SIMON MORRISON had never considered working in new media. But unbeknown to the highflying Rhodes scholar, he was the perfect match for Google. Despite getting 3,000 job applications every day, the company makes a lot of effort to track down promising individuals who fit its corporate culture. In the growing war for talent, it is essential to focus on finding recruits who share a business’s vision.

Morrison, in the second year of a master’s degree in African studies at Oxford University and toying with the idea of becoming an academic, was drawn by curiosity to a party that Google hosted at Oxford for students.

The company’s presentation was engaging, so he submitted a speculative CV and was then invited to London to discuss a possible position in public relations. During that day, Morrison and Google clicked.

“They sold it to me,” said the 26-year-old graduate. “I was impressed by the vigour and sharpness of the people I met, but the biggest draw was Google’s culture. It was unlike any corporate environment I had encountered before, almost an anticorporate corporation, laid back but intense.”

Liane Hornsey, the human-resources director at Google, said its recruitment procedure had been shaped to focus on cultural fit, which it ranks alongside three other attributes – cognitive ability, leadership ability and role-related knowledge.

“We want people who can thrive in our culture, who can play as a team, take other people seriously, take work seriously but also take their work-life balance seriously,” she said.

The process is based on extensive interviews that involve assessment by junior colleagues as well as senior ones who would have to work with the individual. Even executive posts are filled in this manner.

“If anybody doesn’t feel comfortable with the candidate, we don’t go forward,” said Hornsey.

Competition for the best talent is intense and the price of getting it wrong high. In a survey of 412 executives conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit for Development Dimensions International, 55% of respondents said their company’s performance was likely or very likely to suffer because of insufficient leadership talent.

Price Waterhouse Coopers’ annual survey of chief executives put attracting and recruiting talent top of the business agenda and showed that many felt a lack of success in this quest was delaying major projects.

Michael Rendell, partner and global head of PWC’s human-resource service, which helps businesses to recruit, said: “The demand for high-quality people globally has become more intense than ever.”

Some industries, such as financial services, engineering and, more recently, construction and commodities extraction, were particularly competitive. In such areas, Rendell said recruiters had to be creative to attract the best people.

This was not just a matter of the right money. Rendell said the best recruits could be attracted to the opportunity to engage in a variety of work in different countries, to a clear career progression, with an idea of when they might expect to be promoted, and to a company with good corporate social-responsibility credentials.

For top executives recruited by BT Global, the prospect of tackling challenging projects was often a key attraction, said Caroline Weeks, head of recruitment for the IT services business.

She said the search for the talent started at home. “Ideally, you want to promote people within,” she said.

If that approach proves unsuccessful, Weeks turns to specialist search companies. They use their networks of contacts to draw up a list of perhaps 50 potential candidates. This is then cut to a short list of perhaps five known to be interested in a move.

At the other end of the scale, HSBC is courting university students. Charlotte Fordham, graduate recruitment and development manager, said that by having a campus presence at 11 key universities – through, for example, social-responsibility initiatives, skills sessions and money-management podcasts – the bank aimed to forge links with talent early on.

“It’s getting harder to get hold of the best students so we try to build strong relationships with top-tier universities,” she said.

The recruitment of Sophie Biagioli epitomises this approach. She was studying for a master’s degree in international business and Italian at Edinburgh University and Milan’s Universita Bocconi, when she learnt about HSBC’s intern scheme.

This allowed her to gain work experience and held out the possibility of the international career that she wanted. She excelled in her role and was offered employment on graduation.

“While my housemates were running around looking for a job during their final year, I had an offer in hand and could focus on my degree,” said Biagioli. She graduated with a first.

In September 2006, Biagioli joined HSBC’s executive training programme, earning £29,000 including bonuses and completing a six-month placement in Istanbul as part of the chief executive’s team for strategic products. Aged 23, she is now about to move to America as a credit analyst on HSBC’s international management programme, with the expectation that she will head one of the bank’s businesses or trouble-shoot a business problem abroad.

Paul Sparrow, director of the centre of performance-led human resources at Lancaster University, said: “Organisations are fighting for a handful of highly talented people, which gives them a remarkable amount of power in today’s labour market.”

This means that a host of different strategies are required to recruit the right individuals, from playing a role in shaping education and identifying top graduates early to negotiating individual deals for more senior posts.

“You need to ask why would they want to work for you,” said Sparrow.

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