Who: The a Method for Hiring
by Geoff Smart
![Who: The a Method for Hiring]()
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List Price: $49.99
Our Price: $32.21
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Manufacturer: Tantor Media
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Audio CD
Dewey Decimal Number: 658.311
EAN: 9781400138388
Format: Unabridged
ISBN: 1400138388
Label: Tantor Media
Number Of Items: 4
Publication Date: 2008-10-01
Publisher: Tantor Media
Studio: Tantor Media
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: Let me trim the fat from the meat..and add more meat
Comment: American people have been prone to overrate different things over time. In the last years they got crazy about Internet companies and next over real state, valuing them way above what they were really worth. And now I see a small bubble forming up.
Just like real state and the early Internet start-ups, "Who" is both quite useful and has quite potential benefits. Now, keep on mind the diversity of "corporate cultures" (funny name when companies are nothing but wild jungles) or values. Geoff and Randy (G & R) emphasized that a great candidate should always have his references quite excited when recommending him, but values are quite different in different companies, sometimes within themselves. There are places where "working too hard" is indeed a true defect.
What I've been seeing where I live -in the Mid-west- is a pressure from companies to drop the salaries to 3rd world levels, while trying to offer other things to make up, particularly "making you happy". One staffing agency, Stat-Tek, even shows a guy dressing Hawaii clothing, with a slogan "another day at the office!"; below that, a funny paragraph describes the "associates" (employees) having fun with activities such as shaving the boss' head.
A contract company I worked for (EPL-BAS) would overstaff and then have the employees wasting hours and hours playing cards and telling jokes, no exaggeration at all. It was actually a priority socializing a lot there. This company gets some government benefits when hiring more and more people, which makes it overstaffed. At the same time, it wants costs at almost zero, which makes their staff very very badly paid. Their solution is hiring unqualified staff and focusing in creating a "happy" atmosphere. It should boost morale to motivate the employees to work well while keep salaries way down. That's why their key value was being quite social.
Companies can be outrageously different.
G & R have shown us how to get some clues on how to discover false good recommendation. Yet, they forgot to take into account that different values in companies also lead to wrongful good recommendations...and equally important, these different values lead to wrongfully bad recommendations too. Thus, think twice when bosses complain about former employees, they virtually do it always. And think twice when they are thrilled at someone, he may just have being politics master.
As G & R say, get curious but they don't tell you how for these cases. Well, focus on the skills and attitudes your job needs and enquire about them as much as possible. Remember that on these referral interviews you are on the other side of the equation, and the jerkness you can afford with job seeker no longer exits. You are now on a similar seat. You cannot cut the talk within 15 minutes if you don't like the interview or keep pushing "tell me more".
The companies' web sites may well be deceiving on what their true values are. Referral interviews are still a bit of dark magic. For me, my question is why so many consultants say that some referrals may keep silent for fear of being sued. Who's going to know normally?
As for the candidate interviews, you should also skip the third one, the focused one, which is about how the candidate matches your scorecard. The previous one -the topgrading- should provide that info. More important, G & R recommend bring more people in, and well remind you that you have to prepare them with a scrip and previous info, otherwise they'll bring their voodoo methods to the table and screw the whole time-consuming process. Actually, you have to teach this method to any person you invite to join the interviews. Otherwise, they will insist on their voodoo sorcery.
In general, G & R don't prepare well enough their readers to deal with the defects of candidates. They say candidates should admit at least 5 flaws. Those are many and still normal, people are quite flawed. Will your objectivity be enough to neglect -or put up with- those many flaws that are not key to their performance?
Whenever you ask former employers about their flaws, they will surely tell you much more than the candidates, sometimes they will exaggerate. How to tell exaggerations from realities? Maybe the slogan that G & R mention, "if you look for...., then X is the right one" is helpful.
And by the same token (everybody is quite flawed), candidates must also be allowed to criticize their former employers at some point. If only former employers can criticize, how can an objective judgment will be done? In fact, letting the candidates criticize their employer will let you see more of their personalities and performance. A guy who just criticizes is surely a bad candidate, but what about one who keeps her tone? And finally, keeping bad comments on former bosses is widely advised all over the internet and books. I can't imagine a job seeker criticizing his boss on a job interview.
