The FINANCIAL — Smart young people who grow up outside of Tbilisi often move there in pursuit of educational and professional opportunities.
They settle in the capital, and only return to their home town occasionally for family affairs, causing a brain drain from the regions of Georgia to the capital. This makes it considerably more difficult for companies that are based outside of Tbilisi to find qualified managerial-level staff. “Everyone who had a chance to leave left,” is something that I often hear. In this article, I’ll discuss what you can do to attract the best managers in Georgia. The answer is quite simple: make your company an awesome place to work, by providing opportunities for professional development, giving managers real responsibility, and challenging people.
The idea here is basic: if supply is high, companies don’t have to make much of an effort to attract good people to fill their managerial ranks. However, when the supply of talent is low, which is the case in Georgia’s regions, you need to do more to attract those few good managers.
There are three groups of people who you should be targeting in your recruiting efforts. First, returnees, either from abroad or from the capital, often come with valuable experience that locals don’t have. Second, there are superstars all over Georgia, and they are probably working at your competitors. Get them, but only if they fit your culture. Third, don’t overlook your own employees. If you invest enough time, money and love into them, they might just be your new managers. However, how can you make your company awesome enough so that these people will want to work for you?
First, provide opportunities for professional development. Georgians have a hunger to learn, but many companies, especially in the regions, don’t invest much time and money in developing their employees. Set a few hours a week apart specifically for training. Allow employees to study things that are not related to what they are currently doing, but that may be helpful as they advance in the company: let your sales managers study finance or English. At GeoCapital, we make sure everyone learns everything that we do in the company. Fuel their hunger for learning. It will take some effort in the beginning, but if you can create a company that has a culture of learning, this will pay off in the long term.
Second, give your managers real responsibility. Allowing people to make their own decisions is a vote of confidence, and will empower them and push them to new heights. People flourish when they are given their own projects to be responsible for. Sadly, many managers in Georgia never get the chance to make any decisions: their job is simply to do as they are told. This approach not only underutilizes the potential of these managers, but also lowers their job satisfaction. Especially for returnees from abroad, who are used to working in less hierarchical environments, this is very important.
Third, challenge your people! If your managers are comfortable, that means they are complacent, and not pushing the organization forward. Convey this message to people who you recruit: you want candidates who love new challenges. Make people do things that they have never done before, even during job interviews. Being constantly challenged can make the difference between a boring desk job, and one that makes you jump out of bed every morning.
Word travels quickly in the regions of Georgia, and if you make your company a good place to work for managerial level staff, people will know about it, and they will want to work for you. Provide plenty of opportunities for professional development, give your people the power to make decisions, and challenge them. It will make them better, and it will attract others to your company, and allow you to be awesome and have the best managers, even in the regions of Georgia, where talent is scarce.
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