I was listening to David Baker and Blair Enns talking on the 2Bobs podcast about the “common traits of success” that they see in firms that they’ve worked with. 

These are guys who have worked with thousands of creative firms between them, and they are boiling it down to the few indicators that tell them that this firm is going to be a success. 

They talked about several indicators that you’d expect, financial, vision, positioning, but one stuck out to me. 

When they look at a firm and ask themselves, “Is this firm going to be successful,” one of their criteria is, ”Would I want to come to work at this firm?”

Successful companies attract great talent. 

Are they successful because of the talent that they attract, or do they attract great talent because of their success? I’m not sure, but I do know that the more attractive your firm is when great talent comes looking, the more likely you are to land that talent. 

There’s one guy that I know who has spent more time thinking, talking, and writing about this phenomenon than anyone else I know, and that’s James Ellis. 

Your employer brand is a strategic business asset, one that attracts more of the right kind of talent, shorten conversion times, increases offer acceptance rates, increases talent retention, and becomes the shared reason why people love to work for you. ~ James Ellis

There is currently more talent on the market than we have seen in over a decade. If you are looking to grow your business, now is the time to add the best people you can get to your team. But to do that, you need to be an employer that folks want to come work for. 

If that’s something you want to know more about, you are in luck. James is publishing a new book, Talent Chooses You, in which he’s going to lay bare his best secrets for building the kind of business that top talent wants to come work for. 

If you want to increase the likelihood that your firm becomes successful if you want to attract the kind of talent that makes your job easy, grab a copy of James’ book.