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In this instant New York Times Bestseller, Geoff Smart and Randy Street provide a simple, practical, and effective solution to what The Economist calls “the single biggest problem in business today”: unsuccessful hiring. The average hiring mistake costs a company $1.5 million or more a year and countless wasted hours. This statistic becomes even more startling when you consider that the typical hiring success rate of managers is only 50 percent. The silver lining is that “who” problems are easily preventable. Based on more than 1,300 hours of interviews with more than 20 billionaires and 300 CEOs, Who presents Smart and Street’s A Method for Hiring. Refined through the largest research study of its kind ever undertaken, the A Method stresses fundamental elements that anyone can implement–and it has a 90 percent success rate.Whether you’re a member of a board of directors looking for a new CEO, the owner of a small business searching for the right people to make your company grow, or a parent in need of a new babysitter, it’s all about Who. Inside you’ll learn how to• avoid common “voodoo hiring” methods• define the outcomes you seek• generate a flow of A Players to your team–by implementing the #1 tactic used by successful businesspeople• ask the right interview questions to dramatically improve your ability to quickly distinguish an A Player from a B or C candidate• attract the person you want to hire, by emphasizing the points the candidate cares about mostIn business, you are who you hire. In Who, Geoff Smart and Randy Street offer simple, easy-to-follow steps that will put the right people in place for optimal success.
Hardcover: 208 pages
Publisher: Ballantine Books; 1 edition (September 30, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0345504194
ISBN-13: 978-0345504197
Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 0.8 x 9.5 inches
Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (161 customer reviews)
Best Sellers Rank: #7,022 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #9 in Books > Business & Money > Job Hunting & Careers > Interviewing #20 in Books > Business & Money > Human Resources > Human Resources & Personnel Management #60 in Books > Business & Money > Job Hunting & Careers > Guides
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.
Hiring is a black art, even big data led initiatives going back to find data points to find what the "best" employee looks like - they actually found a negative correlation between good interviewees and actual job performance.The book is further flawed by assuming the bucket list qualifications that HR cooks up is what's needed in the company and is unassailable in its correctness. When was HR great? Anyone? If it’s so important why are there never any CEOs in for profit companies with HR backgrounds if people matter so much?Cold recruiting:The book also assumes that candidates contacted that say no, are really a negotiation starting point. And that you would be able to grill the hell out of that person if they agree for a quick coffee.The problem is that innovation, out of the box thinking and real outperformance is always done by outliers by outsiders that don’t play by the rules. This is exactly what a “A” player is, totally different from B’s and C’s because they do things very differently and have a skill set that can vary from feeble to outstanding. This book doesn’t address any of these important issues.When did you have a bad boss?(studies show the majority of management is bad, and bad middle mgt. is mainly responsible for people quitting, not the overall company)SO the book assumes that the employer is king, is right all the time, ignores that companies go bankrupt, lose money, produce bad products, etc.So what you get is devious candidates that are great story tellers, never slighting the boss, or the company or telling what it is really like. Basically you are going to hire great politicians with this book.In other words, Group think is what the book is promoting.