And what about those great candidates who happened not to make eye-catching resumes and letters? G & R don't cover the fact that it's not the best candidates but the best self-marketers who get interviews. These problems even happen to candidates in engineering and sciences
When you hire a CEO, you can get a lot of reliable information, but most hires are not for CEOs.
All in all, it's still a good book to get, but trimming the fat and keeping simpler to the first two candidate interviews and probably the referral one.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Save your money - get "Hire With Your Head" instead.
Comment: Within the hiring world, there is a split:
* Interviews can predict great hires,
* Assessments (like IQ tests) can predict great hires.
This book is all about longer and more complex interviewing.
The book focuses on hiring CEOs and top management, so remember that when looking at this book.
This book is useless for hiring college grads, IT professionals (Software Developers, Project Managers or Business Analysts). In fact, as I specialize in hiring tech people, I find this system goes against best practices for hiring technical people in any field as the book focuses on interviewing direct reports (people the candidate manages).
The main problem that I had was the that the book (nor the website) provided their research for review. Interviewing as the main stay of hiring has been PROVEN to be the WORST predictor of hiring success. However, this book suggest the main solution is to do more stringent interviewing.
The book supports three questionable interviewing techniques. The first is to THREATEN the candidate. The books suggest that the interviewer use phrases like, "WHEN I speak with your last boss, what will they tell me your strengths are." The author suggest that the use of "WHEN" lets the candidate know you will be speaking with their past manager. This, and other suggestions, seems a little heavy handed.
Then their is a lack of transparency in this hiring process. This system is quite manipulative and an experienced candidate could be turned off. One technique is to get the candidate to agree to the compensation early in the process. Any shewed candidate that wants to hold off salary negotiations until they know enough about the position, is toss out. In fact, the book authors brag about only hiring one person in 500 (at their web site) This is NOT a useful metric.
More bothersome is the suggestion that the interviewer find out about the candidate's spouse. This can be all sorts of illegal as martial status can be grounds for discrimination law suits. The book suggest that the candidate's spouse, and family, must be sold the job as well. While I agree that a candidate may decline an offer if their spouse objects to moving, a company needs to be VERY careful how they ask this question. "Would you and your family be comfortable with moving?" would be a much better way to ask this question. If the book's advice is followed, an inexperienced HR manager may ask, "would your SPOUSE be comfortable with relocation?" This is all kinds of bad.
The author's website says they have only a 97% client satisfaction rate. That is not all that good given the author's suggestion of the success of their technique.
To end on a positive note, ...
There is research that suggests that interviewing is only 50% predictive in hiring. That is, you could flip a coin and do as well as if you interviewed a candidate and chose. I am of this camp, I am a believer in cognitive assessments. But, if you are going to use interviews as your main screening method, I suggest "Hire With Your Head". A much better system.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Good book on hiring
Comment: Great book on hiring the right people - If you hire right, 85% of your manager's job is complete!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Clear, Concise and Actionable
Comment: Finally, a business book that is clear, concise and actionable. This book very clearly lays out the authors' methodology for hiring great people. This methodology is complete, easy to understand and is presented in a way you can truly incorporate into you business. We started using this methodology with our most recent open position and although we have not successfully hired anyone, we have screened out two candidates who looked really good on paper but ultimately would not have been a fit. NOT hiring the wrong candidate is as valuable as finding the right one.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Easy-to-Read, a True Mirror & Actionable
Comment: I rate WHO 5 stars for 3 primary reasons:
Easy-to-Read - If a resource is to be useful, it must be accessible. The book was so easy to read, that when I gave a copy to a fellow executive of my company (an operator who has hired 100s of people over his nearly 30-year career), he read it over the weekend and has found it very valuable. Candidly, I was surprised that he had completed it when we talked the following Monday. We have since talked about how to effect some recommended changes at our company. I started reading the much more dense Topgrading, but I stopped halfway thru. I doubt I would ever have been able to get my colleague to read Topgrading. Topgrading is more academic, which suits me fine on occasion, but I needed a quicker read here.
A True Mirror - WHO is honest & relevant, as it exposed several key areas of improvement. In several instances, we saw ourselves in the examples of poor hiring methods...perhaps a little "painful & embarrassing" to see, but it's necessary to know your shortcomings to improve them.
Actionable - Finally, WHO provides actionable recommendations for the key hiring phases, a critical barometer for determining the value of such a book. We have been able to quickly begin to employ some of the techniques discussed in the book at my company.
