Sorting a list by a set ranking

I am working on Excel 2010. I have a list of employees and their years of service. I want excel to sort employees by this ranked list.
So my example:
A B
1 Alice
2 Jane
3.5 Joe
4 Bob
5 Nick
12 Nancy

I want to be able to put in a separate part of the sheet those names in a random order and have excel sort them into the ranking I listed above. I did this using the "Custom List" inside Sort but my list of employees is too long.
So, as a fix I tried then combining the ranking with the name in one cell so "12 Nancy" or "3.5 Bob" but when I asked excel to sort it it sorts it:

1 Alice
12 Nancy
2 Jane
3.5 Joe
4 Bob
5 Nick

It apparently doesnt recognize the number as distinct from the name.
Any ideas??? I would prefer to not combine the names and numbers for the sake of appearance but I will do whatever works.