The talent myth

Most companies nowadays are hiring aggressively all the time. Everywhere they post about a job position they want to fill and make claims of all the new perks and benefits they offer to attract and hire more people.

We all go with the flow and get on the same bandwagon of "competing" for people, or talent, as we call it.

It seems we are all understaffed all the time. But is that so?

I think we are sending the wrong message to the team we already have, telling them they are not enough and can't do the work because we need more people.

I'm sick of it. Sure enough, companies need a healthy income of people and talent, and I feel most companies are abusing it, getting overstaffed, and not making any progress.

We forgot how to optimize for output with the people we already have, and now we fall back to "we need to hire more people."

It's like thinking I'll be happy once the world is at peace, meaning you'll never be.

I started going in the opposite direction and hiring less on purpose. I decided to hire as few new people as possible. So instead, I'll focus on how to grow our current team and pay them more.

I recently read something from Malcolm Gladwell in one of his books: "The talent myth assumes that people make organizations smart. More often than not, it's the other way around".

Bringing new people will not solve your business problems. You have to solve them yourself. There is no magic employee who comes and fixes everything for you. You will pay a lot until you realize that is not the real solution. You are bringing additional problems, overhead, overstaffing, meetings, training, etc.

Don't go crazy hiring. Take your time to work with your current team first, build processes and internal tools first, and then you can decide if you need external help or not.

You will thank me later.