FYI, I bought 10 copies of the book to give to colleagues & friends.
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Editorial Reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Let me trim the fat from the meat..and add more meat
Comment: American people have been prone to overrate different things over time. In the last years they got crazy about Internet companies and next over real state, valuing them way above what they were really worth. And now I see a small bubble forming up.
Just like real state and the early Internet start-ups, "Who" is both quite useful and has quite potential benefits. Now, keep on mind the diversity of "corporate cultures" (funny name when companies are nothing but wild jungles) or values. Geoff and Randy (G & R) emphasized that a great candidate should always have his references quite excited when recommending him, but values are quite different in different companies, sometimes within themselves. There are places where "working too hard" is indeed a true defect.
What I've been seeing where I live -in the Mid-west- is a pressure from companies to drop the salaries to 3rd world levels, while trying to offer other things to make up, particularly "making you happy". One staffing agency, Stat-Tek, even shows a guy dressing Hawaii clothing, with a slogan "another day at the office!"; below that, a funny paragraph describes the "associates" (employees) having fun with activities such as shaving the boss' head.
A contract company I worked for (EPL-BAS) would overstaff and then have the employees wasting hours and hours playing cards and telling jokes, no exaggeration at all. It was actually a priority socializing a lot there. This company gets some government benefits when hiring more and more people, which makes it overstaffed. At the same time, it wants costs at almost zero, which makes their staff very very badly paid. Their solution is hiring unqualified staff and focusing in creating a "happy" atmosphere. It should boost morale to motivate the employees to work well while keep salaries way down. That's why their key value was being quite social.
Companies can be outrageously different.
G & R have shown us how to get some clues on how to discover false good recommendation. Yet, they forgot to take into account that different values in companies also lead to wrongful good recommendations...and equally important, these different values lead to wrongfully bad recommendations too. Thus, think twice when bosses complain about former employees, they virtually do it always. And think twice when they are thrilled at someone, he may just have being politics master.
As G & R say, get curious but they don't tell you how for these cases. Well, focus on the skills and attitudes your job needs and enquire about them as much as possible. Remember that on these referral interviews you are on the other side of the equation, and the jerkness you can afford with job seeker no longer exits. You are now on a similar seat. You cannot cut the talk within 15 minutes if you don't like the interview or keep pushing "tell me more".
The companies' web sites may well be deceiving on what their true values are. Referral interviews are still a bit of dark magic. For me, my question is why so many consultants say that some referrals may keep silent for fear of being sued. Who's going to know normally?
As for the candidate interviews, you should also skip the third one, the focused one, which is about how the candidate matches your scorecard. The previous one -the topgrading- should provide that info. More important, G & R recommend bring more people in, and well remind you that you have to prepare them with a scrip and previous info, otherwise they'll bring their voodoo methods to the table and screw the whole time-consuming process. Actually, you have to teach this method to any person you invite to join the interviews. Otherwise, they will insist on their voodoo sorcery.
In general, G & R don't prepare well enough their readers to deal with the defects of candidates. They say candidates should admit at least 5 flaws. Those are many and still normal, people are quite flawed. Will your objectivity be enough to neglect -or put up with- those many flaws that are not key to their performance?
Whenever you ask former employers about their flaws, they will surely tell you much more than the candidates, sometimes they will exaggerate. How to tell exaggerations from realities? Maybe the slogan that G & R mention, "if you look for...., then X is the right one" is helpful.
And by the same token (everybody is quite flawed), candidates must also be allowed to criticize their former employers at some point. If only former employers can criticize, how can an objective judgment will be done? In fact, letting the candidates criticize their employer will let you see more of their personalities and performance. A guy who just criticizes is surely a bad candidate, but what about one who keeps her tone? And finally, keeping bad comments on former bosses is widely advised all over the internet and books. I can't imagine a job seeker criticizing his boss on a job interview.
And what about those great candidates who happened not to make eye-catching resumes and letters? G & R don't cover the fact that it's not the best candidates but the best self-marketers who get interviews. These problems even happen to candidates in engineering and sciences
When you hire a CEO, you can get a lot of reliable information, but most hires are not for CEOs.
