Who: The A Method for Hiring

Crystal

Ravenclaw Boys Dormitory

Highly Recommended

One of the covers was a little damage, but rather than that the books were EXCELLENT!

Actionable recruiting guide

Geoff Smart and Randy Street offer a clear, sensible strategy for finding, selecting and recruiting the best candidates for jobs you are trying to fill. Their process, called the "A Method for Hiring," begins with a step many managers neglect: preparing a focused, specific description of the results you will expect from the person who gets the job. The authors describe the four steps of their hiring method in just the right amount of detail, neither bogging the reader down in minutiae nor leaving important matters to the imagination. They use real-life anecdotes to connect their advice to actual business problems and issues. Many books about human resources tend to be long on vague generalizations and short on actionable, how-to information. getAbstract thinks this book is a standout and recommends its straightforward ideas to anyone who is responsible for hiring.

Superlative business book!

"Who" is an incredibly valuable book. It also is as much of a page-turner as any business book I've ever read.

The authors take on perhaps the #1 challenge facing anyone in a leadership position: how do you find good people to successfully enact your institutional mission and vision? Based on their own consulting experience and exhaustive research among a virtual "who's who" of CEOs and managers, Mr. Smart and Mr. Street take the reader step-by-step through the how-to's and, perhaps even more importantly, the how-not-to's of effective recruiting and hiring.

This book is engaging, compelling, and even entertaining. From their critique of what they call "voodoo hiring methods," to their very clear and actionable four-step process for recruiting (scorecard, source, select, and sell), anyone who employs people will find tremendous value.

While reading "Who," I was reminded of a t.v. show in which a masked magician shares the secrets behind seemingly impossible tricks. The mask is necessary because of the presumed hostility that other magicians will feel towards someone breaching their code of silence. I hope that Mr. Smart and Mr. Street don't need to resort to wearing masks to protect themselves from aggrieved H.R. consultants, but their willingness to reveal the secrets behind their clearly successful methods will be much appreciated by anyone who makes the very wise investment in buying and reading this book.

Solve your hiring problems

A company is only as strong as the human capital that keeps it humming. Unemployment is on its way up, leading to greater scrutiny and a greater number of applicants to screen for every open position. The authors of Who present the challenge of hiring right as an obstacle that can be overcome. They conducted a thousand plus hours of interviews with three hundred CEOs and 20 billionaires to determine some best strategies for getting the right people on the bus.

The book's style is applicable if you're working in a non-profit, traditional US corporation or even a small business. Specifically the authors aim to help you:

* give up the traditional interview
* set clear objectives for your hiring process
* keep a positive flow of quality talent
* develop good interview questions
* position your company as a place good people want to work.

I work in human resources and find Who to be a helpful resource for educating managers on how to hire effectively.

Another book I recommend strongly for engaging your workforce and helping them to make the most of what they have is The Emotional Intelligence Quick Book it's an outstanding book and a perfect follow-on to Who for those you choose to hire.

WHO Trumps WHAT

Intriguingly insightful, deceptively simple, intuitively appealing. The authors use research with CEOs to support a strong, tight model that works. Definitely the smart way to select for talent. Richard M. Vosburgh, Ph.D. Founding Partner, RMV Solutions

Incredible Hiring Book!

I just finished reading a pre-release copy of the book Who by Geoff Smart and Randy Street. Wow, it¿s good. Really good. Geoff and his father Brad Smart are well known as the team that popularized Topgrading, a thorough interview process that takes the success rate for new hires from the average of about 50% to just over 90%. I don¿t know of a business owner alive who wouldn¿t love to increase the effectiveness of the interview and hire more effectively. Smart and Street are experts in their field ¿ they are paid huge sums of money to do this for some of the biggest and best companies in the world. Their research estimates that the average hiring mistake costs employers 15 times the salary of the incorrect hire. The number sounds absurdly high, but when you include salary, lost productivity and opportunity costs, it¿s plausible. Frightening. Who is a fast and simple read, but is heavy on content. It begins with a discussion of what they call voodoo hiring, or the process most business owners use during the interview process, and it was painful for me. I¿m guilty of voodoo hiring and I¿m guessing most of you are, too. Much of my process is guessing and gut feel, and is done over too short of a period of time. It¿s not hard to see the need for a change. Next comes a simple explanation of why hiring ¿A¿ players is so important. They define an ¿A¿ player as the right superstar for the job, a talented person who fits in well with your company culture. B and C hires cost you money A¿s make you rich. The meat of the book is about the four keys to what they call the A Method : Scorecard, Source, Select and Sell. I can¿t do justice to the brilliance of the system in this short review, but here are the basics. The scorecard is your blueprint for the job ¿ not a description, but the criteria you will be using to judge the person who is ultimately hired. Source is how you find your candidates, primarily referrals and recruiting. Select goes over the four interviews that need to be conducted ¿ screening, Topgrading, focused and reference. Sell is important and often overlooked, selling your top candidate on taking the job. With great people in demand, you need to fight for your best people. Many of us have read Topgrading ¿ it¿s a long read but describes the theory well. Even so, countless managers still have trouble implementing the system. Who bridges that gap and helps us see the whole process ¿ then implement it well. This book just became required reading at Greenleaf Book Group, and the process is our new hiring process. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to improve hiring practices and remove a huge piece of the risk. Clint Greenleaf CEO, Greenleaf Book Group

No text was provided for this review.

No text was provided for this review.

No text was provided for this review.

No text was provided for this review.

No text was provided for this review.

No text was provided for this review.