• by Dave Morgan , Featured Contributor, Yesterday

I am an entrepreneur -- that's what I do. Companies I start are only as good as the people I recruit to drive them. I have had the privilege of recruiting and working with thousands of incredibly talented colleagues over the past 30 years.

I always tell employees I want to build companies that are not just great places to work, but great places to have worked. As an employer, you need to care as much about building great careers for your hires as building great companies with great hires.

I write this today from Ukraine, a country defined at the moment by a horrific war. In this amazing, resilient, optimistic country, I now employ more than 60 employees across two different companies, all hired over the past 18 months. These folks are, without question, among the most talented people that I have ever worked with in my thousands of hires.

How did we find such great people so fast? Here’s how we did it --  with no headhunters required:

Show up. You can’t build teams in places where you aren’t. This is my twelfth trip to Ukraine in just over two years. You can’t recruit teams if you don’t go where they are, and if you don’t show a willingness to live the projects you want them to handle. Simple.

Lock in on talent. Focus on quality, not cost-effectiveness. Identify the best schools, best talent producers, best talent cohorts. Surround those talent sources. Partner with those talent sources. Own that as a company -- don’t delegate or outsource.

Sell the vision. Great talent works first for problems that they get to solve, then for the people that they get to work with -- and, finally, for being paid market compensation. Sell the problem and your vision, not the compensation. It’s the only way to get the right people.

Share the journey. You can’t hire great talent to do a job that you won’t do. It’s more than just showing up; it’s doing it day in and day out. You have to walk the talk that you sold your team on. That means walking in their shoes too, and living their pain as well as their glory.

I know this isn’t everyone’s path. But it is mine -- and it has worked well.

What do you think?