them know that the A-Player Profile at Milhouse & Neal calls for strong leadership qualities as well as strong accounting skills, and she requested their help in referring their best students. The professors believed in Shirley Ann and understood what she was looking for in a new hire. As a result, they started referring some of their top student leaders to her firm.

Keep in mind that if your company offers irregular hours (evenings or weekends), there are dependable students who may be interested in working for you. Whether they are undergraduates or graduate students, there are young people out there who are looking for positions with hours that fit their school schedules. I know several businesses that successfully employ students for several years while they finish their degrees. Are there specific university programs that fit well with your business? If so, introduce your company to the directors of the program and create associations at the school. Jobs you typically find difficult to fill may be perfect for this group.

One great way to expand your farm team and develop connections with A-players is to create an internship program. Michael Vaughan is vice president of sales for TicketLeap, a start-up company that allows event organizers to sell tickets online. Mike and others at the company have strong connections with the Wharton Business School and other schools within the University of Pennsylvania. They used these connections to develop an internship program through which they hire a significant percentage of their full-time employees. When the company had only 22 employees, 5 or 6 of them were college interns, and another 3 or 4 of the full-timers had started out as interns.

Here are Mike's pointers on tapping into universities using internships to find and hire A-players:

Internships fit into a farm team recruiting strategy because you are essentially trying people out before you hire them. It won't take more than a month or two for you to figure out who are the best-performing interns. Even if you keep a talented intern for only one summer, your company is typically better off for having hired an A-player. Some students can continue to work as interns during the school year, while others will become full-time employees after graduation. Furthermore, if your internship program is strong, this year's interns will spread the word to younger students that your program is worthwhile. This helps you to fill next year's program with potential A-players.

Gazelles Inc. (www.gazelles.com) offers leadership development and executive coaching to fast-growth businesses. Chief executive Verne Harnish recently hired an especially intelligent high school student as a summer intern with a specific focus on improving the company's social media presence. This teenager already had 20,000 people following him personally on Twitter, so why not have him improve Gazelles' profile there, on Facebook, and other online social media outlets? As Verne says, "I rescued him from Smoothie King, which is where he was going to work in order to earn enough money to get a high-end laptop to drive his own business venture." As compensation for his internship with Gazelles, the intern got the laptop he wanted along with a much more valuable summer job experience than working at Smoothie King. Verne and Gazelles got the improved social media presence for which they were looking. Furthermore, Gazelles now has one more A-player on its farm team. Here are some additional lessons that can be gleaned from Verne's approach:

IBM, Ernst & Young, KPMG, Accenture—name any large company, and chances are that it has a well-developed alumni network. These firms know that only a small percentage of their employees stay for their whole careers. The majority of their employees ultimately leave, and it is important to these companies to maintain strong relationships with them. After all, the alumni often turn into clients.

If you or your employees used to work for such companies, an immediate action item for you is to get more involved with these alumni networks. Most of these organizations have an online presence for their alumni where you can register and search for others. Retained search professionals will tell you that this is one of their favorite hunting grounds for building relationships with high-quality people. You will find that leveraging past relationships— particularly those built in your school and early career years—will pay significant dividends in A-player contacts and referrals.

Often you will hear executives say that they don't hire entrepreneurs as employees because as soon as they get back on their feet, they will leave to start their next venture. However, some former entrepreneurs love being free of the burdens and responsibilities of small business ownership.

Vita Burdi of DJ's Home Improvements, a kitchen and bath remodeler in Franklin Square, New York, finds that people who have run their own carpentry businesses are terrific for overseeing her carpentry crews. They are seasoned professionals who managed companies on their own for 10 years or more but are tired of the headaches of owning a business and are ready to have someone else worry about making payroll. These individuals know what it means to be committed to customer service. They understand the people side and the carpentry side of the business, plus they make sure their crews do great work and get things done on time.

Consider the type of former small-business owners who could be a great fit for your team. If you are a kitchen and bath company like DJ's and you want to hire the former owners of carpentry firms, your recruiting takes place every day that you conduct your business. Develop relationships with a wide range of carpenters. Find the people who do the best job and recruit the A-players. If you own an advertising firm, you may want to hire a full-time account manager from among the freelancers with whom you work. This is another situation where you can hire people on a project basis, put them on your farm team, and actively recruit the A-players. This same approach works for turning consultants, CPAs, attorneys, and other professional service providers into A-player employees. Every project they complete is part of the interview process.

You need to tap into only one of these talent pools to make a big difference for your company. Experiment with different industries and backgrounds to find a group of people who make sense for your farm team. Once you find the right one, go deep: Develop as many relationships as you can. If you tap into a particular set of people—all of whom have the basic skills and experiences that you want—and then you interview a lot of these people, you will find some A-players. The key is to find as many people as possible who fit your A-player profile, then use your interviewing process to separate the wheat from the chaff.