according to amazon, there are more than 7000 books on recruiting. Given that at the rate of one book a day, it would take nearly 20 years to read them all, I thought it would be helpful to narrow the list down to the essential must-read items.
here they are:
You are reading: Best books on recruitment
1. ball of money
Subtitle: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
author: michael lewis
Why it’s a must read: Yes, this book is about recruiting baseball players, but it contains the key to hiring effective teams without paying money for superstars. It’s also an easy and fun read, even if you’re not much into baseball.
best quote: “over the past three years, the oakland athletics had paid about half a million dollars a win. the only other team in six figures was the minnesota twins, at $675,000 a win. the richest franchises more spendthrifts: the baltimore orioles, for example, or the texas rangers, paid nearly $3 million for each win, or more than six times what oakland paid. oakland seemed to be playing a different game than everyone else.”
2. beat ’em up by hiring the best
Subtitle: Proven Tactics for Successful Employee Selection
author: martín yate
Why it’s a must read: This book is geared toward hiring managers rather than recruiters. however, since recruiters often need to coach hiring managers on how to make good decisions, this serves as a “train the trainer” manual.
best quote: “to manage productively, you must first hire effectively. if you make bad hires, chances are those hires are not productive people or team members willing to work for your department’s success ( and therefore your success) Hiring effectively is at the core of getting work done by others: it is the foundational skill of successful management If you can’t hire effectively, you can never manage productively and you will fail as a manager. /p>
3. contract with the head
Subtitle: Using Performance-Based Hiring to Build Great Teams
author: lou adler
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why it’s a must read: adler approaches recruiting from the perspective of a longtime recruiter who has seen recruiting undergo massive changes. he believes that hiring practices must be systematic to adapt to those changes. his approach is thorough and direct.
Best Quote: “Ongoing demographic changes, global expansion, the internet, and the great dot-com boom and bust changed the rules of hiring forever. This led to a cultural shift of major proportions. Changing jobs every In just a few years it no longer carries the stigma it did before 2000. Loyalty to the company is no longer a hallmark of character. Not surprisingly, considering cutbacks in pension plans, shifting the cost of health care to the employee management and the outsourcing of entire departments have forced every employee to take care of themselves companies no longer set the hiring rules, the best people do while this has always been the case, evidence abounds that this change is taking place accelerating”.
4. 96 great interview questions to ask before you hire
Author: Paul Falcone
Why it’s a must read: From the title, you’d think this book is just a checklist of typical job interview questions. However, what Falcone presents is an entire interview philosophy that is the exact opposite of the canned question approach. is full of examples and explains why these questions work and how to interpret the answers correctly.
Best Quote: “Behavioral questions ensure spontaneity, as candidates can’t prepare for them in advance. Rehearsed responses to traditional queries fall by the wayside in this ad hoc interview environment where candidates count.” stories about their real-life performance. And because they link responses to concrete past actions, they minimize the candidate’s inclination to exaggerate responses.”
5. how to spot a liar
Subtitle: Why People Don’t Tell the Truth…and How You Can Catch Them
authors: gregory hartley & maryann karinch
Why it’s a must read: Like all books on how to spot liars, there’s a little snake oil here. after all, even lie detectors can be fooled. however, many people (including some in law enforcement) rely on these techniques, so they are worth learning and trying.
best quote: “when you learn to combine interrogation tactics effectively (baselining, reading body language, minimizing, effective questions), you will be unique… when you understand the mechanics of stress and master the techniques for manipulate someone’s fears and dreams, you will be powerful.”
6. keeping millennials
Subtitle: Why Companies Are Losing Billions in Turnover to This Generation—and What to Do About It
authors: joanne sujansky & jan ferri-reed
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Why it’s a must-read: Due to our incredibly rapid pace of technological change, there is a greater cultural difference between millennials and baby boomers than there is between boomers and the generation of mad men who raised them. recruiters must navigate between these two cultures and help both generations work together.
best quote: “boomers are leaving a workplace that has been designed around them, which is now at odds with the job expectations of the millennials who will replace them. the clash of cultures in the workplace is creating perplexity, consternation and havoc for companies that are now faced with the need to adapt their cultures to millennial work styles.”
7. who
Authors: Geoff Smart & Randy Street
Why it’s a must-read: The authors of this somewhat mysteriously named book have done extensive research on how HR functions effectively within corporations. The result is not only eye-opening, it’s practically a manifesto as to why recruiters have never been more valuable than they are in today’s slightly wacky corporate world.
best quote: “these ‘who’ mistakes are costly. according to studies we’ve done with our clients, the average hiring mistake costs fifteen times an employee’s base salary in direct costs and lost productivity. think about it: a The mistake of hiring a $100,000 employee alone can cost a company $1.5 million or more. If your company makes ten of those mistakes a year, you’re flushing $15 million down the drain a year.”
8. hire for attitude
Subtitle: A Revolutionary Approach to Recruiting and Selecting People with Both Tremendous Skills and Superb Attitude
author: mark murphy
why it’s a must read: one of my recent posts was about how chipotle uses attitude as a primary determinant of hiring. this book explains how the hiring and interviewing process must change so that companies can weed out candidates whose attitude will lead to failure.
best quote: “when you see your colleagues become obsessed with hiring people who can ‘get the job done’ and who have the ‘right skills’ and enough ‘talent,’ [you should] explain to them that attitude, not ability, is the number one predictor of a new hire’s success or failure, because even the best skills don’t really matter if an employee isn’t open to improvement or constantly alienates co-workers, lacks motivation, or simply lacks the right personality to have success in that culture, skills still count, but the data overwhelmingly tells us that attitude is the hiring issue that should demand the most attention.”
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