“Good help is hard to find.” — 433,900 Google matches for that phrase

The best applicants aren’t the only ones who must make excellent first impressions. The top professionals look to you and your company to make the same kind of powerful initial impact they do. The sooner you make that match come true, the better your chances of capturing great talent—before your competition beats you to it.

A new definition of “best” candidate
Too often we limit ourselves to cataloging credentials, experience, or traits. All three are useful; all three are too limited.

Credentials, including educational degrees, certifications, and licenses, are meant to underwrite quality. But they are conferred by a third party. In other words, while they are a good indication of potential, they are based on someone else’s view of how well the applicant performed in a workplace the conferring authority probably never sees.

Experience should be an excellent predictor of potential. Yet sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between a person with 15 years’ experience…and one with one year’s experience 15 times.

Traits are the least useful of all qualifications. Some say they lay out the minimum requirements. Your managers wouldn’t hire someone who is almost a team builder or is nearly results focused. Some trait-based descriptions are almost meaningless. Can anyone define “world class,” or “people person?”

Building compelling proof: the candidate’s mission
Let’s describe the best candidate in terms that help our mission. The best candidate knows she will be hired if she can build clear and compelling proof (in your mind and management’s mind) that she will make more money than it costs to hire her. In short, she can draw the straight line between the things her boss sees her doing on the job and your organization’s profits.

She knows which observable behaviors she must demonstrate every day to win and keep your team’s trust. And she offers a very powerful, sometimes overlooked, value. Because she is an expert in her field, her genuine passion produces even greater results over time. If the résumé is properly written, you’ll be able to weed out “pretenders”— those who got their outstanding results the same way the Enron team did.

Because this exceptional candidate can do all the things you’ve just read, she has choices. She wants a recruiter and an employer who thinks like she does, so you get the credit for finding great talent, your company gets a wonderful addition, and she enhances her career. And she has a special tool to cut through the clutter.

Many top professionals rely on the “First Law of Employment:” Everything they hear, everything they see, is encouraged or condoned by the leadership. They apply that law to everyone they deal with—from recruiters to hiring decision makers. I want to leverage that fact for you, starting with great announcements.

Start with great announcements
The hiring official has the biggest stake in this transaction. To get permission to hire the executive you’re searching for, he promised his boss the new person would yield a strong return on a rather large investment. He made that promise to the one who signs his annual review. That means he can make your job a lot easier…but only if you help him focus.

Start by making a connection between how the best applicants think and your hiring manager’s needs. Here’s a key question for the prospective boss: Which actions—things you can see this new hire doing on the job—will make our company the most money?

To get even greater clarity, consider this question. Assume the applicant has been on your team for six months and has exceeded your expectations. What would she have to do to rise to that level? No room for generalizations here. You need living, breathing descriptors of top notch performance.

Helping the hiring manager define value
Your goal is not to ask questions and dutifully record the answers. Rather, you want to help the hiring manager define value so clearly you can make his wants come alive in your announcements and interviews. As you probe, you may find other players who have an interest in who gets hired. That’s why you ask the hiring official which key internal and external customers the new hire must serve. Some exceptional companies even enroll their best customers in this process. The answers you get will pay off well, in your next announcement, in your screening interviews, and in the hiring recommendations you make.