A star employee. Hard to find, right? Welcome to the global village full of potential talent and future Elon Musks. Here are some basic steps one can take to find star talent from all around the world.

How to find a star employee

Step 1: Believe in what you do

Start by defining the skills you need for the job. If you don’t know the details then copy! Search competitors and the websites of major firms to get the English version of skills competencies for the position. I use www.builtwith.com to understand the weakness of my service compared to a brilliant competitor. Then I set a direction.

Define depth and breadth of knowledge. Do you need a generalist who knows a lot, or a specialist in the field (breadth)? Do you need someone that’s just starting or someone so experienced they are able to invent new ways of doing their job (depth)?

Use those two parameters to figure out what you actually need. I prefer young people to grow under daily coaching and encouragement. This can lead to heavy maintenance and lots of managerial work. If the motivation is there, older people can produce more in less time, but usually they have their own way of working.

Step 2: Know your management style

Situational leadership is rather common and starts with the basic notion that all are junior when given a task, or a new role in a company. Understand when to apply a supportive or directive style to bring them on board. Check the willingness of the person to learn and adapt to various circumstances. Greeks tend to be directive all the time and that could go down the road as tyrannical, so learn as well to adapt.

Step 3: Go hunting for the star employee

Now you are aware of the skills you need for the job, and you know your managerial style. It’s time to hunt. Don’t worry, no tranquilizer guns are necessary.

If you’re looking for technical skills then search open source communities. Hire the guy who reverse engineered something, or made a good copy of a popular software. Such developers are demonstrating their artistic and logical skills to the world. They are searching for self-expression, and make no bones about it, they are artists in making.

Check out the forums. Go to the relevant Reddit discussions, pick up the channels that are relevant, and get into the discussion. You may not get the superstar but a wannabe observer. Even this guy or girl is good if they can learn and adapt fast.

Shout about your product or service

Simply create a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) about your product or service and see how much talent you can attract or show interest. A 200 Euro online ad budget there could bring you better results than a headhunter. This strategy is used all the time (Google partnership with Coursera on AI yields a team of 8 with the most brilliant minds in AI) and is successful. Eliademy.com can help you with that and would be glad to see more knowledge shared and the platform used for such purposes here in Europe.

IESEC and other international student programs can provide good interns for business or tech. Be sure to manage those ambitious youngsters with care, however. You might just create a monster at the end so watch out where you invest your time. Erasmus Plus and other EU programs offer interns – lots of them. Use this aggressively to create multicultural teams. Accept the fact that without a multicultural team you are bound to local markets only because you are lacking a global perspective.

Embrace remote workers

You don’t want everyone to move to Greece, so you can have a bit of that sweet cyber love that everybody talks about. Let the person stay where they are and work from the farthest place on earth away from you. Good developers know that Thailand or India has a lower cost of living and prefer to stay there. Trust him or her and they will trust you too.

Take risks

Don’t be afraid to take a risk that is a good idea for HR to confirm with an aptitude test or ocean model. So you know precisely what about to manage. The Myers model is good as well, and you can find online tests to check your personality and the candidate if you lack the funds for special HR aptitude tests.

Oh yes, and don’t be afraid to end a relationship if at the end of the three months probation period things are not working out. That’s a good rule to follow in your personal and life relationships, too by the way.

Don’t discriminate!

Use a cultural tool to understand what environment your future star employee is coming from. Don’t discriminate on culture! However, some cultures match better than others. Russian is a perfect match to Greek, and thousands of brilliant but hard to manage, geniuses are available. Avoid Moscow and St Petersburg as those are on high rates (in terms of remuneration). All other cities are below the Greek level in salaries. Eastern Europe is OK but the Greek finds his match on Nordic or Germans. Hire a German to avoid monoculture.

Research in the USA shows the dangers of monoculture on agriculture. Same for startups or business in general. Do or die because all kind of diseases spread faster within the same culture. On the other hand, multiculturalism is a bit more of a balancing act but very resilient in long term. Only in multiculturalism, you find out of box thinking and superb creativity.

Bottom line…

To conclude, don’t wait for the star employees to come to you just because they need a salary. Go after them and make them feel exactly what they are: special.

About the author: Sotiris Makryiannis has 25 years experience in Telco and Internet services. He’s hired over 100 developers from around the globe as R&D site manager of Helsinki for Nokia. Currently, founder of Eliademy.com, his mission is to make education accessible and affordable. A father of two, and always an explorer, his motto is “learn fast and adapt”.

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Sotiris Makryiannis