All in all, it's still a good book to get, but trimming the fat and keeping simpler to the first two candidate interviews and probably the referral one.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Save your money - get "Hire With Your Head" instead.
Comment: Within the hiring world, there is a split:
* Interviews can predict great hires,
* Assessments (like IQ tests) can predict great hires.
This book is all about longer and more complex interviewing.
The book focuses on hiring CEOs and top management, so remember that when looking at this book.
This book is useless for hiring college grads, IT professionals (Software Developers, Project Managers or Business Analysts). In fact, as I specialize in hiring tech people, I find this system goes against best practices for hiring technical people in any field as the book focuses on interviewing direct reports (people the candidate manages).
The main problem that I had was the that the book (nor the website) provided their research for review. Interviewing as the main stay of hiring has been PROVEN to be the WORST predictor of hiring success. However, this book suggest the main solution is to do more stringent interviewing.
The book supports three questionable interviewing techniques. The first is to THREATEN the candidate. The books suggest that the interviewer use phrases like, "WHEN I speak with your last boss, what will they tell me your strengths are." The author suggest that the use of "WHEN" lets the candidate know you will be speaking with their past manager. This, and other suggestions, seems a little heavy handed.
Then their is a lack of transparency in this hiring process. This system is quite manipulative and an experienced candidate could be turned off. One technique is to get the candidate to agree to the compensation early in the process. Any shewed candidate that wants to hold off salary negotiations until they know enough about the position, is toss out. In fact, the book authors brag about only hiring one person in 500 (at their web site) This is NOT a useful metric.
More bothersome is the suggestion that the interviewer find out about the candidate's spouse. This can be all sorts of illegal as martial status can be grounds for discrimination law suits. The book suggest that the candidate's spouse, and family, must be sold the job as well. While I agree that a candidate may decline an offer if their spouse objects to moving, a company needs to be VERY careful how they ask this question. "Would you and your family be comfortable with moving?" would be a much better way to ask this question. If the book's advice is followed, an inexperienced HR manager may ask, "would your SPOUSE be comfortable with relocation?" This is all kinds of bad.
The author's website says they have only a 97% client satisfaction rate. That is not all that good given the author's suggestion of the success of their technique.
To end on a positive note, ...
There is research that suggests that interviewing is only 50% predictive in hiring. That is, you could flip a coin and do as well as if you interviewed a candidate and chose. I am of this camp, I am a believer in cognitive assessments. But, if you are going to use interviews as your main screening method, I suggest "Hire With Your Head". A much better system.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Good book on hiring
Comment: Great book on hiring the right people - If you hire right, 85% of your manager's job is complete!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Clear, Concise and Actionable
Comment: Finally, a business book that is clear, concise and actionable. This book very clearly lays out the authors' methodology for hiring great people. This methodology is complete, easy to understand and is presented in a way you can truly incorporate into you business. We started using this methodology with our most recent open position and although we have not successfully hired anyone, we have screened out two candidates who looked really good on paper but ultimately would not have been a fit. NOT hiring the wrong candidate is as valuable as finding the right one.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Easy-to-Read, a True Mirror & Actionable
Comment: I rate WHO 5 stars for 3 primary reasons:
Easy-to-Read - If a resource is to be useful, it must be accessible. The book was so easy to read, that when I gave a copy to a fellow executive of my company (an operator who has hired 100s of people over his nearly 30-year career), he read it over the weekend and has found it very valuable. Candidly, I was surprised that he had completed it when we talked the following Monday. We have since talked about how to effect some recommended changes at our company. I started reading the much more dense Topgrading, but I stopped halfway thru. I doubt I would ever have been able to get my colleague to read Topgrading. Topgrading is more academic, which suits me fine on occasion, but I needed a quicker read here.
A True Mirror - WHO is honest & relevant, as it exposed several key areas of improvement. In several instances, we saw ourselves in the examples of poor hiring methods...perhaps a little "painful & embarrassing" to see, but it's necessary to know your shortcomings to improve them.
Actionable - Finally, WHO provides actionable recommendations for the key hiring phases, a critical barometer for determining the value of such a book. We have been able to quickly begin to employ some of the techniques discussed in the book at my company.
FYI, I bought 10 copies of the book to give to colleagues & friends.
In Who, Geoff Smart and Randy Street provide a simple and straightforward solution to every manager's number-one problem: unsuccessful hiring.
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